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Don't Fly During Ramadan

varnull.adityamukerjee.net

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#441

Post by unhappyhippie »

tsax wrote: post #276
seehafer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israeli-style random questioning in all airports, conducted by highly-trained experts (not rent-a-cops), in conjunction with profiling.

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.

As someone who has had a harrowing experience at an Israeli airport, I would dispute the claim that they are highly trained or even intelligent. I don't even want to recount my experience at Tel Aviv, its much milder than OP's but it spoils my mood just thinking about it.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#442

Post by chimeracoder »

blhack wrote: post #418
chimeracoder wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, my surname is incredibly distinctive. To anybody who's vaguely knowledgeable about these things, it not only points out my nationality, but also which region of India I belong to, my religion, and also my caste[0]. [0] Not that I pay attention to caste, but as you can see, Indian surnames contain a lot if information, to anybody even remotely trained in reading them.

You don't have to say your name, for obvious reasons, but would you mind giving an example of an Indian name, and how all of that information is encoded in it? That's REALLY fascinating to me.

Any name that ends in "-jee" or "-ji" is a British variant on an Indian Bengali name[0]. Almost anybody who has it (Mukerjee, Banerjee, Chatterjee) is originally from West Bengal, a state in India that borders Bangladesh.

Beyond that's, it's a Hindu name. Almost all Hindu names are specific to a particular caste (the origins of the caste system are simply a precise codification of socioeconomic status, so it's similar to someone being called "a Trump" or "a Kennedy").

Priests can also tell further information from the name, such as the gotra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotra . In layman's terms, this is a way of identifying one of your earliest known ancestors.

The name even has a Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukherjee

[0] The British changed a lot of names of both people and places when they were in power - ex., they changed "Mumbai" to "Bombay", although people are now starting to use the original name again.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#444

Post by magic_haze »

john_b wrote: post #417
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…

> "You can argue about the techniques; religious questions, not giving him water, but it's all a well-documented psychological game that they're trying to play. If they make the suspect mad, the suspect is more likely to start yelling hysterically without thinking, saving the taxpayer the cost of a long trial. It's worth a try, right? (I think the correct answer to any question is, "my lawyer will answer that. get me…

Exactly. Should we start waterboarding all suspects because, hey, it might save the cost of a trial?

And besides, doesn't the government have armies of lawyers on their payroll already? The only significant cost to the taxpayer here would be if they lose.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#445

Post by joering2 »

jwr wrote: post #177
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…

> 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. And she is right — the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state. But it i…

> "She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about... "

It is too expensive and inefficient to follow everyone personally. You can instead shoot a satellite in the space that each second takes high-definition infrared photos of Earth and can pinpoint/track/identify each person by their uniquely located veins/blood packets on their shoulders. See? Khazakhstan v. 2.0.

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/09/13/secret-us-spy-sate...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#446

Post by jazzyb »

marvin wrote: post #116

The last part really got me thinking, when the author mentioned that his apartment was probably searched by some agency. He would obviously have noted if he had received some sort of notification that his apartment had been legally searched. Is it legal for the police, the DHS, FBI or any other agency to search your apartment and belongings without notifying you? Are there warrants that will let the authorities do th…

I am not a lawyer, but this is how I understand it: Hypothetically if they had issued a FISA warrant to the landlord, then the landlord could have let them search the apartment and additionally would not be legally allowed to inform his tenet that a warrant had been issued [1], must less that his apartment had been searched.

1. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/1861 see part (d) "Nondisclosure"

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#447

Post by greedo »

genericresponse wrote: post #107

Look at it from the TSA/Police/FBI perspective: Someone goes to the airport on the first day of Ramadan, refuses the scan, sets off the chemical detectors, then asks to leave. During further interview he indicates that he hasn't eaten yet that day, is travelling for religious purposes, has just moved and is travelling alone. This further investigation doesn't seem insane to me. In fact if there was a clear profile fo…

And, to be the devil's advocate, if I was EvilGenius, I would test security in a dry run in a fashion similar to this. Have someone get residue on their clothing, and see how the authorities responded. The sad thing is that EvilGenius would learn that the authorities are bumbling fools that make Barney Fife look like a model LE agent.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#448

Post by mindcrime »

51Cards wrote: post #373
mindcrime wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seriously, FUCK the TSA. Those assholes are the terrorists as far as I'm concerned. That one comment just undermined 100% of any credibility I had placed in the remainder of your comments in this thread.

That one comment just undermined 100% of any credibility I had placed in the remainder of your comments in this thread.

I'm sorry you feel that way. We probably have some fundamental differences in our worldviews and fundamental principles. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion, even if it makes me sad.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#449

Post by ranman »

protomyth wrote: post #405
ranman wrote: post #201

My plan: 1. Dress in ethnically ambiguous clothing. 2. Coat myself in insecticide before heading to the airport. 3. Look shifty. 4. Refuse the millimeter wave machine. 5. Get Detained. 6. Take off ethnically ambiguous clothes. 7. Scream: "I'm a white male... what now bitches!"

If you're going to go through that much trouble, the Colorado School of Mines does a high-speed photography workshop every so often. You are photographing explosives of various types. I would imagine clothes worn during the workshop would be very interesting to airport scanners with a bonus of learning about high-speed photography.

I have been wanting to book a flight to Colorado.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#450

Post by antjanus »

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…

Let me tell you what would happen and what DID happen to one of my friends who set off the alarm.

A supervisor was called in, he double checked his ID, found out my friend was using some chemicals the day before (working on his apartment). Waved him through right after.

The explanation may be the thing that got him through but it could also be the fact that they told him what chemical he set off and the fact that he's white as hell.

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