Quote Originally Posted by Wigferth Ironwall
I still think that racial profiling is a bad idea but I'm utterly mistified about the people here that refuse to accept that 100% of the potential Jihadists are Muslim and that that in tern means we can totally discount the other 58.2 million people here.
Therefore openly discount general profiling of Muslims and court the general Muslim population to help profile their communities. The police can't cope with the amount of information they already have, why would giving them even more help? Dividing the country into regions and relying on the Muslim communities therein to help detect anything suspicious would be a better strategy. Adding a few dozen thousand profiles of individuals to the database would bring the police to a stop. Adding a few dozen profiles of communities would be a realistic project, and they in turn will help focus on the few individuals who may have jihadist links or sympathies.

The media often ask why the state has information on perpetrators but do nothing to stop the crimes. The fact is, unless we want to live in a police state with 50% of the country's resources directed thereof, there is only so much bureaucracy can do. The demand for more surveillance coupled with more bobbies on the beat (or variations of) only makes things worse, as there is even more data to deal with and fewer desk jockeys to deal with it. The police don't want more information, they want more targeted information. Indiscriminate profiling of Muslims reduces the pressure on the rest of the population, but it acts against gaining information from the Muslim population from which the terrorists spring. It makes the rest of us feel good, but it counters our goal of stopping terrorist attacks. I suppose this means Blair will be proposing it in the near future.