more on middle-aged white females

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Hugh Crawford <hugh-list () thoughtballoon com>
Date: July 26, 2005 11:02:58 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: middle-aged white females


In 1986, a pregnant 32-year-old Irish woman attempted to take an El  
Al flight from London to Tel Aviv with a bomb that her boyfriend had  
hidden in her luggage. In 1987, a 70-year-old man and a 25-year-old  
woman--neither of whom were Middle Eastern posed as father and  
daughter and exploded a bomb aboard a Korean Air flight from Baghdad  
to Thailand killing all on board. In 1999, men dressed as businessmen  
and as a Catholic priest forced an Avianca flight to divert to an  
airstrip in Colombia and held passengers hostage for more than one  
and a half years.

So much for profiling. Anyway, if I were in charge of the MTA I'd be  
more concerned about the gasoline tankers that drive past very  
vulnerable points of the subway system such as stations or  
ventilation grates every day. The effects of a few backpack bombs  
would be trivial compared to a driving a gas tanker into the 72nd st.  
and Broadway station for instance

Protecting the NYC subway system ( mostly built in trenches just  
below the surface ) against the vulnerabilitys of the London subway  
system ( mostly built in deep tunnels ) is just silly

Hugh Crawford
Brooklyn NY






David Farber wrote:


> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: "Dr. James J. O'Donnell" <provost () georgetown edu>
> Date: July 25, 2005 8:00:10 AM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: middle-aged white females
>
>
>
> Dave, this one is easy.  If the bad guy can discover that middle-aged
> white females or rosy-cheeked white children under 10 are never being
> searched, he will figure out how to booby-trap one.  We make fun of  
> TSA
> for its searches of unlikely figures, but by searching the  
> categories we
> regard as unlikely, they are in fact protecting *all* members of those
> categories -- and us.  Random needs to mean random in order to mean
> anything, and has to have an appreciably high degree of frequency  
> to be
> deterrent.  For entirely other reasons, customs agents are supposed to
> pull over every hundredth person who comes through for random  
> screening,
> and I suspect there are some years of experience for them in  
> figuring  out
> what's effective.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown U.
>
>
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