By
Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 3:20pm
I finally had a chance to read this extended debate between the security-ologist Bruce Schneier and critic-of-religion Sam Harris (yes that Sam Harris) over whether we should profile Muslims in airport security.
First of all, Sam Harris performs a useful function by articulating a more sophisticated version of what is the intuitive position for many Americans, which runs something like: “we know who the danger is, it ain’t old ranchers from Texas or pretty blondes from San Diego—it’s Muslims, so let’s focus airport security on them.” (I hear this regularly myself when discussing airline security in public.) By fearlessly arguing for such profiling—which many people might quietly suspect makes sense—Harris sets it forth explicitly so that it can be explicitly debunked. And Schneier not only debunks it, he demolishes it.
