On Mon, 03 May 2010 14:06:25 -0400, Warp wrote:

>> He's presuming you're guilty, because he has to have probable cause to
>> pull you over to ask if you're legally in the country.  Being brown
>> isn't sufficient.
> 
>   Well, that was kind of my point: If the store clerk is not assuming
>   your
> guilt, nor is the guard at the airport, what makes a policeman checking
> someone's ID different?

The fact that they're an agent of the state engaged in law enforcement.  
They're paid by the state to do that.

The clerk in the store is not employed by the state (well, in Utah liquor 
stores, they are), but a condition of purchase is that you be legal.  
Your options are to either present ID if asked or not make the purchase.  
The choice is not "present ID or *go to jail*.".  Huge difference.

>> >> Based. On. Skin. Colour.
>> > 
>> >   Why are people so damn obsessed with skin color? Criminal profiling
>> >   does
>> > not have anything to do with racism. Skin color is just one feature
>> > which can be used for profiling.
> 
>> Not in the US, not legally.  That's the point.
> 
>   You mean that in the US the police can construct criminal profiles on
> everything else *except* skin color? Hair color is ok, as well as eye
> color, the color of clothes... but not skin color?
> 
>   Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but if that really is so, it
>   seems
> like a real hindrance to police work, in the name of political
> correctness.

Specific crime vs. assuming a crime was committed because someone looks 
hispanic.  That's the difference, and it's not about political 
correctness, it's about prosecuting *actual specific crimes*.

Look at it this way:  Someone at a border crossing spots someone of a 
specific description (or a group of a specific description - not just 
"they look Mexican", but height, weight, etc.).  Cop sees someone 
matching the description for a specific crime, that gives them reason to 
stop the person and investigate, even if they're not guilty.

Cop sees someone who is Hispanic and *assumes* they must be here 
illegally (otherwise what's their probable cause for stopping the 
person?) and asks for their papers.  That's NOT OK.  Why?  No specific 
crime was committed or reported.  The reason for the stop isn't "this 
person looks like someone who crossed the border illegally" but "this 
person looks like an illegal immigrant because all illegal immigrants are 
Hispanic" - the presumption is "they must be guilty because they're 
Hispanic" not "they match a description for a specific crime that's been 
reported".

Does that make it clearer?


>> >   If most illegal immigrants happen to look similar, it only makes
>> >   sense
>> > to concentrate resources on people who look like that. It's the same
>> > as the vast majority of rapists being male, hence it it makes sense
>> > to concentrate resources on investigating males and skipping females.
>> > Nobody is crying sexism because of that.
> 
>> Nobody that you're aware of, perhaps.
> 
>   You mean there are people who are complaining about the police
>   investigating
> only males in rape cases?

I'm saying that you don't know the details of every investigation that 
has ever taken place regarding rape cases in the US.  Or you have a 
really strange hobby.  The fact that you (or I) are not aware of an 
instance of this doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

>> >   I really think people are way too hypersensitive with any kind of
>> > profiling based precisely on skin color. Any other type of profiling
>> > is ok, but heaven forbid if you start using skin color as a
>> > distinctive feature. The second you do that, all human rights are
>> > flushed down the toilet. Sheesh.
> 
>> You're not allowed to profile in the US based on religious beliefs,
>> ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other factors.  Just like you can't
>> use those to make hiring decisions.
> 
>   Ok, I think we are using a different meaning of the word "profiling".
> It's possible I have understood the term wrongly.
> 
>   I have heard about criminal profilers on the police force who try to
> get a picture of what kind of person the criminal might be based on the
> available clues, and this can include things like ethnicity (such as for
> example "serial killers are typically white middle-aged males"), but
> maybe that's just in TV series and movies?

You're talking about a specific crime.  The point is that there is no 
*specific* crime in the case of enforcing the AZ law.  In order to 
prosecute a crime, the prosecution must be able to state with specificity 
what crime was committed and when.

>   If making a criminal profile based on ethnicity is illegal, does that
> mean that the police cannot say things like "serial killers are
> typically white males"?

No, but they cannot say "I must detain and/or question all white males 
because most serial killers are white males, even though nobody has 
reported a serial killer in this area."

