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Airport Security: Let's Profile Muslims

Exactly how do you propose that we start profiling muslim travelers? Anyone with a funny-sounding name should receive extra screening, perhaps? Or, people with brown skin? Or, women wearing head scarves?

The thing is...airports, airlines, and the TSA aren't set up to collect data on travelers' religious preferences. At this point, it would be extremely unwise for a muslim terror organization to send someone in full-on burkha onto a flight to bomb it. Their efforts would be doomed to fail, because not only are TSA employees likely to pay special attention to such folks (whether they subject them to special screening or not), and so are other travelers.

The recent efforts at recruitment have been directed at Somali youth, who are AFRICAN genetically. So, rocket scientists in this thread who are advocating profiling, you going to pull all the black folks out of line for special screening? What about black muslims who've been in America forever, and who haven't been linked to any terror attacks in the U.S.? Going to give them a special screening, too, even though they don't fit the "profile"?

I deal with profiling, all the time, as part of my job. I don't think that, in this instance, it is going to be as easy as you think it is. Israel, who profiles, for instance, doesn't have anti-religious discrimination laws and privacy laws that function the way that ours do.
 
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ight. ButI want every single Muslim woman (anyone) wearing facial covering to be forced to remove that facial covering so that facial recognition software has a chance. I want every single person who's wearing flowing robes to be body scanned or patted down. If these people think we are infringing on their religious freedom, they can walk.


When was the last time you saw someone wearing garments lke this while traveling? Were ANY of the 9/11 or subsequent bombers wearing flowing robes? Going to search the black folks in daishikis, too?
 
I think it would be easier and better to profile foreigners or naturalized citizens. It's seems many terrorists are from Somalia or Yemen.
 
You realize TSA already DOES train individuals to do this type of thing?
Do they? To what extent and with what purpose? They don't seem to rely on that training however, since there are invasive pat downs, scanners, and metal wands and metal detectors. Contrast what we do with El Al in Israel, and maybe the answer is somewhere in between. On a side note, I live in the NE - the TSA agents I encounter at Phil. International, Newark International and Laguardia, I wouldn't trust as far as I can throw them for the most part. Just my perception? Maybe ... but the TSA folks I see don't seem competent to dress themselves in the morning for the most part.

They're not hugely wide spread and tend to be at the big airports because its expensive training to get someone actually skilled at it. The people routinely and rather ignorantly comparing things to Israel need to realize we're gigantic compared to them.
Newark, Philly and Laguardia are big airports - my previous comments stand. I constantly hear the complaint about how large the U.S. is and how small Israel is, but no reasoning why El Al's methods are not scalable, yet see no sound facts or evidence to show your claim of my ignorance has any validity. Why isn't it scalable again?

We have 303,289,200 more people in our country. That's almost 42 times more than Israel. We have 14,000 registered airports in our country as compared to 31. That's more than 400 airports for every one they have. We have almost as many Category X airports, the largest designation, as they have airports in general. In three weeks of time half the population of Israel will have passed through Chicago O'Hare International Airport alone.

The feasability, both in logistics and in cost, to roll out an Israel type of airport security would be mind boggling. The training involved, the higher pay for every employee that would be required, the higher quality employee that it would need, in and of itself presents huge issues in those two realms.
So too costly, too complicated logistically, too much training... that's it? And when compared to the training that TSA agents (you claim) already get, and the cost of these scanners from R&D to implementation and the training agents need to run those machines, coupled with the added no-fly list, random flagging of people to go through bag searches, invasive pat downs, etc... how is the questionable effectiveness of what we're doing now any more logistically a nightmare or less costly than a PROVEN methods provided by El Al?

Answer -- it's not. The entire argument of "it's not scalable" is made out of ignorance. Fact is, it's not been tried in the U.S. to scale so you don't know. What we DO know is what we have now is a mishmash of costly and ineffective methods which trample on individual rights - whether that is justified or not doesn't justify ignoring El Al's significant successes around their methods. Perhaps it's another tool in the tool box to use at every airport and doesn't displace everything else bolsters it. Yet, I've not seen a report from the government or anyone else from that matter that identifies it's too costly to implement, or too difficult to train, or that it's not scalable. Those are simply baseless talking points.
 
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I think it would be easier and better to profile foreigners or naturalized citizens. It's seems many terrorists are from Somalia or Yemen.

