Comments on: Days Like This

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 00:13:27 +0000

Just for the record, my comment above should not be read to imply that I agree with Raymond’s views, which I expressly disavow.

By: Raymond

Raymond — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 23:53:49 +0000

Muslim converts are creepy and often zealots. There’s way too many better religions out there. We have ufo religions and such; surely no sane person converts to the religion of hatred, violence and oppression.

By: Raymond

Raymond — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 23:53:14 +0000

By: q

Mon, 07 Jun 2004 13:14:34 +0000

tom t: if a list of 50-100 pops up a Muslim convert with at least some small ties to one of the Portland Six, it’s no surprise that the FBI is going up jump on that person. Quite agree with you – just seems a bit amazing that out of 44 million checks, assuming 100 hits, with 500 high profile Muslims on the books (1 in 88,000) that one of them appeared at all. Using my bad maths I calculate the chance that a selection of 100 random people from a database of 44 million wont include someone from a subset of 500 people is 99.886% which is approximately 1 in 1000. If they have done 500 similar fingerprint checks this would reduce the odds dramatically, and it suddenly would not be so incredible. In order to know any more, we need to understand the frequency and methodology of the fingerprinting operation.

By: Jeremy Osner

Jeremy Osner — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 02:58:54 +0000

Raymond sez: The guy is a convert to Islam—and hence is likely psychotic or tending towards. I am not comfortable with this idiot living in America. I say: Raymond—how do you feel about converts to Lutheranism? Judaism? Agnosticism? I am not comfortable with an idiot of your sort living in America.

By: Raymond

Raymond — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 01:31:06 +0000

Lets not forget that Portland is a hotbed of muslim militancy. Also, this guy is a muslim convert (likely a bit of a cipher/psychotic). I’m not comfortable with what the government did, but I’m also not comfortable with this idiot living in america.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 20:58:29 +0000

The only way of assuring no false positives is to assume, like Belle’s mother, that any identification is wrong Although, in this case, apparently double-checking Mayfield’s fingerprints against the one found in Spain would have sufficed.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 19:54:40 +0000

The 9/11 commission is preparing to hand the FBI its ass for having failed to connect various dots prior to Sept. 11. Under that circumstance, if a list of 50-100 pops up a Muslim convert with at least some small ties to one of the Portland Six, it’s no surprise that the FBI is going up jump on that person. The only way of assuring no false positives is to assume, like Belle’s mother, that any identification is wrong, and the FBI’s incentives don’t lean that way these days. Think of it this way, Belle: if you’re looking for a person with ties to an al-Qaeda bombing, what are the odds that that person is not going to be a Muslim? Certainly, the person that Spain is now naming as belonging to that fingerprint is a Muslim.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 08:57:21 +0000

From the NYT

Mr. Mayfield’s prints were in the F.B.I.’s central database of more than 44 million prints because they had been taken when he joined the military, where he served for eight years before being honorably discharged as a second lieutenant.

I don’t think this is actually crucial. The vital question is the second one posed by q. How likely it is that a mis-identification would pick up a Muslim with some sort of dubious connection (convert status isn’t critical, but is probably one of the factors that would count against someone)? I’d guess about 2 per cent of the US population is Muslim and of those maybe 1 in 10 would have some sort of link that might give rise to suspicion, giving a 1 in 500 chance of this thing happening entirely by accident. My guess is that the examination process spat out quite a few partial matches (say 50 to 100) and that Mayfield was the only one who produced any red flags when they cross-checked. As the story points out, this episode is going to be very damaging for the FBI’s use of fingerprint evidence, and will almost certainly force them to tighten up criteria and rely less on “expert” judgement.

By: Belle Waring

Belle Waring — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 08:53:23 +0000

I don’t know of any pix, but if you read the article the Spanish investigators detail what a poor match it was: wrong number of loops, ridges turning up instead of down, that sort of thing. They gave it 7 points of similarity, I think, while the FBI claimed 15, but actually there is no one accepted standard for the number of points which need to match. This is especially true of latent partial prints. They claimed to have run it through a database of 44 million prints IIRC; they had Mayfield’s because of Army service. Given how few Muslims there are of any stripe in the states I think the odds that a random match from those 44 million would be Muslim are so slim as to defy credulity. I guess stranger things have happened.

By: q

Sun, 06 Jun 2004 07:58:49 +0000

Although motives are difficult, some statistical analysis is helpful sometimes. How many people does the FBI have fingerprints? 1 million? How many of those people are Muslim? 50,000? How many Muslim converts: 5,000? How many high profile Muslim converts: 500? If it was a genuine mistake, the chances are 1 in 20 the person picked up would be not Muslim: 95%. If 1 person in 2,000 is a high profile Muslim convert, then the chances of a mistake selecting them are slight. Or were they only checking Muslim fingerprints? What is strange about the case is that if the fingerprint doesn’t match now, why did it match then? What has changed? Does anyone have a photo of the two fingerprints so we can compare?