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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#491

Post by throwaway9848 »

niuzeta wrote: post #472
throwaway9848 wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the superior airline that you will be transferring your business to? Let us all know :P

Seeing where the airline operates and since I'm not in US, I won't have a chance to boycott the airline. However, if I ever get a chance to travel to/out of US(which is bound to happen), Jet Blue will not be my airline of choice. If my friends happen to have to use an airline, I will let them know what I've heard of the airline, and suggest them to find an alternative. That's pretty much it. It's not much, but I won'…

You will be disappointed with the alternatives. I think you are not allocating blame correctly.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#492

Post by darklajid »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #466
mark-r wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once they've determined he isn't carrying actual explosives he shouldn't be considered a threat anymore. The detection machine might single you out for additional searching, but once the search is complete you should be free to go.

> Once they've determined he isn't carrying actual explosives he shouldn't be considered a threat anymore. // Because people who handle explosives and cover it up when questioned, and aren't involved in handling explosives in their day job, are completely to be trusted? Surely once they've determined he isn't carrying explosives they need to be sure as possible, if he claims not to have been around any explosives, th…

Er.. No.

The problem with your line of thought is that you trust that machine to be somewhat reliable. We don't _really_ learn what set off the machine, but the author's guess is an over the counter spray..

If that's the high tech "You need to endure this process for the greater good, since the machine claims you're a threat" world you like to live in, I .. opt out. That thing is obviously next to useless and probably as effective as a look in the eyes of the stranger, with your gut deciding if he's going to stay put for the rest of the day or if he's allowed to move on.

IFF we had a reliable, working test with little to no false positive due to f*ing everyday stuff (or .. bad luck, being a 'random' match), THEN you might have a point. Right now, you don't.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#493

Post by brown9-2 »

ck2 wrote: post #103
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…

How do you know they don't have a button to push to make it give a false positive so they can hold people? Cops have dogs trained to give false positives on signal and we are constantly spied on and lied to by our own intelligence agencies. So please don't tell me this idea is far fetched, I think it's very plausible.

What incentive does a TSA inspector have to make him or her want to do a private pat down on a traveler like in this story?

What does the TSA agent get out of needlessly fucking with some random person?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#494

Post by laureny »

angersock wrote: post #104
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'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 and all these other sorts of issues.

She's right, and like her, I have found it next to impossible to explain this to Americans who think the US is turning into a police state.

People making this claim should spend a few hours reading on history and learn about the Gestapo or the Stasi.

What's happening in the US occasionally produces unfortunate episodes, such as the one above, but by and large, the US continues to be one of the most free countries in the world in all respects.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#495

Post by a-priori »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #17
jonheller wrote: post #8

Extremely disturbing. This was well written and very interesting to read, but I do wonder how one could recall the details so specifically?

Traumatic events can leave much stronger memories, almost like they're burned in.

Yes, they're called flashbulb memories and they feel 'stronger' and more detailed than other memories. People assume that they're therefore accurate, but really, they're no more accurate than other memories.

In fact, the repeated recall can cause them to become distorted over time.

If you want to preserve a memory, write it down immediately while it is fresh. Don't trust that an old memory is accurate.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#496

Post by schiffern »

jlgreco wrote: post #255
jrockway wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that was the NYPD. Unlike the TSA searches, you can refuse to comply with those.

It is plausible that it was the TSA's "VIPR". https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/08/10/vipr-a10.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyo... (Side note, who the hell comes up with these names, and why hasn't somebody with some experience with marketing and PR talked to them?)

>marketing and PR

Oh, they have it. You're just not the TSA's customer.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#498

Post by jonahx »

mindcrime wrote: post #461
anigbrowl wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And because he turned out not to be carrying any explosives, he was let go. As above, what would you do if someone set off an explosives detector? Investigations should certainly be conducted politely and respectfully, but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.

As above, what would you do if someone set off an explosives detector? I pat them down, and search their luggage. If I don't find a bomb, I let them go. It should take 3-5 minutes, tops. What I don't do is detain them for hours, grille them over and over again, and deny them food and water during the detainment. but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conc…

> I pat them down, and search their luggage. If I don't find > a bomb, I let them go. It should take 3-5 minutes, tops.

He had checked luggage.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#499

Post by justin66 »

corresation wrote: post #193
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…

Extended explosion swabbing -- and improved and more discrete equipment -- came about after the failed attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit in 2009 (an almost tragedy that many quickly forget). In earlier iterations of spam filters, it would simply prefix the subject with [SPAM], just as explosion detectors caught lots of things and they quickly dismissed them. As it got better it started movin…

> Of course the same thing happens with explosion detectors, where initially it picked up many similar compounds, and eventually started getting much more discrete, and the probability that it actually caught something of significance went from "not really" to "might actually be something real".

Unless you've got some hard data on false positives, I don't believe it for a minute. As far as I can tell the equipment's warning value has gone from "almost certainly not explosives" to "almost certainly not explosives."

That doesn't make the equipment useless (well, it might) but it'd be nifty if the people operating it understood its pretty obvious limitations. Remember why we're even having this conversation.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#500

Post by laureny »

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…

> It is not a "lottery" when the TSA and their goons are profiling people based on race

In this story, they were profiling based on the fact that the person set off explosive detectors. Repeatedly.

The fact that he was later questioned by tactless people making veiled racial hints doesn't change the fact that he wasn't racially profiled. A Caucasian would have been detained just the same.

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