No! we should simply do good intelligence and conduct behavioral profiling.
I agree...at least in the context of what I understand. As I understand it they rely pretty heavily on random selection of passengers for increased scrutiny. I think that is nuts and I can't believe they're doing it.
Random sampling is a good way to get an unbiased estimate of a population parameter. It is not a good way to detect a problem that has a low frequency of occurence. And if those who wish to do harm are aware of its shortcomings it is not going to be nearly as good a deterrent as something like behavioral profiling would be.
It's such a bad idea in terms of probability of detecting a problem that I'm cautious about talking about it because it's hard for me to believe that the TSA doesn't know how bad an idea it is and I wonder if what I've heard is correct.
If they're doing it, I don't think they should be using random selection of passengers for further scrutiny. I don't think it's an effective use of time and effort.
It's kind of like if you go fishing. Are you going to pull out a map of the lake and randomly select points at which to go make casts? Or are you going to focus your efforts on locations you judge are likely to be holding fish given the conditions, time of year, etc.?
I know some people say that random selection would deter potential attackers because they don't know if they're gonig to be selected. But if they really do probe things in order to find weaknesses they're going to learn pretty quickly that there is almost no chance that they're going to get caught by a random selection strategy.
