Profiling

[Polaris]

I think a better case can be made that terrorism isn't quite the threat we may think it is.

Just because there haven't been any actual attacks, there have been plenty of foiled plots since 9/11. A plot was unravelled just this weekend in Canada.
Remember, the terrorists only have to get lucky once - we have to have luck every time.

Two things are probably doing more than anything - Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is in prison, and most of the raw recruits are going to Iraq.

 

[bigred]

But subjectively, isn't it getting on to five years since we've suffered a terrorist act on U.S. soil? Couldn't you say the whole war on terror thing is working?

You could, but many GW-bashing-bandwagoneers would rather die themselves than do so.

PS and oh btw, I'm not exactly GW's biggest fan and souring more on him/his plans each day. But overall I quite agree w/the pre-emptive strike and taking the war overseas vs sitting back and waiting till it came to us. Anyway....

Hell yes profiling makes sense and enough w/the PC BS, as someone else said. No it's far from fool-proof and how it's done obviously makes all the diff, but generally it's worth doing.

 

[zenith-nadir]

Some say profiling is nothing less than discrimination. They claim that suspicion based upon stereotypes about race, colour, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, or place of origin is a violation of human rights. Which is correct.

But when one is confronted with 9-11, Bali, Madrid, London, one must ask are there times in history where a society cannot wait until it has reasonable belief before it becomes suspicious about a certain race, colour, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, or place of origin. In times of urgency - such as the current age of islamic terrorism - one must rebalance freedom and civil liberties against security. You cannot just wait for reasonable suspicion before you act because in some cases it is too late at that point.

It's a hard question which has no correct answer.

 

[The Don]

I personally wonder what profile I fit into. Last time I visited U.S. (about a year ago), I had six flights and on three of them I was taken into special security check. (I'm a 27-year old blonde man).

Cute ?

Were the security officers heterosexual women or homosexual men perhaps ?