Profiling, Safety and Trust
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2020
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The boss of Ryanair has been criticised for saying that airport security checks should focus on Muslim men who are travelling alone, because they pose the biggest terror threat. The Muslim Council of Britain said Michael O'Leary's comments were "racist and discriminatory". Profiling is the practice of categorising people and predicting their behaviour on the basis of particular characteristics. We're profiled all the time by businesses and insurance companies with the help of computer algorithms. That same technology has been piloted by police and will now be used to identify low-level offenders who are deemed likely to go on to commit "high-harm" crimes, perhaps involving knives and guns. Is it right to target specific groups on the theory that they are statistically more likely to commit certain crimes? Civil liberty watchdogs argue that such ‘pre-crime’ profiling not only violates everyone’s civil rights, but fosters alienation and hostility in marginalised communities. Supporters of ‘data analytics’ believe that, on the contrary, it can eliminate all bias and human error from these judgments. There’s a wider debate about the balance between public safety and trust. Should we worry that these preventative measures are eroding our goodwill towards authority and each other? There are proposals to introduce airport-style security checks in ever more areas of our lives, from concert halls to places of worship. Security campaigners say it’s a necessary step towards making us all that little bit safer. Libertarians call it an over-reaction to a statistically-negligible threat. It is, they say, allowing the criminals to dictate how we live our lives. With Nick Aldworth, Tom Chivers, Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper and Tom McNeil.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a program from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:03.6 | Good evening. They called it stop and frisk, and the New York police were none too gentle about it, |
| 0:08.7 | targeting overwhelmingly young black and Hispanic men for weapon searches. |
| 0:13.4 | Then Mayor Bloomberg was bullish about it, going where the crime and the criminals were, he said, |
| 0:18.3 | producing figures that showed more than 90% of murderers, |
| 0:21.8 | and incidentally their victims, were young black and Latino males. |
| 0:25.7 | Now, Democratic, presidential, hopeful Bloomberg says that was wrong, discriminatory, |
| 0:30.8 | counterproductive. He should have apologised earlier, he says. |
| 0:34.3 | Profiling is controversial, as this side of the Atlantic, Michael O'Leary, boss of Ryanair, |
| 0:38.7 | has been finding out after he suggested that airport security should concentrate on young men |
| 0:43.7 | of a Muslim persuasion, as he put it, rather than families with kids. Racist, said the Muslim |
| 0:49.0 | Council. Nonetheless, profiling's part of everyday life. Insurance companies do it, supermarkets, Facebook, using computer algorithms to categorise us to weigh up our potential for profit or risk. |
| 1:01.0 | The police here have been piloting the technique to identify currently low-level criminals, likely to move on to what they call high-harm crimes, perhaps with knives and guns. |
| 1:11.3 | The Civil Liberties lobby says profiling to predict crime is a violation of our rights |
| 1:16.1 | that angers and alienates marginalise communities. Proponents say it's common sense to concentrate |
| 1:22.8 | on where the data says the danger lies. It actually eliminates bias and human error, they say. |
| 1:29.0 | There are wider concerns. With talk of introducing airport-style security in places like |
| 1:33.4 | concert halls and places of worship, some worry about a breakdown of trust with authority with each |
| 1:38.5 | other. Others think we're getting the balance between public safety and the real, as opposed |
| 1:43.3 | to perceived risk wrong |
| 1:45.0 | and wonder if we're letting criminals dictate the way we live our lives. That's the moral maize |
| 1:50.0 | tonight. Our panel, I'm a McElvoy, senior editor at the economist, Mona Siddiqui, professor |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.