A lemon entry, my dear Stevens
Either Lord Stevens, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police is an idiot who was dangerously promoted past his level competence or he’s gone off half-cocked with a decidedly thin grasp of the facts (as we know them right now) in today’s News of the World.
For instance, every airport in Britain is in chaos over the plane bomb-plot alert as every passenger is subjected to rigorous security checks. Why? They take lots of time, lots of staff, and are extremely expensive.
I’m a white 62-year-old 6ft 4ins suit-wearing ex-cop–I fly often, but do I really fit the profile of suicide bomber? Does the young mum with three tots? The gay couple, the rugby team, the middle-aged businessman?
No. But they are all getting exactly the same amount and devouring huge resources for no logical reason whatsoever. Yet the truth is Islamic terrorism in the West has been universally carried out by young Muslim men, usually of ethnic appearance, almost always travelling alone or in very small groups. A tiny percentage, I bet, of those delayed today have such characteristics.
Now, here’s where Steven’s crackerjack profiling plan falls on it’s abject arse. At least one of the men arrested last week (Abdul Waheed born Don Stewart-Whyte) was a white convert.
I’m a white 35 year-old, 5ft 9ins jeans-wearing ex-computer programmer but do I really fit the profile of suicide bomber?
I happen to have a shaved head and a beard at the minute (I’m an extremely lazy groomer). Did I convert to Islam two or three weeks ago (which is when I last shaved)? No, as it happens. But a customs officer filtering me through a process of top-cop Stevens’ design isn’t to know that.
Using Steven’s uncanny detective abilities, Abdul Waheed would have sailed through security at Heathrow. Maybe we should get a law passed demanding that white converts to Islam black up (a tin of tan boot polish with every Koran, maybe?).
If I was Lord Stevens I’d be firing my ghostwriter this afternoon.
(Link via Tim who has more on this. This post is a version of a comment I left over there.)
Posted on August 13th, 2006 at 11:53 am
| See also • Dogs can’t look up. Don’t ask me why. • Even Stevens • A marriage of convenience |
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Filed under T.W.A.T., The home front |
The American security expert Bruce Schneier quite regularly shreds arguments for profiling. Essentially, he says profiling gives you masses of false positives (most young Muslim men aren’t suicide bombers) and encourages terrorists to find people who don’t fit the profile (white converts). Apparently, it’s mathematically demonstrable that crude profiling is actually less effective than random screening of passengers.
Far better, he argues, to rely on intelligent, well-trained and observant human beings who can spot suspicious behaviour at the gates and thus identify people for further checking.
Plus of course if you allow exceptions to security then, surprise-surprise, terrorists are going to start actively exploiting them.
Richard Reid is half-white, half-West Indian, Germaine Lindsey was West Indian. ‘Looking Muslim’ is totally meaningless, as is most of what Lord Stevens says.
Lord Stevens goes shouty-crackers… again…
Bloody hell. Have a look at this NOTW editorial by Lord Stevens (mirrored/archived here at NOTWATS). Lord Stevens - If you’re a Muslim, it’s your problem: WHEN will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted? When will they……
Didn’t Mr Menezes fit the profile?
Comment from Bruce Schneier on the Last Week’s Terrorism Arrests:
Of course the question cannot just be, “is racial/ethnic/religious profiling practical in the short term?” but also must be, “is this a prudent policing strategy in the long term?”
Even if it were a short term practical measure to demand that Muslims submit themselves to searches, it would be imprudent if the aim is to defend a democratic society. Policing in such a society needs to be be representative in makeup -conducted by all the people or at least be a body that as much as possible represents all the people - and in conduct.
To single out a section of the British population for special humilation would do nothing BUT fracture and dedemocratise our society. Policing would be being done to them, to their community, rather than with their consent and collaboration.
And more, if we really need these security checks to defend our society, how selfish is it of men like Stevens to demand that it ought be other innocent people who suffer not just the inconveniences and humiliations of being targeted, but also the demonisation.
Why not just give Muslims special marks. No need for them to wear a badge, a ethno-religious code on the Identity Card would do, eh?
Earlier comments on the nature of democratic policing.