>> Well, then, come on over here and I'll see to it that you're asked
>> hourly to provide proof that you're here legally.  Including in the
>> middle of the night, just for safety's sake.
> 
>   I assume you are exaggerating. I have hard time believing there are
> enough policemen to do that.

Well, the state of Arizona seems to think the cops there have the time to 
do this.  But now you are perhaps starting to see the problem.  There 
aren't enough cops to enforce this ridiculous law, and to do so the cops 
have to take time away from pursuing dangerous offenders because the law 
requires they investigate *every* *possible* instance of an illegal being 
in the state, and allows the public to sue the government if the police 
fail to investigate such violations.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> Further, under US law, 
> if they *did* find illegal substances in my car, if the traffic stop was 
> not legal, they would not be able to prosecute because they would have 
> lacked probable cause to pull me over in the first place.

  That's one thing I have never understood.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Mon, 03 May 2010 15:18:35 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   I think that you are seeing a difference because you are assuming a
>   racist
> motivation for the ID check in the last case. Do you deem it completely
> implausible for the police to check someone's ID for other reasons than
> racism?

If the reason the police have stopped someone is because they "look like 
an illegal", then that's a problem.  And since we're talking about 
Arizona SB1070 (the law in Arizona that requires police do *just this 
thing*), that's the point that's being discussed.

Jim

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On Mon, 03 May 2010 13:55:10 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> On Sun, 02 May 2010 03:05:24 -0400, Warp wrote:
> 
>> >   So all other types of criminal profiling are ok, but not profiling
>> >   based
>> > on how someone looks like?
>> > 
>> >   I really think this is political correctness getting in the way of
>> > criminal investigation.
> 
>> No, but being brown isn't a crime.  What about that do you not
>> understand?
> 
>   I didn't say being brown is a crime, nor did I anywhere even imply
>   that.
> 
>   I don't understand your response.

You've said that there's nothing wrong with law enforcement asking random 
people for their ID.  There is in the US - in order to do so, they have 
to have probable cause of the individual having committed a specific 
crime.  The police in the US aren't permitted to stop random people and 
ask to see their ID just because they feel like it.

So in order to be stopped, the individual has to have committed a crime.  
The Arizona law makes "being brown in public or private places in 
Arizona" a crime.

That's unconstitutional.

You are saying there's nothing wrong with the police asking people for 
ID.  There is in the US under US law.  So by supporting the position that 
the police can stop people "just because they match the assumed profile 
of illegal immigrants", and the only criteria for such a stop is their 
ethnicity, you are therefore saying that being brown is a crime (whether 
you say so explicitly or not), because *otherwise* what are they being 
stopped for?

Jim

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Warp wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> There is a difference between "we have a specific crime that we are 
>> looking for suspects for" and "we are doing random checking to see if 
>> someone might have committed a crime".
> 
>   There is a difference, but I don't see the random checkings as being all
> that abhorrent in all cases (as I have mentioned, here the police does
> random checkings on drivers even without any reason to suspect them of
> being drunk, and I think that's completely ok).

We do that here, too, in some places.

>   Of course if the police abuse their rights to perform random checking
> in order to harass people they don't like, that's going over the line.

And that's exactly what we disallow here.

And that's exactly what this whole immigration law is designed to 
circumvent, allowing (and even requiring) police to harass people they don't 
like or that are disliked by those telling the police to harass them.

Also, stopping everyone on a particular stretch of road at a particular hour 
is quite different than trying to stop everyone on a particular sidewalk or 
in a particular store or something like that.

>   As a side note: Why are people so afraid of DNA databanks? Why is it
> such an abhorrent idea? What kind of "invasion of privacy" is having
> your DNA in a databank? Exactly how does that invade one's privacy?

False positives, for one. The ability for anyone who already has your DNA to 
plant it at the scene of a crime is another. The fact that the DNA database 
can be hacked is a third.  Not necessarily "invasion of privacy" per se.

We dislike it because it can lead to exactly the same problem as every other 
  "register your ethnic differences with the government" has ever led to.

