Feds Undertaking Massive Passenger Profiling Plan

Logic Bomb writes: "The Washington Post is running an overview of a rather big-brother-ish airline passenger screening system the government is proposing. Keeping track of people's ticket purchases is one thing, but correlating people's addresses and living arrangements...! This attempt seems closer to completion and implementation than any other that's been proposed so far."

Comments

Re:So...?

[EllisDees]

but we have freedom of speech

Right. Try having a public speech in support of forming a Nazi party and see how free you are to speak.

I can buy/rent a zone 1 DVD at any video store.

So can we...

I can publish code to decrypt DVDs without any limitation.

Ok, you got me there.

I can practice cryptography [technion.ac.il] without being targeted.

There are absolutely no laws in the US that keep me from using any form of cryptography I want.

Re:what's wrong?

[Flower]

Well, now we have a prime example of why this is a bad idea. How about we stop profiling the Irish once all those stupid micks cease blowing up shit. Oh, how about we stop profiling people from Spain? Or haven't you heard about the ETA? Hrmmm, better profile the Japanese too. They use chemical weapons.

Do you even have a clue that Muslims are just as ethnically diverse as Christians? How long before we have a John Walker, clean-cut and solidly integrated in society blow up another federal building. Oh wait. That's right. The first terrorist to do that wasn't Islamic.

Finally, you have an extremely small percentage of the population committing these acts so now you want to profile the whole community under the same brush. Well going back to McVeigh, does that mean I should profile caucasian christian males? What? Oaklahoma City isn't big enough now? Not recent enough?

Your "boring math" is weighted by some human's criteria. It is in no way pure and merely analytical. And as someone who wouldn't flag a single criteria mentioned in the article it still really bugs me that my personal history is coming under such scrutiny. imnsho, this intrusion isn't worth the 15 minute savings I'd get at the airport.