Warp wrote:
>   That didn't answer the question I asked. I didn't ask "how/why would it
> violate the rights of legal citizens?"

And I answered. Profiling people based on their race is illegal.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment14/

>   What I *am* opposing is the idea that countries should enforce their
> laws more leniently to avoid offending people. 

Nobody is suggesting that.  People are objecting to your assertion that 
stopping and questioning people who look Mexican is better than stopping and 
questioning everyone.

>> Nobody is against catching the criminals.
> 
>   Of course they aren't against that. But at the same time they oppose
> stricter measures which could rise the conviction rates of the criminals,
> if doing so would offend some people. 

It's not a matter of "offend some people."  The people you're at risk of 
offending are the majority of the people living where the law would be enforced.

It's like passing a law where you are that only fair-skinned people have to 
prove before going out on a sunny day that they have permission from a 
doctor. As rational as it is, that's unlikely to be a popular law.

You're *assuming* that profiling will make it easier to catch illegal 
immigrants. There's no evidence of this, and there's no evidence of what 
kind of profiling will aid in that.

>> Randomly stopping people and asking them to prove their innocence.
> 
>   Apparently Britain is not one of those countries?

Apparently not.

>> Consider driving. Do you want police randomly pulling you over because you 
>> have long hair, or you're driving a red car? After all, a majority of 
>> traffic tickets go to people in red cars.
> 
>   I wouldn't be surprised if the police was more likely to stop SUV's than
> eg. trucks for random sobriety tests, purely because of statistical reasons.
> (No, I don't know if they do, but I wouldn't be surprised if the did.)

Not here.  It's illegal.  Why? Because people who drive SUVs didn't want to 
get randomly stopped just because 0.1% of the people driving SUVs might be 
intoxicated.

>   If truck drivers are statistically significantly less likely to drive
> while drunk, that kind of selectiveness makes sense. Don't tell me it
> doesn't.

It doesn't, and I explained why a couple of times.

>> No. You want the cop to wait until he sees you do something wrong before he 
>> stops you, yes?
> 
>   Cops don't need probable cause to stop cars for a sobriety test, and
> personally I really don't mind.

But they don't get to profile during those stops either. They don't get to 
set up a stop where they can stop you without probable cause, but stop you 
based on something irrelevant to the behavior they're trying to prevent.

>>  You don't want him stopping you just because you drive a 
>> particular color car, or you're wearing a particular kind of clothing, right?
> 
>   If SUV drivers were statistically more likely to drive while drunk,
> I really wouldn't mind if the police concentrated their efforts more on
> SUVs than on trucks.

Well, it's illegal here, you see. And that's what has people annoyed. See, 
because people don't like being arrested when no crime has been committed 
because someone who shares some of the same properties they do did something 
wrong.

Basically, people here are generally against getting arrested before a cop 
knows a crime has been committed at all.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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