From: Frederick Mann (fm1@amug.org)
Date: Tue Jul 23 2002 - 22:50:24 MDT
Many years ago, I lived in country X and
wanted to get a visa to country Y. I went
to a Y consulate in a nearby city as a
"trial run." I was told that given my
situation they wouldn't even consider
granting me a visa. I asked a number of
questions that indicated their profiling.
I then made some preparations and went to
the Y consulate in the city where I was
living. I was given VIP treatment and
granted their most favorable visa within
five minutes (while others had to wait
in line).
Frederick Mann
BuildFreedom.com
--On Tuesday, July 23, 2002 09:05:27 PM -0700 Hal Finney <hal@finney.org>
wrote:
> We have occasionally discussed the use of profiling as a security measure
> in airport security, attempting to identify those people who would be
> more likely to be terrorists. Harvey Newstrom has often cautioned against
> this approach, writing for example on May 23,
>
>> As a security professional, I really must insist that standards require
>> search of everyone or random searches. You cannot let guards try to
>> detect the possible "guilt" of people by looking at them. They do not
>> have that skill, and it is not effective enough to base a security
>> policy on. Security profiling must be based on individuals, meaning
>> behavior or situation. Groupism that includes or excludes whole genders
>> or races will instantly fail because the bad guys then have a magic
>> profile that will let them through. Just choose a person who looks
>> right as your agent, and you get through security. Such a security
>> policy would be invalid according to any security standards I know.
>
> Today there is an article going around which illustrates the wisdom
> of Harvey's advice, from
> http://swissnet.ai.mit.edu/6805/student-papers/spring02-papers/caps.htm.
>
> This paper shows that, under plausible assumptions, the profiling methods
> currently being used by the airlines, under government supervision,
> are actually *less* likely to detect terrorists than random searches...
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