Suspicious Behavior

So you know all these weird Orwellian messages at airports and so forth exhorting people to report suspicious behavior? Does anyone ever actually report anything? What to they report? Future of Journalism Conor Clarke takes a look for Guardian America and reveals:

Of the more than 100 communications reviewed, a large plurality consists of citizens who, like the woman from Islip, arrive at their destinations and feel guilty about a security transgression. Few mention other security threats; when they do, they are largely reports on the ethnicity of fellow travellers.[...]

A traveller passing through Cleveland airport on September 15 reported seeing "two Middle Eastern men" who were "possibly trying to look too casual". "Being aware of racial profiling, I hesitated to do anything, so I watched them," he explains. "I have heard on the news to report suspicious behaviour and they didn't act like people normally do at airports. My first thought was possibly they were doing a test run."

Possibly trying to look too casual? What a world.

Comments

Hey, look at the bright side; there are only a few people trying to turn too-casual appearing, semitic-looking, people in.

Posted by Will Allen | October 26, 2007 11:26 AM

I like the New York Transit authority's "If you see something, say something" campaign. Replaced this year with something like "Last Year 1,724 New Yorkers said something."

Did they see anything? Of course not, or we'd have heard about it.

Posted by Philippe | October 26, 2007 11:39 AM

I once reported an unattended package to a cop at Grand Central.

Posted by jayackroyd | October 26, 2007 11:41 AM

Ah, yes. We need to make sure that airport security are well aware that there's a Sikh man over there. he might convert to Islam.

Racism is fun!

Posted by rufustfyrfly | October 26, 2007 11:45 AM

Ah, yes. We need to make sure that airport security are well aware that there's a Sikh man over there. You never know when he might suddenly convert to Islam.

Racism is fun!

Posted by rufustfyrfly | October 26, 2007 11:45 AM

Philippe, here in DC, WMATA has shortened it to a less comprehensible "See it, say it."

Posted by KCinDC | October 26, 2007 11:46 AM

I like the New York Transit authority's "If you see something, say something" campaign. Replaced this year with something like "Last Year 1,724 New Yorkers said something."

Yeah, I thought of that too. That campaign has always amused me -- I mean, as a regular rider of the NYC subways, I can't even imagine the level that behavior would have to rise to to be "suspicious" or "abnormal." I'm guessing that a hefty percentage of those "1,724" were not New Yorkers but freaked-out tourists.

The campaign has, however -- as with all public service campaigns in NYC -- helped improve my Spanish. "Si ves algo, di algo!"

Posted by Glenn | October 26, 2007 11:47 AM

(oops. Sorry about the double post.)

Posted by rufustfyrfly | October 26, 2007 11:47 AM

The backlash against casual fridays has gone to far!

Posted by Tyro | October 26, 2007 11:59 AM

"OK, so you're nonchalant. Stop rubbing our noses in it."

Posted by SDM | October 26, 2007 12:09 PM

Unfortunately for everyone involved, being wary of Middle Eastern men on airplanes is a rational response to our current predicament. It's a sad but unavoidable consequence of ethno-specific mass murder.

It's not racism, it's reaction. These "informers" aren't necessarily bad people, they just don't want to be murdered. Sure it's incredibly unlikely that the Middle Eastern guy sitting next to you is a terrorist, but the cost of being wrong about that is total. When up against the possibility of catastrophic loss, erring on the side of caution is a reasonable thing to do.

And before you decide that I'm full of shit and a racist to boot, here's Melville:

But it was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such terrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature that these things should fail in latently engendering an element in him, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its confinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it was that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which, while generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or whales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet cannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors, which sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged and mighty man.

The fear of violent death at the hands of man: I am not the first to observe its motivating powers, yes?

Posted by JA | October 26, 2007 12:30 PM

being wary of Middle Eastern men on airplanes is a rational response to our current predicament.

Predicament?

Number of airline tickets sold per year: about 4 billion (global)
Number of people killed on airplane due to hijacking or bombing by middle eastern men: 0 per year of late, but let's allow an annualized figure of 100 to account for the occasional incident
Estimated odds of dying on your flight at the hands of ME terrorists: about one in 40 million
Estimated odds of being killed if you drive ten miles in your car: about one in one in 6 million
Annualized: about 6000 times greater than your risk from ME plane terrorists.
Your chance of being killed by MRSA is also probably about three orders of magnitude greater than your risk hijacking. You have to look at things like 'falling out of bed' (170 deaths per year as I recall), 'stung to death by bees', 'hairdryer electrocution' and the like to match the awesome risk posed by middle eastern terrorists on planes.

