But no one is assuming that I'm a terrorist. Maybe my quote was a bit exaggerated (because I rather assumed you would agree with checking more-likely-to-be-terrorist people thoroughly); they're checking me not because they consider me a terrorist (that would be horribly offensive) but because I am statistically more likely to be one. Any implication along the lines of my being a threat is really not intended, I'm quite sure. It's just them being thorough.

I mean, take this example: suppose the police knows that there is some evil terrorist group whose members all have the last name "Smith" and that one of them will be boarding a plane with explosives very soon. The next rational course of action is to thoroughly check all people with the last name Smith boarding airplanes, right? That is the simplest and fastest way of preventing disaster. Doing otherwise will have horrific consequences. And yet, using your moral standards, the police can't do that. Because doing so is obviously going to inconvenience a lot of other people who only happen to have the name Smith, but didn't do anything wrong. It's discriminatory and unfair to those people, similar to people with brown skin in my example, males in this case and whoever else in tons of other situations. If we stop everything that's discriminatory and unfair for the sake of living up to this ideal, we're obviously going to have to compromise on security. That's outright unacceptable, wouldn't you agree?

And I haven't been conditioned to think of myself as dangerous at all. That's ridiculous. I know that I am more likely to be dangerous for someone who doesn't know me and, that being a fact, I fail to see what's wrong there.

I already know that black people are more likely to commit crimes. As I stated, I'm quite alright with "discriminating" against them for the sake of safety, in principle, but with how much history there is with black people having been discriminated against for no good reason, for the sake of not offending people, it's a much better idea to avoid provoking people as such, especially when the threat - somehow harming another passenger in an airplane - is fairly minimal. Of course, the threat of any random man being a threat to children is just as minimal, but in this case, considering males have not nearly as much of a reason to be offended by this, I just don't see why there's so much fuss.

Mind you, to be very honest, I'm not entirely convinced of my argument for this specific case myself. I'm mainly just being contrarian. Because this is honestly such a minor case, both in terms of the threat posed and the measures taken to avert it, that we might as well give this "male discrimination" issue that you guys seem so desperate to push the edge in terms of importance. I'm more interested in the more generalized argument concerning this ideal of people not being discriminated against being more important than avoiding the risk of catastrophe.

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.

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.