Anticipating Terrorism…
The best article, which I read last weekend on the London thwarted terrorist plot came from Bruce Schneier. He argues that we haven’t learned to think ahead of the terrorists and that we are only reacting to their every move…
“here’s where Steven’s crackerjack profiling plan falls on it’s abject arse. At least one of the men arrested last week was a white convert.”
So approximately 5% of those arrested last week were white. And 5% Afro-Caribbean. Both converts.
Are you lot really suggesting that security people should spend as much time checking the bags of an elderly English lady, or a Scots couple with three kids, as on the bearded Asian guy ? Given that security resources are not infinite, something that Andrew Bartless seems to take no account of ?
I believe during the ‘troubles’ that a lot more Irish than English people were checked at Stranraer. Doesn’t seem too bad an idea to me.
Wow. A white convert might get through. How true. But we’re talking averages and probabilities here. As your defeatist forebears (they were arguing against spending cash on air defences) said in the early 30s ‘The bomber will always get through’ - and it’s true. All we can do is try to minimise the numbers.
I would expect that white and black converts are probably being noted down somewhere anyway - I certainly hope so. You know what they say about the zeal of the convert - they’re certainly over-represented in the exploding ranks.
Now you COULD argue that profiling will maximise the numbers, on the ground that it will so alienate the sons of the prophet that we’ll end up with more bombers. I look forward to someone explicitly arguing this :
“these guys are no more likely to be terrorists than anyone else. And if you say they ARE more likely, a small minority of them, supported by a much larger minority, them may decide to blow you up, so don’t say it”.
Well spotted, Justin.
If it’s white, British converts to Islam you want, there’s more of them than you can shake a stick at flying beneath everyone’s London bombing radar.
RELEASE THE EVIDENCE!
Mr Schneier does not argue against profiling, he argues against profiling against an inflexible template with no variation. What he wants is for guards to be allowed to use their inteligence and training to be able to pick on people that they consider suspicious.
This will mean looking especially hard at the actions of people that appear to be of pakistani origin. These people are the ones most likely to by Muslim, and being a Muslim being a prerequist of being an Islamic Terrorist. But it does not mean picking up every person that looks like this and passing through everybody that doesn’t, but rather then deciding based on everything else if they seem like a terrorist or not.
If the principal threat is Irish terrorists then you are going to be warry about Irish people. If you where prinicpally worried about ETA you would pay more attention to people form the Basque country, or the Tamil Tigers Tamils. The current UK threat is Islamic, so you have to pay particular attention to people most likely to be Muslims.
You’re not arguing with the point Lord Stevens was making, Mr Yoghurt. No-one in their right minds has ever suggested that we introduce any system based 100% on profiling. However, much of the Left insists that any more than 0% profiling is unacceptably racist. What some of us would like is for the police to be allowed to use a bit of profiling now and then without being hauled over the coals for it, and we’d like profiling not to be outlawed, as it is in many parts of the Western World now.
squander, it’s one thing to use evidence-led profiling to select or identify individuals. What seems to be swirling around in the miasma is the idea that all you have to do is target ‘Muslims’ because ‘they’ form the most likely group. This is tricky because (a) not all Muslims look alike; (b) some of them come from the same part of the world as people who are in fact Sikhs and Hindus, for example; (c) it encourages the authorities to profile by ethnicity rather than evidence. (You can’t ‘profile’ IRA members by a propensity for red hair and Gaelic spellings of their names) I suspect that some cheerleaders for profiling are doing so because ’round up the blacks and Asians’ seems like ‘common sense’ to them.
Well, if you want to argue against what you suspect and what seems to be swirling around, do please go ahead. It seems unfair, though, to attribute your suspicions of swirls to particular individuals, such as Lord Stevens, who have said no such thing.
You have a good point, though, that profiling is evidence-led. It certainly is. And has there been any evidence regarding likely attributes of people likely to try and blow up planes these days?
This man was the most senior police officer in the land…
WHEN will the Muslims of Britain stand up to be counted? When will they declare, loud and clear, with no qualifications or quibbles about Britain’s foreign policy, that Islamic terrorism is WRONG? Most of all, when will the Muslim community…