Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Uncle Steve Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: For those who like to regress to their youth? :-) Date: Wed, 23 Dec 2015 21:04:40 -0500 Organization: Friends of the Galactic Collective Lines: 42 Message-ID: <0b33206279cf590-bbc47@gmail.com> References: <34461243-0546-43d2-8d26-079bc3130cb2@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="d937dfc22cef0e4be584b6a1fbc7f9e9"; logging-data="10449"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18HYJUOUvhA2FZvr8qJGvcv" User-Agent: nn 6.7.3 Content-Length: 2026 Cancel-Lock: sha1:HVUdMzHXnExLCkAu+c2fAMf6Avs= Xref: csiph.com alt.folklore.computers:155592 On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 11:55:56AM -0600, Stephen Sprunk wrote: > On 23-Dec-15 04:52, mausg@mail.com wrote: > > Rumor has it that the various levels of US security are > > 1) The US itself > > 2) The above and the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand > > 3) Probaly Israel fits in somewhere high too. > > There are three basic concerns--and corresponding profiles: > * Illegal Immigration: anyone from a low-HDI country > * Terrorism: adult males from Middle East or N Africa > * Drugs: anyone from Central/South America or SE Asia > > US consular/embassy staff and border agents are graded on the speed, not > accuracy, of their decisions, and to that end profiling is encouraged. > > Anyone who matches either of the latter two likely matches the first and > as a result is almost always denied. Someone who matches only one, > typically the first, is uncertain. Someone who matches none is almost > always admitted; that is why drug cartels and terrorists desperately try > to recruit whites from high-HDI countries, but they don't have much > success because those people have little motivation to become drug > dealers or terrorists, which is why such profiling mostly works. Security theater. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that drugs are big money, and that it is a natural evolution of the trade to go high-tech and develop a serious smuggling network with the means to bypass high-school educated drug warriors guarding points of entry. The only drug smugglers who are at serious risk of interdiction are the amateurs, and hence the flow of heroin across borders is not meaningfully impacted by border service agencies. Where I come from heroin is basically a strategic resource to privileged consumers and as a matter of necessity (to them) it does not seem to me that border controls as you describe them are meant to do much more than interfere with amateur competition to the entrenched state-sanctioned interests. -- We all cannot be intelligent, but at least we can all be polite.