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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#151

Post by marvin »

chimeracoder wrote: post #96
CoachRufus87 wrote: post #85

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

IANAL, and I would love to know this. But at the time, what else could I do, besides wait for the police to show up?

For the lawyers out there, this sounds like an excellent business opportunity. 20-minute legal emergency response to people in trouble at the security checkpoint. Could assist directly with regards to asserting rights, filing suits if the passengers' rights have been violated and extracting every dime that can legally be extracted from airlines that involuntarily re-book passengers.

Sorry that you had to go through this, and thank you for the very well-written account of how this ordeal looked first-hand.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#152

Post by amirmc »

jrockway wrote: post #140
angersock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. Or you can take the train.

TSA does more than just airports

"With little fanfare, the agency best known for airport screenings has vastly expanded its reach to sporting events, music festivals, rodeos, highway weigh stations and train terminals."

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyo...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#153

Post by canistr »

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.

It should be noted that other Asian people of non-Japanese descent were also wrongly forced into the same Japanese concentration camps. This occurred both in the United States and Canada.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#154

Post by corresation »

skaevola wrote: post #147
hobs wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was the airline which denied him the flight, not the TSA.

JetBlue were total idiots about it, but at that point they were "victims" of this situation as well, and it seemed that the representative simply wanted to exclude him as quickly as they could to wipe their hands of the consequences of it.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#156

Post by pstuart »

lukeqsee wrote: post #41
eshvk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most popular argument against the TSA that I have heard? They spend too much of their time searching the "wrong people". You know the kind that wouldn't "hurt a fly"? Weasel phrases that in essence mean that the TSA should do what Israel does. Racial profiling. Not that they don't do enough of it. At least on paper, they try to mess up that by searching white grandmas from the midwest and little blonde girls. Of…

I've heard the same arguments. Sadly, I have no good answer for how the TSA should do their job. However, treating someone rudely and, to an extent, inhumanly, doesn't fit the bill.

> Sadly, I have no good answer for how the TSA should do their job

Shouldn't we be "profiling" based on assessed risk? And isn't the NSA making those assessments? It should be a simple as submitting the user's identity and circumstances and getting a guided response back: "no likely threat", "detain immediately", etc.

Not that I'm a fan of the NSA, but isn't that what they are ostensibly there for?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#157

Post by decktech »

jrockway wrote: post #140
angersock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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. Or you can take the train.

Is this a joke? I was searched by the TSA the last time I took Amtrak. They just plopped down a table in the middle of Penn Station and went to town.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#158

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

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.

There is no button labeled "Fuck the 4th Amendment" but a clever technician might know how to manipulate the results, if needed. But why would they need to? They could just lie.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#160

Post by TheCrownedFox »

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.

A friend of mine set one off when we were traveling in Australia. We talked with the guard (who very 100% ralaxed) and he said that setting off the detector is incredibly easy. While he was searching my friend's purse, we were told that some of the chemicals used in make up can set it off. After finding nothing, we were free to continue. Took all of 3 minutes, no additional security, no prolonged questioning, just a simple check and go.
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