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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#351

Post by codegeek »

jonahx wrote: post #336
codegeek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No water for hours? I often go until late afternoon or longer without realizing I haven't had any water to drink. This really doesn't seem that bad. The OP's claim that his mouth was like sandpaper because he hadn't had water for a few hours reads like hyperbole to me.

We all go a long time without water or realization but on a regular usual day when we are not under pressure by the TSA or police or what not. This situation is not a hyperbole.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#352

Post by corresation »

mistercow wrote: post #317
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…

>and no one here knows what would happen if John Smith Anglosaxon set off the same detector in the same situation. We don't have to have direct knowledge of the impossibly specific situation you've constructed. The FBI agent flat out said that it was about his race when he said "a person of your… background". And explosive detectors are not really there to find bombs. They are there to reduce manual searches. If they…

We don't have to have direct knowledge of the impossibly specific situation you've constructed.

Instead we have people saying "I am white and I set one off in 2003 in Australia and they let me through, therefore that demonstrates that this is racism" (ignore every case where non-whites got a couple of quick questions and went through).

And how utterly provincial are so many people on here? What backwaters do they live in? Go to JFK or Newark and tell me that they pick on non-whites, and I'll tell you that they must have hundreds of thousands of employees working around the clock to manage that.

Further what an FBI agent purportedly said during the conversational stage is utterly irrelevant. We don't know what explosive material the sensor detected, but by the response it seems likely that it was rare.

Finally, this isn't just about racism

Indeed, it isn't, even though the overwhelming majority of comments, and the title itself, portends racism. In another comment someone criticizes me for apparently claiming that their treatment is reasonable. Yet never did I say their treatment was reasonable. Who would?

they wouldn't even tell him what they had found

Because they believe in the flawed concept of security through obscurity. They likely imagine that giving that information away shows their hand.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#353

Post by ctdonath »

rquantz wrote: post #309
ctdonath wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This sounds terrible. Police make me very nervous. I avoid them if possible, especially making eye contact. How would I show up in Israel's interview?

There's a difference in reaction between someone nervous of cops vs. someone about to die in the willful act of mass murder.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#354

Post by Karunamon »

kareemm wrote: post #327
enraged_camel wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Anyway, I look at this like the lottery, but in reverse. Sometimes you lose the reverse lottery and a day of your life gets fucked up. But ultimately, life moves on and you have an interesting story. 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. The view you have expressed here demonstrates that you have literall…

The explosives detection machinery doesn't care what you look like or believe. I don't know about you, but I want the TSA / FBI / NYPD to look into it so that they're sufficiently convinced the individual is not a threat.

Did you and I even read the same story?! The guy was clearly being profiled on race and religious background, not just the false positive of the explosives machine.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#355

Post by [deleted] »

enraged_camel wrote: post #259
jrockway wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>>Anyway, I look at this like the lottery, but in reverse. Sometimes you lose the reverse lottery and a day of your life gets fucked up. But ultimately, life moves on and you have an interesting story. 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. The view you have expressed here demonstrates that you have literall…

[deleted]

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#356

Post by driverdan »

acheron wrote: post #315
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

The ACLU has abandoned any pretense of actually being concerned about civil liberties in favor of being a generic left-wing advocacy organization. For example, just recently they were perfectly happy to throw out a commitment against double jeopardy in order to stoke some standard left-wing racial grievances[1]. I used to think if you donated to both the ACLU and the NRA you could cover all your civil liberties prett…

Have you actually looked at ACLU's policies, legal actions it's taking, or talked to anyone who works for/with the ACLU, especially at the state or local level? They are absolutely defending our civil liberties.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#357

Post by siculars »

So my brother is a doctor. He told me a story about one of his colleagues, also a doctor, one of the smartest doctors my brother knows (which is no light praise), who happens to be a brown colored Muslim. My brother's brown colored Muslim doctor colleague tells him that it is increasingly humiliating to be constantly harassed by TSA when traveling and that he is thinking of leaving the country. My brother follows up by telling me that one day someone is going to need this brilliant, brown colored Muslim doctor and when that day comes the brilliant doctor may not be here.

