OK, the NCAA tourney is in town and even though everyone is well behaved you decide to take a break from the hard work of tipping strippers. You decide to motor down Desert Inn to a big private game. When you get there you are profiled because you are wearing glasses (a possible camera or disguise) and thrown up on the wall and searched.

Would a small gift from you host be reward enough to forgive and forget?

With proper education about profiling and some tact maybe the public safety would be reward enough for the act of being looked at critically.

Have not read the book yet so will not comment on the chapter being discussed but I dont see how the US could follow the Israeli style of profiling anyway. There are 3 international airports in Israel and 31 overall if you count landing strips. There are almost 15,000 in America. Probably at least 400 major ones. There isnt enough manpower to flood waiting rooms. But I do agree that profiling generally does not work for this sort of thing.

No, it's not. A more appropriate analogy would be developing (what may or may not be) a maximally exploitive strategy that costs other people money, then telling your opponent exactly what your strategy is and hoping they don't take advantage of it. I have no idea what the best strategy is for stopping reactionary Muslims from hijacking planes, but I do know that handing out millions of notes informing people of your strategy is not likely to be best.

"My solution would be to openly profile, but also take actions to mitigate it."

...

As someone with long-term experience as a criminal defense lawyer, I would like to comment on this profiling controversy.

If I am reading Mr. Sklansky correctly (and please note that I have not yet read DUCY and am relying on the posts in this thread for content), he is saying that IF you are going to profile, doing so openly and with consideration for all the innocent you will inconvenience is the better way to do it. In this limited sense I agree. When we ask some but not others among us to make a sacrifice for the common good it is appropriate to compensate those singled-out folks in other ways.

But I am not sure Mr. Sklansky is adopting the position that profiling is the best method to use to insure public safety. If he is, I disagree.

"Profiling" as I understand it is subjecting all members of a large group to special scrutiny because a certain % of that group is likely to be committing crimes AND because that % is greater than the same % in the population as a whole.

Phrased that way the fallacy should be obvious. Unless that distinction between %s is a very high number (in relation to the degree of threat) this is clearly not an optimal strategy. And it does indeed become even less optimal when you make it public.

A person's background as indicated by their name, nationality, and religion are FACTORS to consider. They are also obviously not determining factors. Concentrating on these factors while concurrently ignoring others (or at least not giving the others greater significance) is FAR from the best way to go about actually increasing security. DUCY ?

Skallagrim

I totally agree with the words quoted. Unfortunately it appears that the distinction between percentages is in some cases a very high number.