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* Suppose I want to look for terrorists trying to blow up airplanes.
Is it "unscientific" to concentrate attention on a 20 year old Arabic
male travelling one way carrying a backpack? These are secondary
characteristics.
This is a really, really, reeeeeally bad idea.
All you will accomplish by this is
a) Creating a racist society.
b) Causing all evildoers to take off their
kaffiyehs, shave their beards, and buy two-way
tickets.
This will punish the innocent without significantly
burdening the guilty. This is diametrically opposite
to what a good security measure should do.
This is, in a backhanded way, a powerful illustration
of the risks associated with relying on secondary
characteristics.