Don't Fly During Ramadan • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#121

Post by hobs » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:07 PM UTC

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #112

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…

I've always wondered what happens if you set off the detector. The fact is that they allowed him to fly afterwards. Overall it's not so horrible. Assuming the thing about the photo isn't true, of course.

And made him pay an additional 700 dollars and miss his flight. Huge hassle as far as I can tell.

If you detained and questioned an innocent man and ruined his day costing him a weeks wages for some, wouldn't you do SOMETHING to make up for it?

A decent person would, a bureaucratic organization that is not held accountable sure wont.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#122

Post by the_rosentotter » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

It seems most commenters here are missing the fact that somebody had been in his home. Without notifying him of the fact, he just noticed that things were slightly off, picture missing, etc. Is this legal in America? I mean, don't they have to tell him at some point if his private premises have been breached? Or are there special rules when you say "terrorism!", like in the London airport detention case?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#123

Post by cperciva » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

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…

he set off an explosion detector (and clearly it doesn't get false positives often given the response they showed)

False positives are fairly common, but usually easily explained -- e.g., "I was target shooting yesterday, there must be some gunpowder on my clothes". A false positive which the individual involved is unable -- or unwilling -- to explain is far less common.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#124

Post by eruditely » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #50

http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/ Call your representative today and talk to them about this story if you are disturbed by it. Please, you have to speak to have a voice.

They have to be listening for you to be heard.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#125

Post by andy_ppp » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #62

The problem here is that he set off the explosives detectors. Regardless of what color skin he had or what religion they thought he was, the second he did that, repeatedly, he was in for a lot of questioning.

I'm sure that there is a common way to make explosives with pesticides, but it's more common to use pesticides to kill pests. Right? The sensors obviously create false positives in most cases I'd expect.

Giving people water should be a bare minimum requirement in any interrogation.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#126

Post by lukeqsee » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #105

lukeqsee wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am. Most likely I learned about it in passing in a history course and have since forgotten because it didn't make an impact at the time. I doubt I'll forget again.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#127

Post by corresation » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #103

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.

Sure it's plausible. It's just incredibly unlikely (not least because this notion that the TSA is some white power apparatus seems to be at odds with the reality that the TSA is a very diverse workforce. Add that the passenger list in most urban centers is incredibly diverse, and this idea that it's just xenophobia seems quite nonsensical. Another post talks about how this demonstrates how the US views "foreigners" -- have these people never been to New York City, where this happened? It is about the most inclusive, vibrant, multicultural place on the planet).

Indeed, the narrative of this very story seemed to be overwhelmingly focused on figuring out why he was setting off the explosives detectors. They repeatedly went through his belongings and tried to figure out if he was indeed in the business of making explosions. They almost certainly used a secret warrant to go into his apartment to, again, see if there was an explosives lab there. They really thought they had something when the explosives detector found something it didn't like, and there is no rational reason they would do this just because someone was Muslim (again, Muslims make hundreds of millions of flights in the US -- do people seriously think this is what they go through?)

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#128

Post by tty » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

maxmcd wrote: post #108

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. E…

>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".

Did you miss the part where the machines gave him a positive for explosives?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#129

Post by songzme » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #104

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…

What a great analogy!

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#130

Post by waffle_ss » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 6:09 PM UTC

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.

The Canadians did as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Canadian_internment