
The Saudi Marathon Man - sasvari
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/04/the-saudi-marathon-man.html
======
curtis
It's probably worth remembering Richard Jewell and the Centennial Olympic Park
bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics:

According to Wikipedia:

> Despite never being charged, he underwent a "trial by media" with great toll
> on his personal and professional life. Eventually he was completely
> exonerated; Eric Robert Rudolph was later found to have been the bomber.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell>

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tptacek
If we voted every story about every injustice in the news to the top of the
site, we'd have /r/politics, not Hacker News. Not every important story
belongs on this site; in fact, a lot of important stories need to be kept
_off_ the site, because they generate discussions that end up damaging the
community. So, like most political stories on HN, I flagged this one, and you
should too.

~~~
mnazim
Individual voters decide what belongs at the top. If it has enough votes, it
belongs. HNer's should stop complaining about what belongs or does not belong
on top because it would not change anything.

~~~
tptacek
I understand that Paul Graham doesn't want people commenting about whether
stories are germane or not, probably to avoid exactly the repetitive
discussion we're having now, but I disagree with him and think it can't hurt
to remind people:

The site has guidelines. The belief you have about the importance of votes is
simply not true. Votes are _one_ of the mechanism by which stories are
selected for the sites, but not the only one.

~~~
WayneDB
Why should anyone listen to you when you're clearly not following the
guidelines either though?

From the guidelines: Please don't submit comments complaining that a
submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or
offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not
all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something,
please don't also comment that you did.

~~~
tptacek
I don't much care, since early flags knocked this story out of the top 100
stories on the site within minutes of me leaving the comment you're replying
to.

But since my comment mostly related facts, I'd assume people would want to
listen so they can collect additional facts about how the site works,
independent of what they thought about me.

~~~
WayneDB
A possible point of interest for you - I use <http://hckrnews.com/> to get to
these stories and I think a lot of other people do to. So, even when you flag
things we'll still see them.

The reason I use it is because of the first paragraph on their about page
<http://hckrnews.com/about.html>

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djanogo
It's unfortunate, but has to happen. The statistical likelihood of him being
suspect were greater than others at that instance. The cops did what is
expected of them, just like a software developer would perform a check for
most likely condition first before the flow moves forwards.

I don't see anything wrong, my skin color is similar to him and I wouldn't
mind them checking me out first, I would gladly cooperate so that they can
move on and find the real bad guy.

~~~
w1ntermute
Repeat after me: skin color is not probable cause.

Setting aside all ethical issues, using ethnicity alone to determine probable
cause is a violation of the law. If you would like to see it be acceptable to
use skin color as the sole determinant for probable cause, that's fine. Just
change the law. But until then, it is not allowed.

~~~
djanogo
no need to repeat 'politically correct' statements, skin color, just like sex
and age, are _part_ of vectors that you would have to mathematically use to
narrow down suspects.

~~~
jlgreco
You are not thinking sufficiently Bayesian.

While you _could_ say that there is an elevated chance that the terrorist is
of Arabic descent (and frankly, the odds there are not _that_ strong. _Maybe_
better than 50%, but I wouldn't put my money even on that...) that is only a
small part of the picture. You must also consider the possibility that any
given person of Arabic descent is a terrorist (an _absurdly_ small
probability). When you combine these two factors _then_ you can decide how
probable it is that he is the terrorist, given his descent.

If you actually work out the numbers here, you will undoubtedly discover that
the probability he is responsible falls _well_ below any rational standard for
harassing the man.

Edit: To get a grip on what sort of standard you would usually demand:
consider a murder in a small isolated town. With no clues at all, lets say the
murderer could be anyone. In a town with 3 people, each person could be said
to have a 50/50 chance of being the murderer. Is that enough for search
warrants for both (not under our legal system, but just ethically/morally)?
Sure, I'd accept that. If there were a hundred people in that town? No way.
So, does _"terrorist, given arabic descent"_ go over 1%? I _HIGHLY_ doubt it.

~~~
vadman
I don't know much about Bayesian statistics, but wouldn't it be "terrorist,
given Arabic descent AND participation in the targeted event AND proximity to
the explosion AND high probability of a follow up explosion (judging from past
events) AND ..."?

~~~
jlgreco
> _wouldn't it be "terrorist, given Arabic descent AND participation in the
> targeted event AND proximity to the explosion AND high probability of a
> follow up explosion (judging from past events) AND ..."_

The only thing that man has over the likely thousands of others that in some
way participated in the event is his skin color. Everyone else there had those
same properties. So if we are considering the population of people in the
general area at the time, then no. They used only his descent. They, and
djanogo[edited], used P(arabic|terrorist) to justify a search. In order to
justify a search you need a reasonable P(terrorist|arabic).

Assign some reasonable numbers to each factor off the top of your head, work
it out on a napkin, and come back to me with whatever figures work out to be
over whatever a reasonable threshold might be.

~~~
vadman
Actually I didn't justify anything, just asked a question. Your explanation
makes sense, thanks.

~~~
jlgreco
Oh, sorry. Confused you for djanogo, my bad.

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jlarocco
Unfortunately, this isn't even a little surprising. Disappointing, but not
surprising at all.

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dylanrw
As the world gets smaller the likelihood of any profiling being accurate
diminishes. I for one would like to see them practice more intellectually
honest investigative techniques. For example, when there is a roadside attack
in a prominently arab region, do you round up all of the arabs? No, you survey
the scene, find the bomb, look for trigger points, etc. The fact that we jump
to profiling I think is an action that not only taints the nation's perceived
objectivity, but detracts from a proper investigation...

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w1ntermute
Racism is still widely prevalent in America. The only thing that has changed
is that instead of thinking it's OK to be racist, Americans now think that
they're _not_ racist. All the while actually continuing to be racist.

~~~
vowelless
That is a bold statement. Having lived in many different locations (India,
middle east, europe, canada and the US) as a brown guy, the only place I
experienced _less_ racism than the US was Canada.

~~~
bmelton
Isn't that basically what he just said?

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Not really. w1ntermute said "racism is still widely prevalent in America"
which to me means "racism commonly occurs in America". But vowelless said "the
only place I experienced less racism than the US was Canada" which to me means
"of all the places I've been, America is the second least racist place...
second only to Canada".

I'm pretty sure the two said very different things... possibly even totally
opposite things.

~~~
bmelton
Yep. I completely got it backwards. Thanks for the correction.

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mnazim
It's not racism, it's not xenophobia, it's not Islamophobia. It's just
bogeymen. All governments invent different bogeymen at different time to keep
masses under control and push them towards seeing, hearing, and feeling what
they want. It's nothing new, it has been happening from the very start of
organized governance.

(Okay let's scan the crowd... Found 7 _______ looking men/women. Hmmm... eeny,
meeny, miny, moe. There you go get that ____ fella with ______ looking face.)

(EDIT: Improved grammer)

