[The Lettonian]

Originally Posted by L473ncy

Let me guess, driving a relatively newer car that's in a good price range for your age group (ie. not driving an Audi A8 if you're only 20 but driving something like a early or mid 2000's Camry or Corolla), clean, well shaven, don't look like a hardcore pot smoker, interior relatively clean of garbage. Yeah.... I'm pretty sure they do profiling for when they decide to do "random" searches, or at least those things are part of the algorithm for deciding who to randomly search (ie. it's really a pseudorandom picking and choosing of who to search).

Random searches are random. Non-random searches are a judgment call by the officer, based on the training they get. Think about it - single male passenger, unemployed, travelling from a drug source country after being there for two weeks, has four bags, purchased ticket in cash, body language screams "nervous." That's not "profiling" in the sense of race or religion, that's "sketchy dude from a sketchy place." Not necessarily a drug smuggler, but worth a closer look. By the same token, random searches have turned up stuff on people you'd never think would be doing something illegal - that's why they're there. To be random.