>   Imagine that if every single citizen had to have their DNA registered,
> and thanks to that the apprehension rate of rapists grows near 100%,

That's not how DNA fingerprinting works. You can't pick someone out of a big 
bunch of people.

Think of blood typing. You can't say "Well, the murderer was A+. Go round up 
everyone A+ and question them."  When you have a hundred million people in 
the DNA database, you're going to get tens of thousands of false positives.

And if you say "you can use it to eliminate people", that's true, but if you 
eliminate a hundred million people and end up with 10,000, when the actual 
suspect like might only be 20 people, how does that help compared to taking 
DNA samples from the 20 people?

> wouldn't that be a good thing? Not only would the rapists be all caught,
> but it would also act as an effective deterrent.
> 
>   How could DNA information be misused by authorities?

Planted on the scene of a crime. Used to round up all those pesky people of 
Arab descent.

DNA information is *already* misused by authorities. We call it "racism." 
They just didn't collect and centralize it all yet. They actually have to go 
look at you to evaluate your DNA for those purposes.

>   I suppose that that kind of law could perhaps have good intentions
> behind it,

We already have the laws with good intentions behind them.

-- 
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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On Mon, 03 May 2010 16:00:13 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> Further, under US law,
>> if they *did* find illegal substances in my car, if the traffic stop
>> was not legal, they would not be able to prosecute because they would
>> have lacked probable cause to pull me over in the first place.
> 
>   That's one thing I have never understood.

The ends don't justify the means.  To be effective in enforcing the law, 
the police have to follow the law.  The penalty they suffer by not 
following the law is that someone who is guilty may go free - so the 
incentive is for them to follow established police procedures.  Getting a 
warrant before a search (or permission from the property owner) is 
standard procedure.

If the state doesn't follow the rules, the state doesn't get to benefit 
from the rules being broken.  Otherwise, you set up a "whoops, we'll do 
better next time" scenario that repeats itself.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> the presumption is "they must be guilty because they're 
> Hispanic" not "they match a description for a specific crime that's been 
> reported".

  Am I being too naive when I make the assumption that it is possible to
check people's IDs without presumption of guilt nor for racist reasons,
even if a choice is made based on typical illegal immigration profiles?

  I do understand people getting angry by such actions, but I really think
it is possible to perform such checks without there being discriminatory
motives behind. The *intent* is not to discriminate, just a honest intent
of catching illegal immigrants. (Of course you can argue that this is not
the most efficient way of doing that, but I'm talking about motivations
and intent. Why is discrimination and racism always assumed as such? Do
we always have to assume the worst about everything and everybody?)

  That was, more or less, my original point in this entire thread, even
if I didn't know how to express myself this clearly back then.

> >   You mean there are people who are complaining about the police
> >   investigating
> > only males in rape cases?

> I'm saying that you don't know the details of every investigation that 
> has ever taken place regarding rape cases in the US.  Or you have a 
> really strange hobby.  The fact that you (or I) are not aware of an 
> instance of this doesn't mean it hasn't happened.

  Of course there always are exceptions. I was talking about normal
occurrences. I don't think it's at all usual for people to complain
about such a thing.

> >   I have heard about criminal profilers on the police force who try to
> > get a picture of what kind of person the criminal might be based on the
> > available clues, and this can include things like ethnicity (such as for
> > example "serial killers are typically white middle-aged males"), but
> > maybe that's just in TV series and movies?

> You're talking about a specific crime.  The point is that there is no 
> *specific* crime in the case of enforcing the AZ law.  In order to 
> prosecute a crime, the prosecution must be able to state with specificity 
> what crime was committed and when.

  Well, one *could* argue that illegal immigration *is* a specific,
existing crime being committed right now... (Not that this justifies
draconian laws and discrimination, but still...)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On Mon, 03 May 2010 15:54:06 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> There is a difference between "we have a specific crime that we are
>> looking for suspects for" and "we are doing random checking to see if
>> someone might have committed a crime".
> 
>   There is a difference, but I don't see the random checkings as being
>   all
> that abhorrent in all cases (as I have mentioned, here the police does
> random checkings on drivers even without any reason to suspect them of
> being drunk, and I think that's completely ok).
> 
>   Of course if the police abuse their rights to perform random checking
> in order to harass people they don't like, that's going over the line.

