Man branded a pedophile because of where he sat.

[Immortal]

Kantor said:

Well your second paragraph has an obvious problem. The group just says "You know what? They're only searching Smiths. Some of us should change our surnames and we will breeze right through". Also, there aren't two billion people in the world named "Smith". The best course of action is to put everyone through a basic check, and then give extra attention to people who look suspicious - shifty eyes, rapid breathing, moving from foot to foot, glancing around, sweating, generally looking worried. Nobody can pull off something like this without giving some signs.

Ideally: Bag in the x-ray, no stupid rules about laptops or liquids. Empty pockets. Walk through an improved millimeter wave detector. Pick up your bag. Continue. Those deemed to be suspicious (by which I do not mean "brown") could have a more thorough bag checking, perhaps. Fun fact: The TSA has stopped exactly zero terrorists in the eleven years of its existence, even with the rules on liquids and shoes and jackets and all of that. Meanwhile, the underwear bomber walked right through. Yes, he was brown. But what if he wasn't? And who's to say that Islamists are the only terrorists in the world? Look at Anders Breivik, or the IRA, or whoever shot up that Sikh temple. All white skinned.

You cannot build a safe and free society through discrimination of any kind. It will never be stable.

You're really not arguing in the area that interests me, :P. I mean, hey, I'm not even sure if it's a proper statistical fact that terrorists are usually brown or Islamists or whatever and that these decisions aren't entirely based on prejudice. That's why I'm trying to fo go for hypotheticals, because I really don't have that much experience with statistics.

For my example, obviously there's practical issues (such as the fact that it's already pretty difficult for me to get even scissors through security at airports and explosives are probably a bit harder), but please try to give me the kind of answer I'm looking for. I mean, I obviously don't mean Smith as a direct analogy for a certain color of skin when it's a changeable name. Also, isn't your method unfair as well? Not every nervous person is a terrorist. Your method would lead to a lot of innocent, but nervous people being inconvenienced, which is really just as bad as innocent, brown people or innocent Muslims being inconvenienced, because you can't even be sure that the terrorist will be nervous.

How about this, then? The police has some rough idea about the person who the terrorist is; it's a person with white skin and brown hair. That obviously means a lot of people, but will definitely help narrow down the number of people to investigate. Would you say that it's unfair for the police to investigate based on this information since it will obviously inconvenience a lot of non-criminal people for their hair and skin color?

For your idea, I've always assumed that there's some reason for the liquid, laptop, etc. stuff. If there isn't, then we might as well do your idea, but I really can't see why they'd annoy you just for the sake of it. Also, not that I care much about the TSA, but I'm quite sure it's meant to be a deterrent rather than a way to capture criminals. You have to be really, really stupid to go through security with explosives that can be detected.

I'm just wondering, but do you think that there has been a single "safe and free" society in the world until now? Because I can't think of any society where even minor incidents of discrimination like this haven't happened (in recent history, it's been much worse). And if there hasn't been one until now, I don't see any reason why there would ever be one, making aiming for this outright idealism. While idealism is fine, if getting there involves limiting our ability to prevent dangerous stuff like terrorism, I can't say I think it's worth it.