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Comment by tuna-piano | Hacker News Reader

His picture of himself from his website. Guessing the scraggly beard + hair + math combo is what scared the passenger:

http://web-facstaff.sas.upenn.edu/~gmenzio/index_files/self4...

I agree. He definitely looks like a terrorist. I guarantee you that if we waterboard him enough, he will tell us anything we want to hear about how his cell works. My guess is that he knows people that he'd even be willing to implicate in its operation.

That "I-know-how-a-terrorist"-looks like thing, is what kept the german RAF going strong for nearly twenty years. They just dressed up like buisness man and walked through every controll.

I used to go to anti-Nazi demonstrations in a suit and tie with short hair. Everyone else on my side was scruffy anarchists and socialists. The police got quite confused.

"If you're going to say something radical, make sure you wear a suit"

The problem with stereo-types is- that anyone just similar looking goes in the "usual suspects bag". If some hacker would went on a automated killing spree- everyone beeing pale, having glasses and drinking too much coffee suddenly would be suspicious.

Thats really troubling. How to solve this ? I mean, dirty-workaround-solve this, not wishfull thinking reeducate solve this.

Some karma system, involving how much a person is socially connected, how much it contributed to society, how much it got planned, how much is at stake in its life?

But however you refine that algorithm- you catch a lot of unwanted fish, and someone like mohamed atta slips right through. This is really tough. I guess the best indicator is how mono-thematic your life is. If all your searches, all your interests and all your communication partners are "themed" - you desserve some suspicion. He is a math-expert, get him.

Yeah, I think I agree. It has to be multilayered; you have intelligence sifting behavior & communications. You have security personnel experienced at noticing strange behavior. You maybe have a layer which puts people in a situation that asks a question/encourages behaviours that might identify those with ill intent. And at all levels, there's a. a huge chance it'll fail or get false positives, and b. the chance of abuse/corruption on the security side. And the more levels there are, the more complex it becomes, and the higher the chance of miscommunication between levels causing more issues.

Simple stereotyping works to an extent, but it's an incredibly dumb system. But at the other end of the scale, exerting increasing control over the environment means corrosion of personal freedoms. Infiltration of organizations by security services works really well for established groups, but that's also fraught, and does nothing to stop tiny groups or loners, or identify people on the fly. Least worst is always going to be a balance, but that balance point will change depending on the context of every case.

Focus towards recovery rather than preemptive prevention; once medical immortality and mind-backups become available and routine, anyone who dies from "terrorism" and other violence or accident could just be resurrected.

Data, financial and whatnot, can already be restored. Architecture can already be rebuilt. Once nobody is able to inflict any lasting damage on society, everyone can just chill and maybe no one would want to try any terrorism, knowing how futile it would be.

So many professors look homeless. This might be a step up!

Yes, he looks exactly like a terrorist:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Atta

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marwan_al-Shehhi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_al-Ghamdi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zacarias_Moussaoui

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramzi_bin_al-Shibh

groan

Indeed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh

That scarf tho

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