John Allen Paulos has pointed out a problem with massive, untargeted wiretaps. To illustrate the problem, he sup-poses that one out of every million Americans has terrorist ties. Furthermore, he supposes that the terrorist profile is 99% accu-rate, so that if a person has terrorist ties, the profile will pick them up 99% of the time, and if the person does not have ter-rorist ties, the profile will accidentally pick them up only 1% of the time. Given that the profile has picked up a person, what is the probability that the person actually has terrorist ties? Dis-cuss how your answer affects your opinion on domestic wire-tapping. Source: Who’s Counting.

A First Course in Probability (10th Edition)
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ISBN:9780134753119
Author:Sheldon Ross
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Chapter1: Combinatorial Analysis
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John Allen Paulos has pointed out a problem with

massive, untargeted wiretaps. To illustrate the problem, he sup-
poses that one out of every million Americans has terrorist ties.

Furthermore, he supposes that the terrorist profile is 99% accu-
rate, so that if a person has terrorist ties, the profile will pick

them up 99% of the time, and if the person does not have ter-
rorist ties, the profile will accidentally pick them up only 1% of

the time. Given that the profile has picked up a person, what is

the probability that the person actually has terrorist ties? Dis-
cuss how your answer affects your opinion on domestic wire-
tapping. Source: Who’s Counting.

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