Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Fly During Ramadan

varnull.adityamukerjee.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 986 posts

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#161

Post by JackFr »

fsckin wrote: post #14

>In all my life, I have only felt that same chilling terror once before - on one cold night in September twelve years ago, when I huddled in bed and tried to forget the terrible events in the news that day, wondering why they they had happened, wondering whether everything would be okay ever again. Wow... just wow.

"Wow" can only refer to how bad the writing was.

I found that sentence to be a non sequitur, illogically and gratuitously tacked on as an appeal to sentiment over rationality, and absolute bit of overwritten purple prose.

"Oh! The irony!"

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#163

Post by ferdo »

JshWright wrote: post #141
bayesianhorse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit, the TSA in this case didn't do racial profiling. They skipped that step, and went straight on to "rabid racism". That they apparently had no idea what a Hindu is doesn't make it one bit better.

Did you miss the fact that he triggered the explosive residue detector several times? As the article itself describes... when he skipped the pat-down (and therefore skipped the ERD), no one batted an eye at his race.

Correction: they claimed he triggered the detector.

It's not a wise course to take government employees at their word.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#164

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#165

Post by bitwize »

andy_ppp wrote: post #125
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.

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

They could be a member of Cobra, who have devised a way to make explosives out of water so they can turn the world's oceans into bombs.

You never know.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#166

Post by mundizzle »

eshvk wrote: post #6

This makes me so angry. This was one of the reasons I got out of consulting. Every fucking time, I would get an enhanced check. Surprisingly enough, it is nothing new. This is something you face if you are a minority. Hell, I remember a friend from back in Africa whose dad got blacklisted in the nineties because he had a beard. Brown catholic guy with a beard got blacklisted. The only difference now is that at least…

no idea if it accomplishes anything, but i wrote a strongly worded complaint through the jetblue website here - http://www.jetblue.com/contact-us/email/concern/

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#167

Post by goostavos »

reso wrote: post #86
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…

Agreed. If I set off an explosive detector, I would expect to have a hard time, too.

I've set off the explosion detector before. I didn't receive anything like what OP did. And honestly, I chalk up a decent amount of that up to having the good luck of being white.

I did get pulled into a separate area, and treated like criminal. Two agents stood by me the entire time while another one gave me another pat down. They opened up my backpack and rifled through everything (which was, I think, the most offensive part of everything), and meticulously swabbed and tested each area of my backpack.

I did receive similar questions "Where are you going," "Why are you here," "Why would your bag be setting off our alarm?" etc..

After a few more searches, a few more scans, and a lot more questions they finally let me go through security. Whole process probably took about 20 minutes -- twenty terrifying minutes -- but in the end, it was relatively painless compared to OPs.

I don't think his treatment was in any way justified by setting off an explosive materials detector.

Post reply on HN