Abhi, what exactly is the point of this post? Racial profiling is bad because terrorists can look like anybody? It's one thing to criticize, it's another to offer a practical solution to a very real problem. I read this report and the first thing that popped into my head was not, 'look how they are lumping all brown guys together', but how chilling, and frightening and scary. What cowards these men are. What fools. What bastards.

Profiling is a part of police work. Not racial profiling, but profiling. I mean, he doesn't look like a woman. He doesn't look eighty. He doesn't look Scandinavian. He is not a Fitzpatrick type I skin type sort of person (red haired and freckled). Non-descript brown guy is not so non-descript. Look, I abhor the instances of abuse by the police directed at innocents, but we have to use common sense. There is nothing wrong with generating a profile based on the facts at hand.

Oh, and Abhi, I hope you don't think I am being rude. I adore this blog and I adore the work you and the other 'authors' are doing. I am genuinely interested in your, and others, opinions so if the last comment came of as snarky, I apologize :)

Whoa MD,
I think you are reading wayyyy too much into my post, possibly with the preconception that all my posts will be leftist rants. This was supposed to be humorous post more than anything else, and certainly not a political commentary. I know that one of the FBI's most potent weapons is its 10 most wanted list. The only point I was trying to make was like "good luck with that," in trying to catch this guy. I was not being critical, nor was I implying that anything they have done in this instance is wrong. I am the one lumping all brown guys together in this case and I thought I was funny. I still think he looks like many of my friends. :)
Don't worry, I wasn't offended. Keep reading. :)

Snark is our middle name around here, so it fits right in.

The issue with racial profiling is the "all look like" problem. Authorities use racial profiling for non-whites where they wouldn't bother for whites, and they use a much broader net / coarser filter when it comes to non-whites.

Personally, I have nothing against looking for an individual based on their characteristics. My beef comes when you drag a presumptive net around a group without having any individuals in mind (GC, let's not get into this again right now, OK? I'm just clarifying my position.)

Abhi: AAAAAhhh, I see. Egg on face. I did read too much into the post. Well, in the words of Emily Lutella, Nevermind. As for the leftist rants, personally I think your posts are too subtle to ever be called rants.

Ennis: Is that true do you think? When do 'they' use racial profiling for non-whites that 'they' don't use for whites (when the situation is the same?) Think about the descriptions you hear on the news about a white suspect: White twenty-ish male, brown hair, dressed in jeans and sweater. Pretty freakin' non-descript. I dunno. Then again, me and mine have traveled a bundle, are brown and some of us are pretty accented, and yet, we have been treated very well. So there you go. My input based on an N of four :)

Authorities use racial profiling for non-whites where they wouldn't bother for whites,

I agree w/ MD. For whatever evolutionary reason, perhaps 10-20% of the worlds population (whitefolk) have enough phenotypical variance that they don't consider themselves quite so racially profiled when an APB goes out for "20something, brown hair, blue eyes..."

The other 80% of the world, well, we're all brown eyes / dark hair....

perhaps 10-20% of the worlds population (whitefolk) have enough phenotypical variance... The other 80% of the world, well, we're all brown eyes / dark hair.

Gotta disagree, check out the differences in look between a Spaniard, a Peruvian and a South Indian.

they use a much broader net / coarser filter when it comes to non-whites.

• It's the 'all members of races I'm not familiar with look alike to me' effect. Goodness Gracious Me had a field day with this: 'Those white people, ya know, I just can't tell 'em apart.'
• Given a minority population, you have to throw a broader net to generate the same # of suspects

Goodness Gracious Me had a field day with this: 'Those white people, ya know, I just can't tell 'em apart.'

Yeah, well, it's an empirical question. You may be interested in seeing whether you really can tell other groups apart. Try telling apart Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans.

I actually did pretty well (12/18 right), but that may be because I have a lot of Chinese and Korean coworkers and can tell the difference (Koreans tend to have high cheekbones).

Personally, I can't tell apart most Indians from most Arabs, for example, let alone identify what region or caste someone's from (beyond "probably north" or "probably south" for extreme cases). It's also pretty hard to tell what region someone in Europe is from, unless you're talking extreme cases like the Irish. There is a huge amount of phenotypic overlap.

There have been studies to this effect, namely that even if you incentivize people to try hard to tell faces apart, they're better at telling apart faces of the majority race that they grew up with it. Probably the brain does some kind of internal principal components analysis on the varying facial features and identifies different axes (nose shape, cheekbones) for, say, Koreans than it does for Europeans (hair color, eye color).