Timely...

In response to recent news, mathematician John Allen Paulos has tweeted a link to this "old, still relevant piece of mine on privacy, terrorists, and Bayes"…:

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/story?id=97755&page=1#.UbM5wOtHlo7

Perhaps, the key sentence:

"....the fact remains that since almost all people are innocent, the overwhelming majority of the people rounded up using any set of reasonable criteria will be innocent."