On 12/20/04 3:47 PM, wrote the following:
On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 21:26:33 GMT, Mitty wrote:


Unfortunately, "effective" is also known as "racial profiling".

Another case where political correctness has subverted simple logic.

Even children don't go fishing in areas where there are no fish because it's a
waste of time and money.

However, to be "PC," it is national policy that we waste huge amounts of time
and money searching people who have a negligible chance of being hijackers.
Which, of course, reduces the time and money available to actually work on
catching potential highjackers. Net result: Less safety, higher cost.



depends on whose ox is being gored.

I suspect there would have been a hue and cry from young white
christians if we had singled them out as terror suspects after McVeigh
and Nichols bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City.


The point is that (1) if you have a valid way to subset your population that (2)
gives you a significantly increased probability of finding the bad guy because
you can afford to expend more screening effort on the subset -- then (3) you
should do it.

Said less abstractly: If there are places in the lake where fishing effort has
a significantly higher probability of producing fish, then those are the places
to go fishing.

To your point: Assuming the selection of the subset is valid from a statistical
standpoint, it is irrelevant whether the members of the subset "raise a hue and
cry" or not.

To your implication that selecting young white Christians is logical: A single
crime committed by two members of a huge class is probably not a valid reason to
select the class for extra screening.

The arguments in the posts below, especially those about screening young Muslim
males versus screening pilots, all implicitly accept the idea that we should be
trying to fish where the fish are. It can also be true that it is difficult to
figure out where they are. That does not make it any less desirable to do so.