So, no, it's not a rational response.

Posted by bbartlog | October 26, 2007 1:05 PM

bbartlog,

It's your argument that's not rational. You cannot infer the risk of being the victim of a future terrorist attack from the risk of being a victim of a past terrorist attack and use that to argue against anti-terrorism measures. It's like saying we don't need airplane safety regulations because the risk of dying in a plane crash is so low. It's low in part because of those very regulations. The other fundamental difference between risks from terrorism and risks from the other kinds of threat you mention (car accidents, etc.) is that the latter are predictable and well understood, while the former are unpredictable and not well understood. Auto accident rates are not subject to wild fluctuations from year to year. Deaths and injuries from terrorism are.

Posted by Mixner | October 26, 2007 1:29 PM

What is the number of Americans killed by "Middle Eastern looking" men versus white guys with guns ?

After the Oklahoma City bombing (the largest mass murder in the U.S. at the time), why weren't white men with pickup trucks rounded up, stripped searched and then sent off to the Azores for "watersports" ?

Every other month, a divorced white male shoots his ex-wife and her co-workers. Why not prohibit divorced white men from owning firearms ?

It's fear of violent death at the hands of darkies that has motivating powers !

Posted by H-Bob | October 26, 2007 1:42 PM

Replaced this year with something like "Last Year 1,724 New Yorkers said something."

The actual number is 1,944. I've seen that sign so many times that I remember it.

Posted by Steve | October 26, 2007 2:00 PM

Orwellian though they may be, I wouldn't blame the existence of casual racism on these ads. There were bigots spinning theories long before the MTA.

And to the extent that people actually understand the campaigns as referring primarily to suspicious objects rather than persons, they may be somewhat helpful.

Posted by southpaw | October 26, 2007 2:04 PM

To be fair, I live in a semi-bad neighborhood, and I am constantly reporting suspicious activity in the form of drug deals. Dealing drugs in my neighborhood is not really divided along racial lines, either. The police always act like there is no way an untrained person could casually observe a drug deal going down while walking or driving down the street, despite the fact that some of the 12,000 cop shows on TV actually portray what it looks like pretty accurately.

Posted by bob | October 26, 2007 2:15 PM

... why weren't white men with pickup trucks rounded up, stripped searched and then sent off to the Azores for "watersports" ?

Excellent plan.

Posted by George | October 26, 2007 2:18 PM

You cannot infer the risk of being the victim of a future terrorist attack from the risk of being a victim of a past terrorist attack and use that to argue against anti-terrorism measures.

Now you are expanding the discussion to terrorist attacks in general. My point is specific to middle easterners on planes, and is contingent on todays' airline security measures.
It's true that for certain types of incidents that have never yet happened to us but are nonetheless a potential problem (meteors, terrorists with nukes and so on) we can't use past occurrences as a guide. But in the case of airplane hijackings, we actually have a fair bit of history and data, and the overall trend since the 1970s has been very much a downward one (thanks in part to increased security). So I stand by the idea that worrying about middle easterners on planes is silly and paranoid.

Posted by bbartlog | October 26, 2007 2:55 PM

Richard Reid, a brit(with a Jamaican dad), still holds the record as most successful terrorist of all time.

Posted by MikeJ | October 26, 2007 4:24 PM

A few weeks before 9/11, actor James Woods, a supersmart fellow (MIT dropout), noticed that the five Arab men sitting on a flight near him gave off every indication that they were rehearsing a terrorist hijacking. Woods reported it, but nothing much was done with it.

The big unreported story of 9/11 is how the Bush Administration was actively pushing for less scrutiny of Arab airline travelers in 2001, as part of a campaign promise he made in the second Presidential debate in 2000 to woo the Arab vote in the swing state of Michigan. Here's an article I wrote about this on the evening of September 11, 2001:

http://www.isteve.com/2001_9-11_Bush_had_called_for_laxer_airport_security.htm

It's just so much more politically correct and self-esteem building to eliminate minor prudent precautions at home so that we end up invading Iraq! It's all the logic of Invite the Word / Invade the World.

Posted by Steve Sailer | October 26, 2007 5:53 PM