[IP] middle-aged white females

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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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