The bottom line is that we need to ask ourselves what kind of environment are we creating for the country, it's citizens and it's visitors. At some point very smart people, who happen to be non-white, are going to realize that they would rather be somewhere else and we will be the lesser for it.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#358

Post by rayiner »

Karunamon wrote: post #354
kareemm wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The explosives detection machinery doesn't care what you look like or believe. I don't know about you, but I want the TSA / FBI / NYPD to look into it so that they're sufficiently convinced the individual is not a threat.

Did you and I even read the same story?! The guy was clearly being profiled on race and religious background, not just the false positive of the explosives machine.

I'm not sure if you understand what "profiled" means. He was pulled into questioning because he repeatedly set off the bomb detector. The questions about race/religion weren't profiling, because they weren't used to select him for additional scrutiny. They are part of a psychological battery designed to evaluate him without a harsh interrogation. These sorts of batteries were pioneered by the Israelis and are very effective.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#359

Post by mistercow »

genericresponse wrote: post #288
mistercow wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the lack of decency is critical to the whole situation. If they had shown decency in the first place, he wouldn't have reacted in a way that they construed as "suspicious", and then they wouldn't have wasted several hours and harassed an innocent person.

I tend to apply some expectation on him as well as the TSA. He knows they might think he's fasting. Say: I ran out the door and didn't have a chance to get breakfast. I'm pretty hungry. He knows that they might be suspicious of religiosity. Explain the details of your trip. Yes he doesn't have to and it should have been easier for him, but use some common sense. It's the same reason that when you're pulled over for s…

But fasting because you're religious isn't illegal, and it shouldn't be grounds for suspicion of terrorism. There is a big difference between being polite to a cop after breaking the law, and trying not to offend the bigoted sensibilities of when you're totally innocent. Blaming the author for the completely innocent and honest answers he gave is rather similar to blaming a rape victim for wearing revealing clothing.

And it seems to me that he did use common sense. He knew from experience that people didn't really understand the deal with his 7 week family sabbaticals, so he tried to keep it simple. And you certainly can't expect a person placed in a stressful and unfamiliar situation to give perfectly tuned responses to optimize their outcome.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#360

Post by Tloewald »

mindcrime wrote: post #254
Tloewald wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an appalling story and the behavior of the TSA is often reprehensible, but seriously -- this is not a fair comparison. So yes, security guys don't know Hindu from Muslim or Indian from whatever, but it's well-known there is a heightened alert right now, US embassies all over the middle-east and Africa are closed out of security fears, and this guy fit a crude profile AND did something slightly unusual (opted out…

What a load of shit. "Security guys" should be fucking competent or they shouldn't be "security guys" at all. And who cares about some "keep the sheep fearful and in line" propoganda shit the US government puts out about supposed threats to embassies or whatever? The "opt-out" he elected is explicitly defined as a valid procedure by the TSA, so citing that as "suspicious" is bullshit. And "behavioural red flag?" Are…

> "Security guys" should be fucking competent or they shouldn't be "security guys" at all.

I'd say the same of Java programmers, but we know that's not true, and Java coders get much better salaries.

> And "behavioural red flag?" Are you shitting me?

In Britain for many years the main security measure at Heathrow was for security people to simply interview passengers on check in and ask them about their bags, where they were traveling, etc. -- the main purpose was to look for behavioral cues and not so much obtain answers to the questions. I believe this is one of the things TSA officers are supposed to receive training in.

So maybe he was low blood sugar and this triggered some kind of tic that also caused a false positive.

So you've got a bunch of things that all put you on the wrong side of checklist, voluntarily pick another one, and then add another couple from pure bad luck, and it sucks. I speak as someone who has been randomly detained for no stated reason at customs in Australia long before 9/11, and who since, having dark hair and complexion, is frequently on the wrong end of TSA profiling.

> Seriously, FUCK the TSA. Those assholes are the terrorists as far as I'm concerned.

You've led a sheltered life.

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