Here in the US, we're very strongly opposed to putting the government in 
a position where it can abuse its power.  There was actually a war over 
this in our history because the government that governed us was seen to 
be abusing its power.  The framers of our government decided that the 
government should not have this power because they'd seen it abused.

>> To use your rape example, suppose instead of "we're looking for a white
>> male because of this specific case we're looking into" the police
>> started by collecting DNA samples from all white males just *in case* a
>> crime were committed.
> 
>   As a side note: Why are people so afraid of DNA databanks? Why is it
> such an abhorrent idea? What kind of "invasion of privacy" is having
> your DNA in a databank? Exactly how does that invade one's privacy?

In 15 years' time, DNA is found to be unreliable for some reason.  A 
whole bunch of innocent people are convicted based on DNA evidence 
because it was irrefutable and infallible back in 2011.

So then what happens?

Again, it comes down to not trusting the government to not abuse its 
power.  It's a means of keeping government power in check.

>   Imagine that if every single citizen had to have their DNA registered,
> and thanks to that the apprehension rate of rapists grows near 100%,
> wouldn't that be a good thing? Not only would the rapists be all caught,
> but it would also act as an effective deterrent.
> 
>   How could DNA information be misused by authorities?

There are lots of ways it could be (and is) misused by authorities.  
Cross-contamination, improper labeling of the dataset - DNA data is 
supposed to be 100% accurate (or better than 99% accurate), but that's 
only as good as we know today based on today's science.  If it's 
mislabeled or miscategorized, how exactly does one challenge that if it's 
supposed to be infallible?

>> That's the difference.  What the Arizona law does is not tie the act of
>> "being an illegal immigrant" to a specific instance of a crime.
> 
>> Does that make sense?
> 
>   I suppose that that kind of law could perhaps have good intentions
> behind it, but in practice it's too radical to have any chance of
> actually working, even if the intentions were good. (Of course I have no
> way of knowing what the actual intentions were behind that law proposal.
> Maybe it *was* made by purely racist reasons.)

Nobody here (as far as I know) has said it doesn't have good intentions 
behind it, but that doesn't make it a good law.  I've actually read the 
law, and while it doesn't specifically say "those of Hispanic descent are 
subject to being stopped", it does IMHO cross the line by making it a 
"specific crime" to "be" in Arizona illegally.  First, that's already 
covered by Federal immigration laws, but the law sets the police up so as 
to be required to engage in racial profiling.  Even the governor of AZ 
(who signed the bill into law) has said she doesn't know how the law 
should be enforced without using racial profiling - but she signed it 
into law anyways.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> On Mon, 03 May 2010 14:40:52 -0400, Warp wrote:

> >   I consider myself to be the exact opposite of a racist in the sense
> >   that
> > I *couldn't care less* about "race" or skin color or anything.

> When you say "race matters", look out, you're making a distinction based 
> on race, whether you want to admit it or not.

  On the contrary: I'm *not* making any distinction based on race. To me
it doesn't matter what race somebody might represent.

  (And yes, I know that the current politically correct multiculturalist
dogma is that "races do not exist". This is motivated only and purely
because of aversion towards racism. "Race" is in no way a negative notion
any more than "nationality" or "gender". Multiculturalists have given it
a bad name because racists use it as an excuse for their bigotry, and
they make it sound that even acknowledging human races to *exist* is
racism all in itself. Bollocks.

  At least wikipedia doesn't seem to have a problem in explaining "race" as
pertaining to humans.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   In other words. The example I gave was correct. You then presented a
> *different* example where the same formulation doesn't work in the same
> way.

No, the example you gave was wrong.

It's like you saying "Every adult is over six feet tall."  I'm saying "No, 
that's factually true only if you pick adults for your sample set that are 
all over six feet tall."

