The only reason, IMO, that the Bushies haven’t found a compromise solution to this issue is because it polls well for them. I hope we all realize that Bush can stop this “controversy” any time he wants. If Dubya went to Congress and asked them to update FISA so this program could be done lawfully and with some minor oversight I think they would do it in a heartbeat. Instead we get to argue about this because it might help Bush’s poll numbers.

So we’re cool with “profiling� now? Because almost all of “those people� are going to be Muslims and darker-skinned Asians.

When he says certain people, he’s referring to people who travel back and forth from places like Afghanistan. And yes, it’s quite likely they’re more likely to be darker skinned muslims. That’s just kind of how it goes. I was never patently opposed to profiling when you have other things to back it up, like travel and associations with other known terrorists. And honestly, at that point, is it really profiling? Doesn’t seem like it.

But so-called “random” screenings in airports and the like ARE profiling and a waste of peoples’ time and energy.

My read on this is that we’ve got enough CPU cycles sitting idle waiting for data to analyze that they’re throwing bigger and bigger datasets at the analysis machines in order to see if anything useful pops up.

Unfortunately, this technology, if they ever get it working right, would make it nearly impossible to organize resistance to a president that turned illegitimate. Unfortunately, the long-term dangers mean that we need to limit the use of such techniques in a war where we are not up against the wall of extermination.

is it really profiling if you are starting from a known, It seems juvenile to assume that because you are looking at people who are involved in suspicious activity, but happen to be in a minority by race or religion (and remember that minority is relative) that profiling must be going on. If you had to look at every person who went into a store over a 45 hour period to find the hybrid fuscia person who robbed the store would it still make sense. I understand that civil libertys are being abused by the idea of profiling, but are you honestly telling me its better that we abuse everyone rather monitering people with observed involvement in suspicious activities?

However, if I’ve understood him correctly, that’s why the Google approach is not only incredibly dangerous to our civil liberties, it’s also worthless to round up all the data.