[All Systems Go]

Originally Posted by Radical Edward

as dante said, yes it will, but for statistical reasons only, because the police know full well that the odds of them finding a white suicide bomber are lower than (the already incredibly low) odds of finding an asian suicide bomber. Whites will still get searched "just to even the numbers"

My point was that you would have a problem if they searching white people only. Essentially, it's harassing a large group of people due to the actions of a minority.therefore you are increasing the liklihood of alienating increasing proportions of that group. there is also the question about how long the searches would continue for.

Originally Posted by Radical Edward

I see no challenge to "innocent until proven guilty" - this is a preventative measure. there are a large number of these kinds of preventative measures in a number of fields, from medicine, where dialysis patients must be tested for HIV before being allowed dialysis, through to police background checks for a variety of jobs.

these checks aren't just on people of a certain colour, they are on everyone.

Originally Posted by Radical Edward

It is unfortunate that certain groups will ultimately be investigated more thoroughly for this, but the fact of the matter is, that when you look at the 8 photos of suicide bombers in london, not one of them is a white guy. As I mentioned before, the muslims and asians will already be stared at far more than anyone else. why? because all the bombers were from those ethnic groups. Also the other boat full of asians at the whitewater rafting club will also be investigated. Do you think it is fair that more police time is put into investigating this group than is put into invesitigating all the white people who turned up that day or do you think it is unfair?

I don't really know much about this. Did the Asian have any type of contact with the terrorists on this exercise? Where were they from? How many Asians are Muslim?

Originally Posted by Radical Edward

your issue regarding drugs and so on is an interesting one in that, since muslims might be searched more, more drugs will be found amongst muslims, regardless of whether more muslims carry drugs than other groups, but I think it is a bit of a diversion, and would quite easily be illuminated through the percentages involved.

You are saying Muslim but it's not just Muslims, it's people who look Middle Eastern or whatever. Religion really doesn't come into it unless you are suggesting just searching people wearing religious clothes. If you look at the pictures you will see that none of them were wearing anything of the sort.

So, I don't know about the British statistics but people with different ethnic backgrounds are statistically more likely to commit certain types of crimes than people from other backgrounds, (e.g. black people may be more likely to be involved in gun crime while Jamacians may be more likely to commit drug offences, for example).

So whether these people use drugs more or less isn't really relevant to the discussion. the fact that they are being searched specifically means that they are more likely to find these people carrying drugs than if they weren't being racially profiled.

If correct me if I'm wrong here but I don't believe that racial profiling is legal i.e. you can't search someone just for looking a certain way. the police can't search Jamacians just because they are more likely to be carrying weed. So all the police can do is ask to search they bag or refuse entry to the train. this seems like a waste of time.

Good god, I really didn't think this race thing was going to drag on for quite so long.