Passenger profiling

I think it is wild that I can read the London Times, almost in real-time, from my laptop on the kitchen table. They don't require registration, either, which is nice. I refuse to register, and often just spam up the registration scheme with fake emails.

Anyway, back to the story. It seems that the British.gov is thinking about profiling certain passenger types.

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

Makes sense to me. You see, there is a certain profile that the terrorists follow. You'll notice that there weren't any septuagenarian grandmothers weilding boxcutters on the 9/11 flights. Subjecting them to the same criteria as young Muslim males is just silly. It smacks of stupidity.

However, the all-too-easily offended are concerned that some people who fit a particular pattern of suspicion might be inconvenienced.

The system would be much more sophisticated than simply picking out young men of Asian appearance. But it would cause outrage in the Muslim community because its members would be far more likely to be selected for extra checks.

Too frigging bad. Maybe if the Muslims start cleaning up their act, turning in terrorists because it is the right thing to do, we won't look upon all of them with suspicion.

You see, the problem is that people who fit a particular pattern are the ones causing airliners to fall out of the sky. Young muslim males who act generally weird and hijack airplanes are the ones who are causing the problem. Names like Muhammed, or Achmed, or any other Middle Eastern name. You don't see many folks named Gavin, or Taylor causing problems by smuggling bombs. Yeah, we had Theodore Kaczynski building bombs, and we had John Lee Malvo shooting people, but they were the exceptions that prove the rule. And I note with some amusement that Malvo was hanging out with an older male who called himself John Allen Muhammad. Ya see, there is that Muhammed thing again.

This ain't profiling. This is common sense. We've already let Ziad Jarrah, Ahmed al-Haznawi, Ahmed al-Nami, and Saeed al-Ghamdi hurt us once. There is no good reason to let them hurt us again.

The loyal local Muslim community needs to realize that we aren't hearing much out of them. They need to vocally reject terrorism and start bringing in the perpetrators.

Or, quit bitching when we profile them.