Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Fly During Ramadan

varnull.adityamukerjee.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 986 posts

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#531

Post by tobiasu »

javajosh wrote: post #219
ck2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internment is a revisionist word to make it sound less harsh. They were concentration camps.

"Concentration camp" has been used to describe Nazi death camps for a long time, and has come to be more-or-less synonymous. None of the Japanese camps systematically killed people, as far as I know. Manzanar was an atrocity, but it was not in the same league as Dachau. To call them both by same name is misleading. That said, 'internment camp' sounds far too weak. From what I've read, every piece of property they cou…

Concentration camp (KZ) sounds about right. The term for places like Dachau and Auschwitz is Vernichtungslager (extermination camp). A concentration camp is not set up for industrial mass-murder of its prisoners.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#532

Post by jonahx »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #504
jonahx wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And Rumsfeld said "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?" and asked for detainees to be forced to stand up in "stress positions" for more than the previously specified (and already inhuman and torturous) 4 hours... N.B.: I'm not pulling out a strawman, or claiming you agree in any way with what Rumsfeld did. I'm just pointing out that your logic could, and actually does, lead to such in…

To be clear, they absolutely should have given him water. I just don't find some of the comparisons and adjectives that people are using to describe their failure to do so warranted. The only part of what happened to him that seems truly unjust and worthy of outrage is the purely speculative accusation that they broke into his apartment.

There is very little consideration in this thread for the shittiness and stressfulness of the TSA jobs, especially when faced with passengers who refuse the scan and set off the bomb detectors. If you want to argue that TSA should employ highly skilled workers and pay them better, I'm all for that. But given that's not the case, workers being incompetent and rude to people who set off bomb detectors, and holding them too long, doesn't seem like human rights violation to me. It's just a crappy and annoying and stressful situation.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#533

Post by ars »

ctdonath wrote: post #434
ars wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You still didn't answer the question of why.

Why make this person crack.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#534

Post by mchanson »

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've set off the machine in question before. I am a american male mid thirties swedish/english/german (and look it). The person assumed the machine was wrong and spent a bit of extra time with me and sent me on my way. This was in 2010.

I do not recall if it was during Ramadan.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#535

Post by darklajid »

jrockway wrote: post #487
darklajid wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. > How do you do it? The way we did it before the one-off event that made airports unbearable and sane people behaving like headless chicken.

Things have changed since 9/11. Explosives have gotten smaller and more stable. And nobody checks bags anymore, because it's cheaper to carry them on. So now you have to do the same screening you did before, but in "real time" and looking for something smaller. 9/11 did cause a lot of hysteria, but the risk profile has also changed since then. (Also, if you get TSA Pre, the security standards become essentially what…

First of all: We can agree to disagree and stop this, I guess? At least for me, this will be my last post here.

You're a name that comes up a lot here, and frankly I don't want to start a "That's insane" discussion with one of the top HN contributors. I've got no idea what's going on in you to defend that process, I'm certainly surprised to see your "It is necessary" comments in this thread, but .. I guess I leave the discussion again after this post.

I really, really don't want to offend you, but I guess this might be taken personal anyway: I'm confused, surprised and - to some degree - disgusted that this pro-terrorism scheme could be supported here, by a hacker.

Regarding your arguments: I'm no expert on explosives (hello NSA?) and wouldn't know about that. Actually I don't believe that claim (think citation needed), I haven't heard about major breakthroughs in explosive materials. You might be right.

I'm always checking in my bag. It's more comfortable for me and allows me to put stuff in that thing that I cannot take on board (yeah, but it can be on board below deck of course..).

Real time is crap. Before and after you needed to pass security. It was always 'one check, at one point, every passenger'. Now they just go nuts and try mentally insane procedures on top.

I doubt that 9/11 changed the risk profile. I think some people, a group of interested parties, changed the risk profile instead.

TSA Pre: Wouldn't know about that. I'm not from the US, never been there, will never travel there. The whole country has so much to offer (culture, country, vast and large) and it was my teenage geek dream to move there one day. Today? I laugh about that. The requirements to enter the country are just not worth it and there's plenty of stuff elsewhere that I need to see.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#536

Post by mjewkes »

clebio wrote: post #464
yafujifide wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'm making plans to leave the US. Since few people will listen to me when I explain how bad things are, I do not believe effecting change is a reasonable course of action. Instead, I will try to internationalize my business and my life so that I can interact with pleasant people and escape tyranny.

What other countries are better options?

Canada is marginally better, particularly Quebec. Otherwise: Norway, maybe Iceland, maybe Denmark.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#537

Post by kintamanimatt »

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…

> It looks here like they checked his apartment to corroborate his statements.

Checked? That's being charitable. You mean it's okay to break into someone's apartment without a warrant and steal shit? What happened to the rule of law? Having said that, we don't know who broke in or what happened.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#538

Post by Cthulhu_ »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #382
pessimizer wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it was the TSA - but Amtrak has dictated exactly how they must behave in stations, and you rarely hear a peep from them. ---- Rail's handling of TSA should be a model http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/06/opinion/don-phillips-tsa-vipr-...

Rail has the advantage that they can just shut down commerce across the country for a few days if the government does anything they don't like, and they have the balls to do it.

Do they? Seeing as how tech companies aren't allowed to divulge they're the NSA's bitches and have to hand over all their data, I don't think that public services like trains (or electricity, etc) are allowed to shut down their services if they disagree with the government's imposed security measures. Pretty sure there's sections in the anti-terrorism laws that say companies need to comply when the government brings in counter-terrorism measures like searches and the like.

Besides, they'd probably comply willingly. The airline companies and airports do; hijackings just ain't good for business.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#539

Post by ajb »

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…

Was that before or after Petraeus's mail was hacked by the FBI? Maybe he was in the market for encrypted email...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#540

Post by ubernostrum »

steve-howard wrote: post #468
ubernostrum wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a legal perspective there's actually a valid point here: they're not conducting universal searches for evidence to use in criminal prosecution, which is mostly the sense that the 4th Amendment is interpreted as applying to. Rather, they're simply enforcing a mandate not to let certain types of objects enter a specified area. Effectively they're arguing that it's no different from, say, a courthouse which has a "…

> In April 2012, during a joint operation with the Houston police and the local transit police, people boarding and leaving city buses complained that T.S.A. officers were stopping them and searching their bags. (Local law enforcement denied that the bags were searched.) > The operation resulted in several arrests by the local transit police, mostly for passengers with warrants for prostitution and minor drug possess…

So someone should sue over that operation.

Meanwhile, universal searching (at first by metal detector, later by other means) of passengers at airports has long been held constitutional by courts; if they step outside the boundaries of what's permitted, you can haul them into court over it.

Post reply on HN