And what will be in that profile? The bemused smile, the desperate
poker face, the jaded look of resignation, perhaps any attempt at
humor? Perhaps you did not pay your credit card bill this month,
or are behind in your party dues? Maybe you know too much about
spiders, or developmental biology?
The cool thing, from the (imagined) terrorists perspective, is that
the profile criteria must be kept secret, so no one will ever know
why they have been more invasively searched. It will appear
completely arbitrary to the average person and thus, in this
climate, increasingly political.
You prevent terror by not being terrorized.
C
On 11/21/10 3:19 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Russell,
I don’t think profiling needs to be politically
incorrect.
N
Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and
profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of
political correctness. So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start
doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what
will our response be then? What about the surgically
implanted explosives?
The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being
blown up. The choice is between acting like idiots or doing
what actually is necessary to prevent terror. So far, we
have chosen the former. Is it really worth it to spend
billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to
be “fair” to everyone?
I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run
things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.
Russ #3
Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ
I have followed the correspondence on enhanced
scanning with usual mixture of shock and
incredulity. Do people object because
it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective? It
would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be
blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced
scanner. But I haven’t enough info to
make any definitive judgment. In
particular on two matters. It seems
that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh
masses in exotic parts of the body without detection
by the old scanners. I thought that
the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems
that old folk, handicapped people, children and
infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with
no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In
this wicked world the innocent are always punished.
If correct this is pretty awful news.
The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that
he’d be directed through the old system, pass and
end up undetected on his planned flight. If
an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid
this by all means while offering to take the old,
ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected,
unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again
another day.
In such circumstances he should behave like a
gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and
behave with all the histrionics necessary for the
exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost. So
this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to
have chosen, and others to approve of, would make
the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.
Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures
Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what
to look for.
1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico
87505,USA
tel:(505)983-7728
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
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