Exactly how are we going to let the TSA know that someone is a naturalized versus homegrown citizen? It's not like that fact is included on ANY documentation that travelers use. So, are we going to set up a new database that identifies naturalized citizens from certain countries?
 
Exactly how are we going to let the TSA know that someone is a naturalized versus homegrown citizen? It's not like that fact is included on ANY documentation that travelers use. So, are we going to set up a new database that identifies naturalized citizens from certain countries?

I would say it's easier to profile someone if we force them to show their ID and can look them up. With my job we profile people all the time when it comes to selling Sudafed, and we can look up all their past purchases with any store by using their ID. I would say it is easier to set up a national database of naturalized citizens versus profiling all Muslims.
 
So too costly, too complicated logistically, too much training... that's it?

Have you worked with law enforcement and people who do interview/interrogation and profiling? It requires a high level of experience, for one thing, before people get good at it. You're talking about recruiting experienced investigators, for the most part, and you're going to have to pay those people considerably more than the average TSA employee earns. So, are you prepared to hire several hundred or thousand people and pay them 80-90k a year? because, frankly, that's what you're looking at. Most skilled investigators earn upwards of $50k a year, and in large cities, they earn significantly more than that.
 
Exactly how are we going to let the TSA know that someone is a naturalized versus homegrown citizen? It's not like that fact is included on ANY documentation that travelers use. So, are we going to set up a new database that identifies naturalized citizens from certain countries?

Wouldn't the Social Security Administration already have that data? I know it's not on a passport or drivers license, but I would think that database already exists.
 
I would say it's easier to profile someone if we force them to show their ID and can look them up. With my job we profile people all the time when it comes to selling Sudafed, and we can look up all their past purchases with any store by using their ID. I would say it is easier to set up a national database of naturalized citizens versus profiling all Muslims.

This is probably true. I believe, based upon what is currently happening when I buy airline tickets, that the government is putting a system into place to compare names on tickets with federal information. I'm okay with checking those things, but here's another twist. Will people want their SS numbers checked before they fly? Or is that another violation of privacy?

See, most profiling occurs in cases where a) the individual is suspected of committing a crime or b) the individual is connected with a group involved in committing crimes (organized crime/gangs). If you're talking about screening 100% of travelers based on personal information (to separate out naturalized from native-born, for instance), you're in essence profiling everyone, and 99.9% of those people aren't suspected of criminal activity. That's a problem based upon our laws.
 
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Wouldn't the Social Security Administration already have that data? I know it's not on a passport or drivers license, but I would think that database already exists.

Do you want TSA handling your SS information? And no, the SS is not currently linked to purchasing airline tickets or traveling.
 
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This is probably true. I believe, based upon what is currently happening when I buy airline tickets, that the government is putting a system into place to compare names on tickets with federal information. I'm okay with checking those things, but here's another twist. Will people want their SS numbers checked before they fly? Or is that another violation of privacy?

See, most profiling occurs in cases where a) the individual is suspected of committing a crime or b) the individual is connected with a group involved in committing crimes (organized crime/gangs). If you're talking about screening 100% of travelers based on personal information (to separate out naturalized from native-born, for instance), you're in essence profiling everyone, and 99.9% of those people aren't suspected of criminal activity. That's a problem based upon our laws.

I don't think the TSA should require SS cards. I don't trust them with that information, plus with all the chaos that goes on in airports I would believe identity theft to be a major concern if we had to hand over our SS cards. One thing I find flawed with profiling is that the terrorists know about it, they will just place bombs or something on groups of people who are considered low risk for committing terrorist attacks. I like the Israeli system of conducting interviews, but the cost is just impractical to function in America. I honestly don't know what we should do, but what I do believe is that the TSA is power-hungry and has overstepped their boundaries.
 
I want every single Muslim woman (anyone) wearing facial covering to be forced to remove that facial covering so that facial recognition software has a chance. I want every single person who's wearing flowing robes to be body scanned or patted down. If these people think we are infringing on their religious freedom, they can walk.

Interesting. I only want to be free. Everything beyond that is secondary. If it's face some nearly immeasurable increase in my probability of dying on an aircraft or excessive, aggressive, violent government force against the People....I'm going to take that probability. Maybe a terrorist could take me out. But government is guaranteed to abuse power.
 
what I do believe is that the TSA is power-hungry and has overstepped their boundaries.

