Don't Fly During Ramadan • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#681

Post by blahedo » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:51 PM UTC

cenhyperion wrote: post #439

jrockway wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> had blocked the interstate

There's a permanent roadblock across northbound lanes of interstates in New Mexico (and, I think, Arizona), and across many of the smaller roads in southern Arizona (and, presumably, New Mexico).

> if I'm a US citizen. Then I was free to go.

It also helps to be white, fwiw.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#682

Post by drivebyacct2 » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:53 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #660

joering2 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.…

The URL does not support any of the assertions in your comment.

Pretty sure it was merely an example of how mass surveillance is easier than individual surveillance. In fact, being a super-set, if they're good enough at it, it's nearly guaranteed to be more effective.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#683

Post by mpyne » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:54 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #552

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your line of thought is that you trust that machine to be somewhat reliable // And your problem is you assume the machine isn't reliable. So then if it's set off, you just say "ah well, it's probably a false reading". At that point you just obviated the purpose of the machine. Yes we don't learn whether it was the permethrin (? can't certainly recall the name) but the people who did the sweep of his apartment confi…

Our friend Bayes and his theorem can help us here. Suppose you have an HIV test which is 95% accurate in detecting if you are HIV positive or not. The HIV rate in the US is about 0.3%. If you subject a random American to this HIV test and the test result is positive, what is the probability that that person has HIV? I wont do the math, but the right answer is about 2%. Since the prevalence of HIV is so low it doesn't…

What that means is that people who trip these explosives detectors should be politely treated while it is determined whether or not they actually have explosives, since they are likely not really carrying explosives.

But this doesn't mean that scanning for explosives is a bad idea, or that people should just be merrily flagged to go on their way, otherwise what is the point of doing any screening?

After all, the vast, vast majority of passengers are just trying to go from point A to point B so each and every single scanning method will generate thousands of false positives every year.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#684

Post by amirmc » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:55 PM UTC

darklajid wrote: post #518

amirmc wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be more precise. > "... because he repeatedly set off the bomb detector." No, the initial pat-down set off a chemical detector. He set it off once before being pulled into the private room. From that point on, it doesn't matter how many more times it was set off. It shouldn't increase the level of suspicion each time. Would they have let him go if one time it suddenly stopped giving a positive signal? I dou…

I .. don't want to offend and all (Amir? Sounds Israeli to me, but I don't claim to be an expert). But this 'It works so well at Ben Gurion' statements get old, really quick. It doesn't. Traveling to TLV is fine and no problem. Getting out just sucks. I feel treated like shit every single time, it's just borderline acceptable half the time (the other half it's really, really annoying, causing delays and trouble, stup…

I wasn't clear enough in my comment. My point was that the entire process is different, so to single out the piece regarding questioning and suggesting that it works in this other context is not a fair comparison (regardless of how good/bad the Ben Gurion approach is overall).

Also, I'm not in the slightest bit offended. I'm not Israeli and although my name is Persian in origin (I think?), I'm British. When I travel to the US, I usually get sent to 'secondary', so I've hsd a little experience with this type of questioning. It's just tedious.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#685

Post by rfnslyr » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:56 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #94

eshvk wrote: post #6

This makes me so angry. This was one of the reasons I got out of consulting. Every fucking time, I would get an enhanced check. Surprisingly enough, it is nothing new. This is something you face if you are a minority. Hell, I remember a friend from back in Africa whose dad got blacklisted in the nineties because he had a beard. Brown catholic guy with a beard got blacklisted. The only difference now is that at least…

If I were a consultant today, I'd look into buying an RV. No more dirty hotel rooms or questionable restaurant food. And a much lower chance of a TSA encounter.

"Yeah can you give me about two weeks? I'm going to take my RV."

-1 client. How bout no.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#686

Post by foobarbazqux » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:56 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #677

jwr wrote: post #177

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

If the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state, at what point will US become a authoritarian police state? When they have kill lists without any trial, jury or judge? When they keep prisoners in jail indefinitely without a trial? When they torture prisoners? When state officials lie to the public? When state officials lie to public representatives? When the secret police interfere with lawyers communic…

All of those criteria, plus I think an extra criterion that they have to happen to so many people that it reaches some kind of tipping point where there's a mass consensus that things are authoritarian. Just to be clear, I'm not excusing the abuses you've listed.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#687

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:56 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #671

jrockway wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why everyone is so outraged that I don't think the US is a police state. "Airport security is horrible", so I say to take the train. Have you ever taken the train? The security is not that bad. But instead, I get downvoted to -4 and people accuse me of having a stroke. All I can say is that the hysteria is at an amazingly-high level. I am not sure why I even read TSA-related articles anymore.

I don't think the U.S. is a police state. But I do think that the answer to someone being mistreated at airport security shouldn't be to "take the train". It is true that the train will probably not have as onerous security requirements, but then that isn't really the point either. If we put restrictions on a mode of transportation those restrictions should in general be in keeping with some legit governmental goal.…

> But I do think that the answer to someone being mistreated at airport security shouldn't be to "take the train".

It should be at least part of the answer; a big part of the idea of the TSA (and one of the reasons the airlines got on board to help lobby for it) was that it moved the responsibility and potential liability from the airlines to the government (who, incidentally, has a whole host of immunities to deal with the "liability" aspect.)

Voting with your dollars away from industries whose services require being subjected to the TSA sends a message -- not directly to the government, but to the industries involved.

That's not to say its the only response, but voting-with-dollars ought to be part of the response.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#688

Post by samsolomon » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:58 PM UTC

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…

> ...the USA seemed like heaven: transparency, procedures, basic rights, free speech, accountable officials.

That last part is interesting, and I think it may play a bigger role here. It is difficult to hold people accountable for actions that are hidden, and not well understood. James Clapper lied to Congress in his testimony, and has had little more reprimand than us bitching about it on the internet.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#689

Post by emiliobumachar » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:58 PM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #281

spindritf wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gets offended by simple questions about religion, etc. OK, good for him. The more you push back, the more self righteous and arrogant you are during security checks I agree with the other parts of your post. Here though I think he wasn't assertive enough. No need to get snarky but a request for a cup of water is not something you just let the cop/whoever shake off with a wink. >> "You also said a lot of things, kid…

He also didn't do himself a favor by saying "We’ll be visiting some temples." Is that the best lie he could come up with? >> "You also said a lot of things, kid," he said with a wink. "Well DUH! YOU GUYS were the ones that made me come here! I'm a quiet guy, minding my own business. I don't want to say anything to anyone"

Once you lie to the government, it has something real to charge you with, for a change.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#690

Post by gsnedders » Thu, Aug 22, 2013, 11:59 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #675

gsnedders wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The British at what airport? There is no singular organization who carries out the security, and different airports subcontract the work to different companies. In general, my experience in the UK has been comparable to the rest of Europe.

4 hour immigration lines at Heathrow are normal for the rest of Europe? Schiphol is about 30 minutes. I am never flying in to Heathrow again, if I can avoid it.

4 hour? Wow. Longest I've ever had at Heathrow Terminal 5 was 15 minutes or so (it's been a decade or more since I last went to any other Heathrow terminal) — and I fly through both there and Amsterdam a fair bit. Typically quicker than Amsterdam, in my experience.