Giuliani on CNN: "You have to" do "rationally-based" profiling" or "you're putting yourself in great danger"
January 07, 2010 9:53 am ET
From the January 6 edition of CNN's Larry King Live:
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So as I've asked before, how do you tell Muslims from non-Muslims, and also, how do you tell who might be a radical, and who might not be? Tim McVeigh, common white boy, nobody suspected he was going to detonate a large scale bomb in front of a Federal Building in Oklahoma. The 9-11 hijackers were all dressed in business casual type clothing when they boarded the planes, and seemed like normal business travelers. The latest guy just looked like an every day black man. Reid was an Englishman. The Tube bombers in England were a different mix of races and ethnicities. Basques look like Spainards. IRA were pasty and white.
Who do you propose we profile?
And again, what does a terrorist look like? Who are you going to profile? What the TSA should be doing, is similar to what El Al does in Israel. Aggressively question travelers before they are even checked in, don't allow vehicles anywhere near the terminals, but we see what happens when TSA or someone else does question people, we hear about liberty's being infringed upon, and some blogger gets arrested and the right wingers get all huffy.
Giuliani's own rationale in this clip is very telling:
A "six-foot-two blond guy" vs. "misguided, perverted Muslims"
It's relatively easy to spot a six-foot-two blond guy, but how do you spot a misguided, perverted Muslim? Well, surprise! Giuliani doesn't say how!
How does the presence of luggage determine someone's religious perversions?
How does payment method determine someone's religious perversions?
This is not a question of PC, it's a question of practicality.
Payment in cash, is another red flag, as most folks use credit cards. Payment in cash is odd. I imagine it happens sometimes, but not very often does someone walk up to a ticket counter, and purchase a ticket, in cash.
I don't think appearances can tell you anything though. As I said before, who do you profile? The choices on which to base your profiling on are way too broad, and there are too many choices there to be able to do it effectively.
So now you want to profile people based on names? Might as well throw Barack Hussein Obama in there. He's got a Muslim sounding name. I wonder if they frisk him before he gets on AF-1.
I brought up a valid point, you asked about names being used to profile someone, and you can't do that either.
For that matter, I know a handful of Muslims who converted, but did not change their names at all. I also know some Muslims who converted to Christianity, and again, they didn't change their names either.
Well, if Barack was born, raised, and living in Morocco, he bought a one-way ticket to the US and didn't have any luggage with him, then I would want to take a closer look at him.
Since I don't profile based on a single characteristic, my profiling of him takes into account that Barack is the President of the United States, and am pretty sure I don't need to take a look at him.
There's no such thing as a "Muslim name"
Barack is an Anglicized Hebrew name
Hussein is an Arab name
Obama is a Luo Kenyan name
True -- some have names like "Keith Ellison" . . .
Someone else posted that you would use a set of standards. Obviously someone like Tim McVeigh would be more likely to be rooted out from an aspect other than his race, but to not take race into account as one factor to consider is crazy, especially if we're talking about someone who clearly is of Arabic or near-asian descent.
McVeigh and Abdullahmatab were both terrorists, but terrorism springs from a motivation, and we can rightfully discern which racial, social and cultural groups may be motivated by different radical philosophies.
You can't profile, because there are too many factors to take into account.
There are too many factors to take into account.
Race
Religious background
Luggage checked or not checked
Ticket purchased how?
Tickets purchased by who?
Traveling from?
Traveling to?
How many times has that person traveled in the last year?
Where from?
Where to?
How many times has that person traveled in the last 2 years?
Where from?
Where to?
Do they have family at their destination?
Friends at their destination?
You get the picture. This is why profiling doens't work, too many factors to analyze, in a short period of time, and no practical way to do it.
State of Origin/passport (if he/she has one)
Hints at ideology (wearing symbols or ornaments, etc)
Luggage
I think those 4 things are enough to take someone out of line for a full-body scan and quick interview.
I would argue that McVeigh would've been flagged on 2 of the 4 standards, should he have chosen a plane instead of a box truck.
And on that front, then you can stop someone for wearing a cross, because hey, IRA is a Catholic group after all. So, we have to stop and search all white guys, from Ireland, that have a cross according to your list of items to look at and profile for.
And NOTHING was done to remove these dangerous looking people from their positions.
Why isn't OUR gum'mint doing nothing to protect us!!!!!!
Race should never be considered a factor. See my post below with the statistics for the world's Muslim population.
Globally, the world still divides itself along racial lines and has inherent cultural and social biases and hatred for other races and cultures, even supposedly "progressive" Europe. Therefore, I think it's fair and reasonable to assume someone of Arab descent that is not an American has a higher likliehood of harboring Anti-American sentiments than Muhammed Mosain who went to your elementary school and is 3-generations removed from immigration.
Amadou Diallo
Giuliani is talking out of line. He said if you get a report that says a 6'2 blond haired guy is planning am attack. You look for a 6'2 blond hair guy. Even if it is a 1000 of them! Look if you have intell that says an attack might happen you get more information on the person or persons behind the planned attack. Not just based off religion or the person's height or hair color! Profiling is dangerous and can lead to racial protests and violence!
Sorry, but there may be 1000 of them if we're talking about a US airport, but if the 6'2" blonde-haired guys were staging attacks in Saudi Arabia, there wouldn't be 1000 of them, and I wouldn't fault the Saudis a bit for taking a closer look at them.
Indians also look like people of middle eastern descent. Do you profile anyone who is brown?
There is no one type to profile, that's the entire point. You can't do it effectively.
And also, what do you think "profiling" entails? I think it only means that you take a set of standards that, if they're met, means you take a closer look. I'm not advocating banning people based on profiling..do you think Giuliani is??
I'm not worried about people's feelings, but I am worried about infringing on people just because they look a certain way.
What you're talking about doing makes some sense, but as I said before, there is no practical way of doing that, of putting that information together, and there will be no reliable patterns in it.
Did you know that many middle eastern people, when wearing western clothes, look just like us?
Did you know that 4,500,000 Americans are Muslims?
Did you know that there are 240,632,000 Muslims in Sub-Saharan Africa?
Only 20 % of the world's Muslims are from the Middle East and North Africa.
Let's get to the profilin'!
IRA
ETA
KKK
And so on.
We keep an eye out for the guy with a mullet, a hunting vest on, and a tshirt that says "Obama = monkey."
Ignoring the fact that 82% of Muslims were born in Asia or the Middle East is also stupid, as is the assertion that radical muslim terror groups will be able to successfully radicalize the other 18% out there living in countries that are likely to be more prosperous than those (on average) in Asia and the Middle East.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Muslim_population
You're also looking at it from a perspective that all 82% that were born in Asia or the Middle East are radicals. They're not. Only a small fraction of a percent of Muslims around the world could be considered radical.
Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Egypt are your top 5 in population wise, and I'd wager, someone wouldn't be able to tell the difference in someone from each of those countries, and or whether they were radical or not.
It's not the ONLY factor, but it's definitely ONE factor.
BTW, you do realize that profiling these folks isn't how you stop them . . . you stop them by changing the policies which create them in the first place. Profiling is what they want. A terrorist never has to attack or must only attack once if the desired effect is achieved just with the FEAR [terror] of an attack or another attack. Living in FEAR [as pushed by Bush, Fox, et buds] means that they have won.
And, if you argued (for the sake of arguing) that 1% of the muslim population are radical terrorists, then 1% of the 18% total is a much smaller number that's not raising ONE of the flags than the 1% of the 100% population, wouldn't you agree?
Well, in that case, we should start profiling many-times-married Italian-Americans who like to cross-dress -- right?