Subways and Cornfields

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York was complaining recently -- in a discussion of the way in which the Dept of Homeland Security apportions funding among the states -- that more of the money needs to go to the big cities and other likely targets of terrorism.

"I've never yet seen a terrorist that was caught with a map of a cornfield in their pockets"

An eminently reasonable argument. If you only have a limited amount of money for counter-terrorism measures, why spend as much to guard that cornfield as you might to guard the Capitol?

Why spread the money evenly, when the facts and circumstances suggest that the risk is spread differently? Perhaps you can imagine my surprise to read this:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that terrorists come "in all sizes and shapes and forms" and it wouldn't be fair for police to profile terrorism suspects on the basis of a Middle Eastern appearance.Asked about the city's random stop-and-search policy, which Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Thursday would forbid racial profiling, Bloomberg told WABC Radio host John Gambling: "

I think if we've learned anything, it is you can't predict what a terrorist looks like."

I want to send the Mayor a picture of each of the Sept 11 hijackers (19 young men from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Egypt), the July 7 suicide bombers (3 young men of Pakistani descent and 1 Jamaican), and pictures of the young men who launched the July 22 attacks.

Despite the Mayor's statement, I think there are some common aspects of appearance that one might recognize.

If you are going to search people, maybe you shouldn't do a random search?

Why spread the search out evenly, when the facts and circumstances suggest that the risk is not spread evenly at all?

Every morning when I get on the subway, I look around and see African-Americans, Latino-Americans, Japanese and Chinese-Americans, and a variety of European-descended Americans, and all the many varieties and combinations of these groups.

Fewer than 1 in 5 of my fellow subway travelers look like they could be from the Middle East or South Asia.

Anyone could be an Islamic Jihadist, but my guess is that the guy with the bomb in his belt is going to look more like Mohammed Atta than George Bush, Condi Rice, or me.

Isn't that what the facts and circumstances of recent events show very clearly? Are we really going to ignore the facts?

I believe in protecting our civil liberties, and I have no animus towards Americans who happen to look like Atta, or Osama. But surely we would all be safer if the Mayor told the truth -- that we know what the terrorists look like -- and acted accordingly. Maybe then we could search people on a basis that makes sense.

A random search strategy means 80% of those searched will in no way resemble the typical member of Al Qaeda. Given that very few people will be subjected to such a search, can we afford to waste so much time on people nobody is worried about?

Are we really going to just roll the dice?

It is only a matter of time before we suffer such an attack -- so the experts tell us. When we are pulling bodies from the wreckage, will we pat ourselves on the back for having conducted such scrupulously random searches?

-- Neil

For more on this subject, here's an op-Ed piece from today's NY Times.

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