I see no evidence of this. I think that the TSA is responding to information from other federal agencies and trying to identify and stop threats before they turn into another 9/11 scenario. If TSA were really power-hungry, they would be going for the personal data, because it would create an additional layer of bureaucracy.

I think you need to logically examine your statement. What benefit does groping passengers have for the TSA administration? What do they get out of this "power grab"? Do I believe that federal agencies grab power? Sometimes, but there has to be some gain in it for them. I see zero gain from this for TSA.
 
Do they? To what extent and with what purpose?

Yes, they do. I won't go into strict detail because its Sensitive Security Information and shouldn't be discussing it in detail. In general though there are trained people watching for body language cues, talking to passengers, etc and can flag someone for additional screening.

They don't seem to rely on that training however, since there are invasive pat downs, scanners, and metal wands and metal detectors.

Becasue you can't. The average education required for the job is a a bachelor with some graduate education as compared to a High School Diploma. The average experience required for that job is a year at a slightly lower level equivilent type of job as compared to none. Or a combination of the two. These type of officers are far more skilled than your average every day screener.

That's not then going into the training that has to happen with regards to them as compared to the average screener which is far more intense and longer.

Not to mention that the starting pay band for these individuals is two to three higher than a screener meaning 16 to 24k more a year.


Its simply not feasible to teach the entire TSA work force how to do this so they have individuals that do it as an additional level of security over what is simpliest based on the logistics of this country, which is a slightly more automated process with the scanners and such.

Contrast what we do with El Al in Israel, and maybe the answer is somewhere in between.

Its not feasible to do what El Al does. Seriously, this is like saying that "Hey, the Holiday Inn down the road does [x] for their security. That means the Bellagio in Vegas should be able to do something similar".

We have far more people traveling through our country on plains every day than Israel. We have 400 times more airports in our country than Israel. We have almost as many of the largest category of airports in this country as Israel has airports in general. And we have a citizenry that has been loudest in its complaining and issues when security causes flights to take longer, which the method of security you're wishing would end up causing when combined with the scale of our country.

What you and others are suggesting is unfeasable, or grossly ineffecient combined with the amount of money and time that would be spent on it.

On a side note, I live in the NE - the TSA agents I encounter at Phil. International, Newark International and Laguardia, I wouldn't trust as far as I can throw them for the most part. Just my perception? Maybe ... but the TSA folks I see don't seem competent to dress themselves in the morning for the most part.

And its these kind of insulting worthless commentary that does nothing for the conversation. Not to mention you want to turn around and say these are the people, who you insult and think so low of, are the ones you're expecting to learn these higher levels of training?

Newark, Philly and Laguardia are big airports - my previous comments stand. I constantly hear the complaint about how large the U.S. is and how small Israel is, but no reasoning why El Al's methods are not scalable, yet see no sound facts or evidence to show your claim of my ignorance has any validity. Why isn't it scalable again?

I've already stated.

So too costly, too complicated logistically, too much training... that's it?

Yes. The training needed for what you're talking about far exceeds the training we already give TSA agents. So double or triple the amount of money spent on training. The intelligence and professional level of people you'd need for that kind of screening is higher than what is currently needing for a screener, meaning you're going to need to be offering more money as well to lure enough people to take the job. Add about $20k-40kto every TSA employee's salary. The machines, while costly, are actually a fraction of the budget compared to actual pay and training for employees. In large part because there is a high turnover in The TSA becasue the public treats them like utter ****, you get paid utter crap, and thus there's little reason to stay.

The problem, and the ignorance, in the scale argument is that "bringing things up to scale" only work in situations where the two scenarios are the same. Its not. The air traffic in the U.S. per airport is larger than it is in Israel. The amount of foreign travel in and out of the country is gravely disproportionate. The amount of intracountry flight is hugely disproportionate between the two. The situations are not analogs of each other and as such you can not simply act like its a simple scale solution.

As I said above. Your local holiday inn could have a paid security guard at all times who patrol the guards, a front door that is locked save for key cards or the front desk person opening it, a few cameras on every floor, and a front desk person who talks to every person that comes in. That doens't mean that exact same security method is scalable up to work with the Bellagio which has a huge number of different factors that play into the situation as well.

