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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#101

Post by onli »

alanh wrote: post #67
onli wrote: post #42

What I don't understand: If you are detained for several hours, why don't people call a lawyer? Why did he speak to the police (end even the FBI!) without legal counsel?

Do you have a lawyer on speed dial? I don’t.

Not on speed-dial, but I would not need too many calls to get one.

In that situation, you don't need to have him on speed dial. It's enough to stop talking and demanding one and you have to be given the opportunity to call one (in my country including internet access for research) - it was my understanding the the US justice system has the same rules.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#102

Post by unz »

seehafer wrote: post #76
unz wrote: post #47

People like to blame the US government for this, though I think the real culprit is that often the dumber, more xenophobic members of society are usually hired for these kinds of positions. As in the case of police brutality, cameras need to be recording all encounters between travelers and airport security, and extensive quality control performed. This is an issue that is tarnishing the United States's reputation ev…

But who hires and tolerates the dumber, more xenophobic members of society for these positions? The biggest impediment to fixing or eliminating the TSA is that the decision makers don't eat their own dogfood. If every Congressperson had to endure the inhumane treatment that passes for airport security these days instead of being whisked through VIP lines the TSA would be fixed within months.

The thing is, senior people don't eat their dogfood in anything. The CEO of Ford probably drives a Benz. What has worked in all industries is quality control. Government has always had a problem in doing this (the DMV) but that's where startups should step into to educate the politician that it's good for both public and for the politician's future elections (using said startup's product).

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#103

Post by ck2 »

corresation wrote: post #72

It is a terrible ordeal, but for all of the other factors brought up the critical factor is that he set off an explosion detector (and clearly it doesn't get false positives often given the response they showed). Everything else (about Ramadan, being Hindi, the color of one's skin, etc) may be nothing more than decorations, and no one here knows what would happen if John Smith Anglosaxon set off the same detector in…

How do you know they don't have a button to push to make it give a false positive so they can hold people?

Cops have dogs trained to give false positives on signal and we are constantly spied on and lied to by our own intelligence agencies.

So please don't tell me this idea is far fetched, I think it's very plausible.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#104

Post by angersock »

jwr wrote: post #73

The land of the free. As I read more and more of those stories I can't help but wonder at how things changed. I am from a formerly-eastern-europe-soviet-bloc country (Poland) and these kinds of oppressive techniques sound very familiar. The haziness of procedures, lack of basic rights, intimidation, no accountability of state officials -- we've seen all that until 1989. At the time, while the communist regime was imp…

I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues.

The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten the noose so well fitted, that when the bottom drops out we'll only have the briefest of short, sharp shocks before we find ourselves in a terrifyingly efficient machine of oppression.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#105

Post by JackFr »

lukeqsee wrote: post #79
ck2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It echos of rounding up everyone who is Japanese and throwing them into concentration camps. It's amazing how many people don't know we had concentration camps in the USA in recent history. We are just a hop skip and jump away from that again, all it would take is another major nightmare.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment I had never heard of this.

Are you an American? I'm curious, because in my experience the American interment of Japanese is fairly well known among Americans and Japanese, and not well known by everyone else.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#106

Post by jlgreco »

CoachRufus87 wrote: post #85

When the TSA Agent said he wasn't detained yet refused to return his stuff, was that not theft?

Morally? Yes, clearly.

Legally? Probably not, for some idiotic reason about national security, airports being special, evidence, or some shit like that.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#107

Post by genericresponse »

Look at it from the TSA/Police/FBI perspective: Someone goes to the airport on the first day of Ramadan, refuses the scan, sets off the chemical detectors, then asks to leave. During further interview he indicates that he hasn't eaten yet that day, is travelling for religious purposes, has just moved and is travelling alone. This further investigation doesn't seem insane to me. In fact if there was a clear profile for someone I would investigate it would be him.

That said, it doesn't hurt to show basic human decency.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#108

Post by maxmcd »

pinaceae wrote: post #56

Contrarian perspective: He fits a certain profile. Triggered a bunch of attributes (address move, chemicals on him, etc.). The 9/11 attackers walked through the scanners with knifes. The Boston bombers were flagged, but still traveled freely. After both attacks people were laughing at the stupidity of the enforcement agencies, uselessness of the TSA, etc. Here, the process worked. His account is subjective, everyone…

No. There are far more efficient ways to flag people that fit a certain profile. They should have checked all of his belongings and let him go, and not focused at all on his "attitude". That allows for more checks of other suspicious people with the available time they wasted questioning this one person.

The Boston bombers should also have been allowed to fly freely. Their actions had nothing to do with air travel.

Either way the situation described is unacceptable, either as "racist", or "Xenophobic", or, to your point, as an incredibly inefficient way to carry out profiling.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#109

Post by codegeek »

corresation wrote: post #72

It is a terrible ordeal, but for all of the other factors brought up the critical factor is that he set off an explosion detector (and clearly it doesn't get false positives often given the response they showed). Everything else (about Ramadan, being Hindi, the color of one's skin, etc) may be nothing more than decorations, and no one here knows what would happen if John Smith Anglosaxon set off the same detector in…

You are missing the point. yes he set off the explosion detector for which he should have been questioned and he was. The issue is how they did it. No water for hours ? You seriously think that it is ok ? The rest 5% decorations that you were talking about is lot more than just decorations.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#110

Post by chimeracoder »

sethbannon wrote: post #97

How often does this happen and not get blogged about? If you want to help stop this from happening again, I suggest donating to the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/donate/join-renew-give

This post was unbelievably painful to write.

I didn't want to relive the experience - I wanted to forget about it, but a friend of mine convinced me that I needed to let people know that these things happen, for that exact reason. That's why I wrote it.

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