"Profiling is done by advertisers all the time to get a certain group of people that they're targeting," she complained.

"When you have 99 percent of the people that are committing these atrocities, blowing up buildings, being young Arab men, why - for Pete's sake - would you not examine the bag of every single Arab? I think even the Arab people would feel safer if you did that."

Bloomberg replied:

"Victoria, number one ... the law prohibits you from profiling. Period, end of story. So no matter what you think, the courts will not permit you to do that.

"More importantly," he continued, "I think that what this country is founded on is the belief that everybody is innocent until proven guilty and we should not go and profile based on ethnicity or gender or the color of your eyes or whatever.

"The police do have the right to stop people with what's called reasonable suspicion. You know, if somebody's walking down the street with a backpack with wires sticking out of them and a sign saying 'bomb,' of course they stop them."

Bloomberg then explained that even those who refused to have their bags inspected would not attract extra attention from police.

"They can leave, and we will not follow them," he pledged.

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