Profiles shifted from statistical targeting tools to proof of guilt itself

Evidence

In the post-9/11 environment, few are surprised that individuals with life histories such as Almrei’s should come to the attention of security services. What is noteworthy, however, is that at his hearing, Hassan Almrei’s life history suffices to make the case that he is a terrorist or will become one. No longer simply about ‘targeting individuals who possess identifiable attributes that is [sic] believed to bear positive statistical correlations to particular kinds of misconduct,’ in the post-9/11 period the profile now performs an additional function. It targets and condemns through launching Hassan Almrei into a state of exception, a place in law where he has limited due-process rights. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 73

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: This is the conceptual core of the chapter: the post-9/11 ‘profile’ no longer identifies a correlation for further investigation — it is itself the verdict. A statistical heuristic becomes an adjudicative standard, and the legal mechanism (the security certificate) is the state-of-exception that converts suspicion into condemnation.
• XREF: Directly connects to Agamben’s state of exception as invoked in the opening paragraphs of the chapter, and to the general literature on racial profiling’s epistemic collapse into presumptive guilt.
• SEED: Article angle: ‘the profile as verdict’ — how a statistical instrument migrated from investigation to adjudication in security law, and what that does to the distinction between suspicion and proof.