Answer -- it's not. The entire argument of "it's not scalable" is made out of ignorance.

No, its based off rational thoughts and facts.

Fact is, it's not been tried in the U.S. to scale so you don't know.

Which is equally true of saying that you don't know it would work any better because its not been done on such a scale.

What we DO know is what we have now is a mishmash of costly and ineffective methods which trample on individual rights - whether that is justified or not doesn't justify ignoring El Al's significant successes around their methods.

Umm, you want to bitch about "trampling individual rights" and yet you're pushing for the allowance of something that...unlike what you're talking about...has actually been ruled on by the supreme court as UNCONSTITUTIONAL. You're pushing for something CLEARLY labeled as unconstitutional and you want to bitch about tramplining of individual rights?

Not to mention your comment of "ineffectiveness" is off base in and of itself. The screening methods are effective. Effective is different than perfect. And the effectiveness level of it must be balanced between security and public.

I've got no issue with saying "hey, lets look at El Al and see if there's good things they're doing that we can incorporate that are constitutional. Hell, look at all the various countries airport security. My issue is with people ignorantly acting like simply going "Just do what El Al does" is somehow an intelligent answer and something that will simply automatically work. My issue is even more greatly with people who do that which are the same people bitching about the size and scope of government, government spending, and fiscal responsability because they're being ****ing hypocrites when they make the El Al comment.

Perhaps it's another tool in the tool box to use at every airport and doesn't displace everything else bolsters it. Yet, I've not seen a report from the government or anyone else from that matter that identifies it's too costly to implement, or too difficult to train, or that it's not scalable. Those are simply baseless talking points.

You've not seen anyone make a statement of it, therefore its talking points. That makes perfect sense.

Lets play your annoying little game then. Show me a report or study that clearly shows that it IS feasable to scale it up to those levels and the costs associated with it. Apparently if the study hasn't been done then it must not be true.
 
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I see no evidence of this. I think that the TSA is responding to information from other federal agencies and trying to identify and stop threats before they turn into another 9/11 scenario. If TSA were really power-hungry, they would be going for the personal data, because it would create an additional layer of bureaucracy.

One step at a time. First off, groping and fondling. Next step, pissed off people. Third step, if we want the groping and fondling and naked pictures to stop; give us your biometric data. You're getting ahead of yourself.

And TSA is a government agency, as a part of the government of course it's power hungry and oversteps boundaries. That's what government does.
 
One step at a time. First off, groping and fondling. Next step, pissed off people. Third step, if we want the groping and fondling and naked pictures to stop; give us your biometric data. You're getting ahead of yourself.

And TSA is a government agency, as a part of the government of course it's power hungry and oversteps boundaries. That's what government does.

That's an assumption that has zero basis in facts, and is in fact, rooted in your paradigm. Please feel free to factually prove this claim.
 
That's an assumption that has zero basis in facts, and is in fact, rooted in your paradigm. Please feel free to factually prove this claim.

In due time dear Catz. The government already tried things like the Real ID Act which would have subjected us all to RFID type technologies. The only reason that hasn't been started up yet was because some of the States got pissy (rightfully so). The TSA isn't just some benevolent force come down from heaven to watch over us. It's a government agency. Government expanded its power to create it, expanded its power when it demanded that is engage in such hostile, aggressive, and demeaning treatment of the People. It'll do it again in the future. This is the natural course of government. You don't throw the frog into a pot of boiling water. You put it in a pot of luke warm water and turn on the heat. Thus is the way it's done, be it the usurpation of drug laws, drinking ages, National IDs, expansion of unwarranted surveillance, etc.

The TSA is not here to save us, they cannot save us. They're here to expand government's power, put it's tentacles in new places so we can't help but brush up against them. You want TSA going after personal information? All in due time, because it will eventually go that route. Why? Because all government, particularly unchecked government, tends towards tyranny. You can choose not to believe me, but the whole of history shows the natural path government takes. It will continue to expand upon itself, it's not going to spontaneously shrink. And that you can take to the bank.
 
Common sense is we should profile Muslims....They are the ones committing the terrorist attacks.........

Why do you have so little respect for our Constitution? What good is fighting for the principles and values of America when people like you are so willing to spit on the foundations of our country?
 
