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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#431

Post by tsax »

seehafer wrote: post #322
tsax wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is affirmative action rentacops that the TSA has become. Israeli security personnel are highly trained, intelligent folks. The ethnic profile of such a TSA would be > 90% white. Cry racism, and there goes your competent force.

I'm not an expert, but I doubt if you pulled from FBI agents, CIA operatives, Special Forces, etc. that the ethnic profile would be > 90% white.

Competence in pattern detection is pretty much an IQ test. When you go higher on the scale, the number of non-whites, non-asians, and non-jews drops precipitously. I wouldn't bet my house on this prediction, but I would bet a few hundred $. For one, maybe the competence required is not that high. But you are surely wrong about Special Forces. They are overwhelmingly white. See here: http://e-ring.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/10/budget_watc...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#432

Post by throwaway9848 »

seiji wrote: post #51

Initial thoughts: It sounds like the phone was nearby during this entire inexcusable ordeal. Too bad it wasn't recording the entire time. The names of everybody involved in detaining or interviewing or interrogating should be released and they should explain from their point of view. How can we stop the TSA from thinking religious boom boom terrorism is a real thing in the US when it obviously isn't? [Sidenote: I've…

Oh for crying out loud. A well-nourished human body can go for between a week and a month without food. Nothing bad would have happened to his health (he stated he is not diabetic) after a day or so without eating.

It was probably because of the inexcusable treatment and stress that he received. That is more than enough to be angry about, no need to make stuff up.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#433

Post by icambron »

ctdonath wrote: post #353
rquantz wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh. I wonder how they train the inspectors?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#434

Post by ctdonath »

ars wrote: post #362
ctdonath wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because sometimes they need a plausible excuse to act on other suspicions. When working security, agents can sense something is wrong but not have it articulable enough in legal terms to act on. When the suspect says "why are you searching me?" it's a lot easier on everyone to say "the detector beeped, you heard it" than "I've got an uneasy feeling about you". (Not legal, not warranted, just easier.)

I'm pretty sure they don't need any excuse at all. They can just do a "random" screening - which is designed exactly for that. The only reason to keep screening him over and over is if the detector really did find something, otherwise they are just wasting their own time because of a nebulous feeling.

Or they're playing psychological games. Repeated pointless activity tends to make people crack fast.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#435

Post by ucarion »

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…

Though I agree with the notion that racism is wrong, the issue of racial profiling is not as simple as we would want it to be. If we accept that the TSA is an organization of limited resources, and that any failure to capture a terrorist would have unspeakably terrible consequences, then it would be reasonable to try to optimize our efforts at thwarting terrorism.

It is the case that there exist certain profiles that would make a person more predisposed to terrorism (but I'm not claiming that I know what they are, nor do I feel that deciding what those profiles are is a decision to be taken lightly in the least). An equivalent statement would be to say that there are profiles -- such as being very old -- that would make a person less predisposed to acts of terrorism of this sort. So does it not follow that we should attempt to optimize given these conditions?

Note that I wholly agree with the objections to constitutional rights being violated in the account presented in the article, and I can understand the stance against any kind of profile. But it cannot be claimed that racial profiling has no good arguments going for it.

I personally am not entirely decided on what the appropriate course of action is in this matter; profiling is a more complicated issue than we may like it to be.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#436

Post by mapt »

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…

As much problem as I have with the TSA and this event...

Offering hints as to how a person they do not trust would dissuade their suspicions is a way to guarantee that everyone dissuades their suspicions. It is an information-theoretically invalid way of pursuing an investigation of anything.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#437

Post by greedo »

ctdonath wrote: post #344
fennecfoxen wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bit that got me as incontrovertibly hilariously-stupid was... they got all upset that he hadn't identified to them that he'd checked some baggage. If the guy is an adversary, you can't rely on him to bring that fact to your attention. If the guy isn't an adversary, his failure to identify it is (by definition) innocent in nature. In neither sense does harassing the guy about it make sense.

You think that was a stupid mistake? Probably a deliberate documented procedure: throw the person off-balance with some unexpected "stupid" weirdness. "You told the border guard you're entering the country to work." "What? No! I never said that! I'm entering to marry my fiancé!" "I'm here because of the MBA conference." "NBA? We didn't know there was a basketball event in this building." Yeah, I've seen it a number o…

And throw in the fact that lying to a Federal agent can lead to felony charges, the behavior of his interrogators is very typical.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#439

Post by cenhyperion »

jrockway wrote: post #195
chimeracoder wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That thought is terrifying. I was afraid I was going to be put on the no-fly list afterwards and would have to travel back to NYC by train (a four-day trip). Even before this experience I used to avoid flying in favor of taking the train. I don't know what I'd do if the TSA became commonplace at train stations.

Take the bus? Drive?

Have you driven near the border? Driving through west Texas I was met by stop and go traffic for 5 miles. Middle of the desert. I kept driving and realized border patrol had blocked the interstate and was diverting traffic through a checkpoint. Hundreds of cameras and drug dogs everywhere. I drove up and the agent asked me if I'm a US citizen. Then I was free to go.

It's not that simple. It's very very hard to travel if the government doesn't want you to.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#440

Post by umsm »

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…

Regardless of the geographic location you call home, I believe that it's not "if" but "when" the government will remove your freedom. They may do this out of "political", "religious", or any other "reason" they see fit.

The truth is that the world is changing.

People do stupid things.

You give people power and it's only a matter of time when something can go wrong.

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