February 03, 2004
How not to catch terrorists.
According to security expert Bruce Schneier, not only will CAPPS II and other profiling systems that rely on ID checks fail to identify potential terrorists, but these profiling systems have social costs that outweigh any possible security benefits.
Posted by Magpie at February 3, 2004 04:11 PM | TrackBackProfiling has two very dangerous failure modes. The first one is obvious. Profiling's intent is to divide people into two categories: people who may be evildoers and need to be screened more carefully, and people who are less likely to be evildoers and can be screened less carefully.
But any such system will create a third, and very dangerous, category: evildoers who don't fit the profile. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Washington-area sniper John Allen Muhammed and many of the Sept. 11 terrorists had no previous links to terrorism. The Unabomber taught mathematics at UC Berkeley. The Palestinians have demonstrated that they can recruit suicide bombers with no previous record of anti-Israeli activities. Even the Sept. 11 hijackers went out of their way to establish a normal-looking profile; frequent-flier numbers, a history of first-class travel and so on. Evildoers can also engage in identity theft, and steal the identity -- and profile -- of an honest person. Profiling can result in less security by giving certain people an easy way to skirt security.
There's another, even more dangerous, failure mode for these systems: honest people who fit the evildoer profile. Because evildoers are so rare, almost everyone who fits the profile will turn out to be a false alarm. This not only wastes investigative resources that might be better spent elsewhere, but it causes grave harm to those innocents who fit the profile. Whether it's something as simple as "driving while black" or "flying while Arab," or something more complicated such as taking scuba lessons or protesting the Bush administration, profiling harms society because it causes us all to live in fear...not from the evildoers, but from the police.
Am I the only one troubled by the use of the term "evil-doer" in this? Don't they really mean "suspected terrorist" or "suspected criminal"? Is terrorism now the only form of evil? In my opinion, child molestation is one of the most evil acts, but somehow I don't think we're talking about catching child molesters here, we're talking about catching terrorists. Enough with the religious-sounding language.
Posted by: Al-Muhajabah on February 3, 2004 07:01 PMMr. Schneier's choice of terminology has the advantage of reflecting the probable viewpoint of the people who created CAPPS II: they very likely do see the system as dividing people into "evildoers" and trusted people. Once Schneier has used the term to emphasize that viewpoint, he is stuck with it for the remainder of the article, for the sake of consistency.
I'm not sure I see "evildoer" as a specifically religious term; one can argue, apart from any religion, that what some people do is objectively evil. I emphatically do not make that argument: in my experience, most people who talk about "evil" are adherents of religions that define the term for them. But it is not necessarily a religious term.
That said, I question the intent of the people who created and implemented CAPPS II. As my occupation does not require me to travel, I have decided simply not to fly until I can be reasonably confident of not ending up in Mr. Ashcroft's database... any more than I already am in it.
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"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who do not."
"There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who cannot."
Posted by: Steve Bates on February 3, 2004 11:38 PMI'm not sure I see "evildoer" as a specifically religious term; one can argue, apart from any religion, that what some people do is objectively evil. I emphatically do not make that argument: in my experience, most people who talk about "evil" are adherents of religions that define the term for them. But it is not necessarily a religious term.
I tend to agree, although I've spent a little while trying to imagine a secular equivalent. That failing, I'm stuck trying to establish what is an appropriate usage of the term--in other words, if "evil" inevitably does imply a cosmic violation of sublime virtue, then should that term be barred from official usage? In what forms of editorial usage would it be appropriate?
How could I post and not have it deleted?
Posted by: Hanging Chad on February 5, 2004 04:36 AMstart talking *to* people, and not *at* people.
don't make several posts of your own in a row -- let someone else talk.
use the same screen name every time you post.
and *think* before you write.
those would all be a good start. but if you continue to act like a troll, you can expect to be treated like one.
Posted by: Magpie on February 6, 2004 05:47 AM