>>  One more time:
> 
>> You can't use the math of proportions of different subgroups of illegals to 
>> target which unknowns you question. You must use different proportions of 
>> subgroups of illegals relative to subgroups of legals.  Once you do that, 
>> there's no reason to favor one particular way of splitting the total 
>> population into subgroups over another way of splitting the total population 
>> into subgroups.
> 
>   I don't see the logical line of reasoning there. It's a non-sequitur.
> 
>   "You must use different proportions of subgroups" -> "there's no reason
> to favor one particular way of splitting over another" does not logically
> follow.

You split the population of size Z into several groups, A, B, C.  Your 
suggestions for splitting criteria have most frequently been based on 
ethnicity or other properties not having to do with behavior.

Each subgroup, A, B, C, has two portions:
A' - The people in group A who are legal residents.
A'' - The people in group A who are illegal residents.
B' - The people in group B who are legal residents.
B'' - The people in group B who are illegal residents.
Etc.

The likelihood of success of stopping a person in group A and finding an 
illegal resident is not in the proportion A'' to Z, as your flawed example 
suggests. That's where I said your math is bogus.

The success is in proportion of A'' to A' (or A'' to A, depending how you 
want to measure proportions). That's the correction I applied to make it 
possible to do the statistics you wanted to do.

However, the choice of which individuals go into group A and which 
individuals go into group B and so on is most efficiently made by making A'' 
very large compared to A while making B'' very small compared to B. Then you 
can stop people in group A and efficiently find lawbreakers, while leaving 
group B alone.

The *most* efficient way to do that is to have group "A" be "the individual 
people we have actual reason to suspect are breaking the law", with group 
"B" being "the people who are doing nothing to arouse suspicion."  And this 
is a division you can't make base on the genetics, age, or any other factor 
of the person in question that the person in question cannot control.

There's no reason to *logically* believe that splitting A and B based on 
ethnicity is better or worse than splitting A and B based on religion or age 
or neighborhood of residence or value of automobile being driven.   There's 
no reason to believe and no statistics to support that anything you can tell 
simply by looking at a person has any correlation with their illegal 
immigrant status.

>   It intended to demonstrate a *point*. The numbers weren't important,
> no matter how much you like to nitpick about them.

The numbers *are* important. See above.

Now, if you're suggesting that the police should concentrate their attention 
on groups of people who demonstrate through their behavior that they might 
be illegal immigrants, nobody would be arguing with you.

>   Where? All I said is that your implication "your example doesn't work in
> this case" -> "statistics cannot be used at all" does not follow.

See above. I'll say it again here: The best statistic is probable cause.

>> Outrageous and outlandish have very similar meanings here. I simply 
>> misremembered which word you used.
> 
>   Really? I would say that outrage and strangeness are quite different
> things. Not even comparable. The first describes a feeling while the second
> describes the understandability of something.

They're not identical in meaning. But similar enough to be confusing I suppose.

>> Had you simply said "police should use statistical models to figure out 
>> which possible suspect is most likely breaking the law and concentrate on 
>> those," I would have said "They already do. It's called Probably Cause. And 
>> the current law in Arizona is targeted at preventing police from doing that."
> 
>   Yeah, using ethnicity as an example is forbidden because you are immediately
> a racist if you do.

Do you understand the difference between using someone's behavior as a 
trigger and using someone's appearance as a trigger? That using statistical 
models based on statistics that are too vague for the crime being committed 
is a bad idea? That 99% of every person you stop is going to be here 
legally, and that using statistics not based on individual behavior to 
narrow that down in any significant way isn't going to work?

It's not just ethnicity. It's anything that's irrelevant to the actual crime 
under consideration. It would be just as bad if you targeted the people in 
red automobiles, because that hasn't anything to do with the crime either.

>> Given the history of *this* country, I'm pretty sure it's in *our* best 
>> interests.
> 
>   Maybe distrust of authorities is a self-feeding process which never ends.

They have to start being trustworthy before we can start trusting them. I'm 
pretty sure it works both ways. Just like in clean cities, people put their 
trash in the trash cans in public. In cities where there's already trash all 
over the ground, people don't bother.

If we didn't get screwed by trusting our leaders, we'd be more likely to be 
trusting. But trustworthy leaders ought to be able to lead even in an 
environment of distrust.

-- 
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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