"It’s not war on terror, it’s war on the inexplicable. It holds that anything that you, personally, don’t understand is probably cause for police investigation."

Woman calls police to report overheard sexually...: " Brown Deer Police Chief Kass drily opined that perhaps the caller was “taking see something, say something a little too far?” But of course, that’s the entire basis of “see something, say something.” It’s not war on terror, it’s war on the inexplicable. It holds that anything that you, personally, don’t understand is probably cause for police investigation. It’s why Texas has waged war on brown kids withelectronics that aren’t immediately identifiable. It’s why we divert airplanes where someone unfamiliar with orthodox Judiasm spots a couple of hassids dovening (“bearded foreign-looking men chanting in an Arabic-sounding language”). The New York City MTA buses periodically sport giant ads trumpeting the thousands of “see something, say something” calls that alert New Yorkers have phoned in. They don’t note that between zero and one of these tips (depending on how you count) related to terrorism, meaning that the whole program is one giant false-positive-generating machine."