In due time dear Catz. The government already tried things like the Real ID Act which would have subjected us all to RFID type technologies. The only reason that hasn't been started up yet was because some of the States got pissy (rightfully so). The TSA isn't just some benevolent force come down from heaven to watch over us. It's a government agency. Government expanded its power to create it, expanded its power when it demanded that is engage in such hostile, aggressive, and demeaning treatment of the People. It'll do it again in the future. This is the natural course of government. You don't throw the frog into a pot of boiling water. You put it in a pot of luke warm water and turn on the heat. Thus is the way it's done, be it the usurpation of drug laws, drinking ages, National IDs, expansion of unwarranted surveillance, etc.

The TSA is not here to save us, they cannot save us. They're here to expand government's power, put it's tentacles in new places so we can't help but brush up against them. You want TSA going after personal information? All in due time, because it will eventually go that route. Why? Because all government, particularly unchecked government, tends towards tyranny. You can choose not to believe me, but the whole of history shows the natural path government takes. It will continue to expand upon itself, it's not going to spontaneously shrink. And that you can take to the bank.

You should stop using that frog in the boiling water metaphor. It's an urban legend...just like your entire post.
 
Why do you have so little respect for our Constitution? What good is fighting for the principles and values of America when people like you are so willing to spit on the foundations of our country?

When a kid goes missing in a neighborhood, questioning the single 43-year-old guy who entertains teen-aged boys in his home, entertains at kids parties, and coaches all the baseball games in the neighborhood is not spitting on our Constitution...especially if he paints clown pictures.
 
You should stop using that frog in the boiling water metaphor. It's an urban legend...just like your entire post.

Yeah you're right. Government has never expanded once in history. Never has it acted out against it's own people. It's never acted improperly, never siezed power it wasn't supposed to have. No, government has always been a benevolent force, right? Like a nice, warm puppy. There's no evidence of any government doing anything wrong ever, particularly ours. What warrantless searches? You're being silly. What aggressive search techniques by TSA? They're keeping us safe, right? Patriot Act, Real ID Act....what, no now you're just being silly. Yup. Nothing to see here, move along.

Tell you what Catz, when you want to have an actual conversation then come back. Till that point, idiotic dismiss statements are not going to advance anything.
 
The TSA is not here to save us, they cannot save us. They're here to expand government's power, put it's tentacles in new places so we can't help but brush up against them.

Gee, silly me. And here I thought the TSA was tasked primarily with making us safer when we travel, not expanding the power of the federal government. I had no idea that was really their primary goal. Thank you so much for shedding some light onto the situation.

BTW... I think you'd be more comfortable in the Conspiracy Theory section... just saying :ninja:
 
You know what, I have a solution that will please everybody.

You know how you're not allowed to smile in your passport photo? **** it, make everybody smile and strip search anyone who doesn't smile at the airport, who's gonna be happy about blowing themselves up :2razz:

(please don't answer that)
 
When a kid goes missing in a neighborhood, questioning the single 43-year-old guy who entertains teen-aged boys in his home, entertains at kids parties, and coaches all the baseball games in the neighborhood is not spitting on our Constitution...especially if he paints clown pictures.

Just because someone hangs arouond young boys, and ONLY young boys, doesn't mean he should be considered a suspect in a case like this.... oh wait... YES... it does. It's called common ****ing sense.
 
Gee, silly me. And here I thought the TSA was tasked primarily with making us safer when we travel, not expanding the power of the federal government. I had no idea that was really their primary goal. Thank you so much for shedding some light onto the situation.

Yeah, you would think they were tasked to make us "safer". But how much "safer" are we? TSA didn't catch the underwear nor shoe bomber. They couldn't light themselves on fire in the end. And the new methods, these aggressive groping and naked images that we're doing now wouldn't have caught it. Nor will it make us "safer". Terrorism was already low probability, and there is no real way to significantly make us "safer" as the added risk posed by terrorists to the over all probability that we will die on any 1 given flight is minuscule. So what have they really done for us? Not much, nor will they be able to have that significant of an impact. While there can be arguments made for not outright dismissing the TSA, there is significant argument to be made that it should be run more effectively, intelligently, and less aggressively against its own people particularly when we consider the overall probabilities that we're talking about.

BTW... I think you'd be more comfortable in the Conspiracy Theory section... just saying :ninja:

Well there you go again proving that thinking ain't your strong suit.
 
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