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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#291

Post by ctdonath »

jrockway wrote: post #190
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 don't think this is that oppressive. He went through security and set off an explosives detector. The cops showed up and asked some questions. Then he left. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the government can't hamfistedly accuse you of a crime. All it says is that they have to charge you or let you go in 24 hours, give you a trial, and punish you in a consistent way. They did that here; they asked some ques…

Israel does a marvelous job of it by a brief interview of every passenger. It's a matter of how each person reacts to initial eye contact; with proper interrogation training, ill intent is obvious.

The TSA technique does everything but what works. Gross wholesale violations of multiple Constitutional rights doesn't work.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#292

Post by cdonnellytx »

Tloewald wrote: post #206
steven777400 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bags have set off the explosives detector before, twice. (In both cases, due a heart medication that apparently triggers false positives). I was not taken into a back room or interrogated for hours. They searched me and my bags in more detail, asked some questions, and concluded it must have been a false positive. The experience took about 15 minutes each time. This was a few years back, but I don't recall if it w…

If you set off a gas chromatograph for nitroglycerine and then say you have heart tablets then you'll be fine. He obviously set off a specific trigger AND couldn't account for it (although they clearly tried to get him to). Back in the 70s or 80s a group of friends in Britain were sentenced for participating in a terrorist act because they set off an explosive test. They spent years in prison before it was determined…

Too bad they couldn't even tell him what set it off, since he clearly did not remember:

  "I can’t think of anything. What does it say is triggering the alarm?" I asked.

  "I’m not going to tell you! It’s right here on my sheet, but I don’t have to tell you what it is!" he exclaimed, pointing at his clipboard.
''EDIT: formatting''

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#293

Post by JshWright »

67726e wrote: post #274
JshWright wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what you're talking about is widespread conspiracy to allow ERDs to be 'triggered' manually. I think that theory warrants about as much consideration as chemtrails.

He never said they manually triggered an alarm. He said they could very well be lying that a detector was ever used let alone registered explosives.

That would be extremely gutsy on the part of the TSA employee... I go through the pat-down dance at least once a month, and that test is always done while I'm standing there, and the pass/fail reports are quite obvious (big green/red boxes with text).

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#294

Post by foobarbazqux »

amirmc wrote: post #131
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…

> "She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about... " The thing is, they don't need to follow you around the same way as in the 'old days' because, like many things, modern technology makes it easier and more efficient. The tyranny of the future isn't going to be like that of the past. That makes it difficult to explain the dangers to people.

Yes and no. Tyranny always exploits something you previously took for granted as safe, necessary, good.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#295

Post by chimeracoder »

quantumpotato_ wrote: post #78
chimeracoder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I'd recommend reading until the end - unfortunately, it didn't end when I was released from airport.

Have you considered filing a FOIA for raids on your apartment & the painting?

I didn't. I've never actually had to file a FOIA request before - is this something that would be available through one?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#296

Post by ranman »

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…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#298

Post by rquantz »

jrockway wrote: post #190
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 don't think this is that oppressive. He went through security and set off an explosives detector. The cops showed up and asked some questions. Then he left. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the government can't hamfistedly accuse you of a crime. All it says is that they have to charge you or let you go in 24 hours, give you a trial, and punish you in a consistent way. They did that here; they asked some ques…

I don't think this is that oppressive. He went through security and set off an explosives detector. The cops showed up and asked some questions. Then he left.

This is a vast mischaracterization of what happened.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the government can't hamfistedly accuse you of a crime. All it says is that they have to charge you or let you go in 24 hours, give you a trial, and punish you in a consistent way. They did that here; they asked some questions and they let him go.

He was detained without arrest, based on minimal suspicions. Yes, he should have shut the hell up and not answered questions.

You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost.

Except these dice are heavily weighted against you if you are brown and/or non-christian.

say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?

That's not happening here. He was not detained because he had an explosive or firearm, he was detained because he was subject to a different level of scrutiny than the other passengers who went through the scanner.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#299

Post by javert »

magikarp wrote: post #118

Everything about this story, right down to the questions, agents involved, luggage inspections and the man's apartment being broken into and searched, fits very well with my own experiences in 2012 with entering the United States. I'm a recent Lebanese immigrant to Canada, male, in my early twenties, and to top it off I work on encryption software. I imagine the only worse thing I could be is an Iranian nuclear scien…

> I imagine the only worse thing I could be is an Iranian nuclear scientist.

I would like to think such a person would have no problem coming, but just wouldn't be allowed to go back.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#300

Post by sandyarmstrong »

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 think they get false positives all the time.

I am a white male that routinely opts-out of the scanners. I've had many many pat downs. One time my bag registered a false positive and I was also subjected to the "enhanced pat-down".

My experience was totally different from OP's. The TSA officers went out of their way to reassure me that false positives are not uncommon, that there was nothing to be afraid of, etc etc. They asked me a few simple questions, but it felt more like they were making conversation to keep the atmosphere relaxed, rather than interrogating me.

I don't recall if further tests of my bags or clothes indicated explosives, but I was let out of the screening room after ~20 minutes.

I strongly suspect that the respectful treatment I repeatedly receive during my TSA interactions are due to (mostly racial) profiling, and luck.

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