Schneier:

"Without an accurate profile, the system can be statistically demonstrated to be no more effective than random screening."

"The problem with computerized passenger profiling is that it simply doesn't work. Terrorists don't fit a profile and cannot be plucked out of crowds by computers. Terrorists are European, Asian, African, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern, male and female, young and old. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was British with a Jamaican father. Jose Padilla, arrested in Chicago in 2002 as a "dirty bomb" suspect, was a Hispanic-American. Timothy McVeigh was a white American. So was the Unabomber, who once taught mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. The Chechens who blew up two Russian planes last August were female. Recent reports indicate that Al Qaeda is recruiting Europeans for further attacks on the United States."

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/me_on_airport_s.html

It may be due to the Doctor's Israeli connection.

My brothers-in-law hold American citizenship, but are constantly part of the "random" pick because their flight bookings start in Israel.

This leads to funny exchanges like:

B-I-L: Excuse me - you're probably going to pick me for random screening. Can we do this now, so I can check in and go to the lounge?

Perky Emasculated Clerk: Oh NO, sir - our screenings are ENTIRELY RANDOM I assure you!

BIL: Yes I know, but I'm pretty sure I'll be one of them... can you screen me now?

PEC: I assure you, sir...

etc.

I want you all to notice something.

When you make one element of your screening process non-random, the entire process is compromised, and for different reasons.

When you bet your search is more worthwhile based on things that bring out Ben-David's BIL, you take your resources away from others in the line.

If you make a search method standard, you raise the probability the standard method can be analyzed and countered so that it does not find anything actually searching the criminal agent. That's the case in the USA, where hundreds of people can do what they want to planes, yet little Suzy is the threat because she might have more than 3 ounces of gasoline in her Hello Kitty underpants.

Where complete idiots think that searching airline passengers - and pilots! - makes the entire country safe. Meanwhile, anyone may enter the USA illegally - sometimes with official assistance in doing so. But I digress.

No one is acting based on risk analysis.

McVeigh didn't fly to Oklahoma City, and the Unabomber didn't blow up planes. Face facts--since 9/11, the people trying to blow up planes have 1 big characteristic in common.

"...yet little Suzy is the threat because she might have more than 3 ounces of gasoline in her Hello Kitty underpants."

You know what? I'm willing to take the risk. I'm willing to risk my life on the idea that a two year old is not going to have a bomb tucked in her Under-roos. So that the hundreds (maybe thousands?) of two year olds who aren't packing heat can get through security unmolested. I wonder how many people actually wouldn't risk it. Who would demand that the under 10 set get searched "rigorously" because that's fair?