With all of the recent discussions on profiling and the CAPPS system for airport profiling, it appears that one issue was lost: is profiling actually more effective than random searches.

According to an article on ACFNewssource, a set of MIT graduate students have put together a paper detailing why random searches would actually be more effective at fighting terrorism than the current, much more complex system.

The simple explanation is that if there are rules, even if they're supposed to be "secret," they will be figured out by the terrorists and gamed by them in order to circumvent the system. The suggestion is that we could save everybody a lot of headache and money if we just gave everybody an even chance of being caught.