Comments on: We Are All Terrorists Now

By: bbartlog

bbartlog — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:01:43 +0000

How many people who believe that murder of kufirs is always acceptable, mostly acceptable, or sometimes acceptable?

Problem is, this belief alone (while repellent) does not make someone a terrorist threat. Lots of people have extremely misanthropic beliefs, but no real desire or initiative to act on them.
I think it's also worth pointing out that the high false positive rate, in addition to causing vast inconvenience for the affected, will corrupt the effectiveness of the system in actually catching any terrorists. Because once some screener or guard starts getting one hit per half hour on the people passing through, they're bound to become less diligent in their scrutiny than they would if they got one a week or one a month.

By: mahtso

mahtso — Thu, 08 May 2008 04:30:16 +0000

"First, there is no way that 755,000 or even 75,000 people traveling in this country are terrorist threats, so the list is dominated by false positives."

According to the report that was linked the list is not only of people in the US, but a worldwide-list and is a list of those that "are reasonably suspected of having possible links to terrorism" (i.e., one need not be a terrorist threat to get on the list).

By: Doug G.

Doug G. — Wed, 07 May 2008 15:10:51 +0000

Hmm.. I don’t exist either.

By the way, apparently some of our air marshalls, are suspected terrorists. This story talks about them being denied boarding: http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080430/NATION/946059998/1002

By: happyjuggler0

happyjuggler0 — Wed, 07 May 2008 02:03:38 +0000

I don't exist either, nor do any of my relatives, despite the fact that Google has managed to find us, and even give us our telephone numbers.

LMAO. The link is lame.

Hmmmmmm. "Is lame" is Islamic! Call homeland security!

By: 72 km/h

72 km/h — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:03:49 +0000

Alex Tabarrok doesn’t exist either. I knew it! Tyler Cowen has been using a pseudonym for his angrier blog posts!

By: Bearster

Bearster — Wed, 07 May 2008 00:03:06 +0000

How many islamists are there in this country right now? How many people who believe that murder of kufirs is always acceptable, mostly acceptable, or sometimes acceptable?

Hint: it isn't just a few wacko "extremists". I sure hope it's not 750,000. But I think it's far larger than most Americans believe.

For the record, I hope to be proven wrong on this one!

By: Brad Warbiany

Brad Warbiany — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:54:19 +0000

Yes, apparently I don’t exist either. Does that mean I can stop paying taxes?

By: Pieter

Pieter — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:21:53 +0000

Excellent post.

This is a very important issue. The travel restrictions that accompany being on a watchlist are quite onerous. Essentially being put on a watchlist is a punishment for some activity, but people who are punished in this way never get a day in court, never get to hear the evidence against them, never get to get know what they've been accused of, and never get a chance to clear their names. I'd be sceptical of this system if it affected more than a hundred people. At 750,000 people, it's absurd.

Thanks for presenting this interesting informaiton.

[PS If you look at the howmanyofme.com site carefully, they say that they're extrapolating the numbers from data made public by the US census. About 20% of names are so rare that the census bureau didn't want to give any information out about them.]

By: Blackadder

Blackadder — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:41:55 +0000

Lest anyone be inclined to doubt the anonymous guy on the Internet, you can get the same result by using Austan Goolsbee as the test name (for the record, I’m not Austan Goolsbee).

By: Blackadder

Blackadder — Tue, 06 May 2008 01:37:54 +0000

When I entered my name (my real name, not my internet pseudonym), it said there were 0 people in the U.S.A. with my name. So apparently I don’t exist. Somehow I find that reassuring in this case.