Adventures In Profiling

April 29, 2012

Those who read my blog with a modicum of frequency perhaps know that I’m far more receptive to “New Atheism” than most. I find myself agreeing with the likes of Sam Harris more often than not when I watch him debate with religious apologists. But his political conclusions, frankly, sometimes shock the conscience:

We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a glance.

This paragraph is, in part, removed from its context. You should read the whole essay before lighting torches and raising pitchforks. But I think the two biggest problems with Harris’s essay can be summed up as follows:

1. Sam Harris never articulates precisely what it means for TSA to put him “not entirely outside the bullseye.” Is he asking for a less rigorous pat-down? That he should be checked at random with less frequency? He never quantifies this observation. He calls for vigorous profiling of people who “appear” Muslim without quantifying what reduced scrutiny of “non-Muslim appearing” individuals looks like. To be fair, I think Harris is far more concerned about the extreme cases, like 7-year old disabled girls, or the elderly and infirm (mentioned in his essay). Still, even he must be aware of the fact that the terrorists he fears so much have utilized the infirm and disabled to accomplish violent attacks before. So his belief that TSA agents should ignore those who are “obviously not terrorists” is glib at best.

2. Sam Harris has clearly not read (or at least taken seriously) the literature that suggests profiling is not only ineffective, but makes us less safe rather than more. Focusing on physical characteristics rather than behavior makes law enforcement behave like idiots, because they end up using race as a litmus test to trigger suspicion. Also, law enforcement agents are notoriously bad at profiling. To wit, here is a list of characteristics appearing on FBI drug courier profiles, which you can find in David Cole’s No Equal Justice and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow:

Arrived late at night
Arrived early in the morning
Arrived in afternoon
One of first to deplane
One of last to deplane
Deplaned in middle
Bought coach ticket
Bought first-class ticket
Traveled alone
Traveled with a companion
Acted too nervous
Acted too calm
Made eye contact with officer
Avoided making eye contact with officer
Walked quickly through airport
Walked slowly through airport
Suspect was Hispanic
Suspect was Black female

In other words,even in the 21st century, law enforcement officials are incapable of crafting a coherent, non-contradictory character profile of suspicious behavior that makes any sense whatsoever. Which leads me back to the point I’ve been trying to make about the TSA since day 1: when it comes to criminal investigation and national security, the undulating and multifarious vicissitudes of the human experience make it difficult to identify a coherent corpus of suspicious behavior that is in any way reliable. Almost without fail, the end-result of profiling is that people either a) end up ignoring behavior by focusing on race, or b) if race isn’t part of the profile, they end up with a profile that includes actions which are on equal and opposite ends of the spectrum of human behavior. As a result, the only limiting principle under any profiling regime will be the inherent biases and limitations of perception that define a given law enforcement official’s mental state at any one time, which of course defeats the very purpose of having a profile in the first place.

So no, we should not “profile Muslims and be honest about it.” If anything, we should accept the fact that law enforcement is only effective in proportion to the degree which it is invasive of our privacy and freedom. Law enforcement has a legitimate role in civilized society, but what defines an effective justice system is one where limiting principles are drawn so as to preserve human dignity. To this end, there are certain situations where the gains in security are not worth the added restraints on our liberty. The TSA’s current Modus Operandi is a perfect example of what happens when that limiting principle gets stretched too far in the name of security. Yet if we accept security as our primary goal, then it is a Modus Operandi that is necessary, because profiling makes law enforcement officials behave foolishly and ignore potential threats based on appearance alone. The only effective way to keep everyone safe, as the TSA well knows, is to “profile” everyone. Which leads to the sort of outrages against human dignity that we have beared witness to over the past few years.

This of course, brings us back to our Faustian bargain: if maximal security is our goal, we can profile everyone and continue to bear witness to outrageous indignities at TSA check-out lines. If preserving human dignity, privacy and freedom is our primary goal, then we can choose to live with the comparatively small risk of dying in another terrorist attack, and rid ourselves of the consistent den of human outrage that has come to define TSA security procedures.

Considering that you are more likely to be struck by lightning than die in a terrorist attack, I believe the answer is to choose dignity over increased security; an increase which is, by in large, fictitious when placed under scrutiny.

2:54pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZMMjnxKZCgLY

(Notes: 60)