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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#761

Post by unreal37 »

jazzyb wrote: post #446
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"

They won't go to the FISA court for every suspicious guy they see at an airport. What the author describes must happen every day at most major airports.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#762

Post by angersock »

krelian wrote: post #735
belorn wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When we can longer have this discussion, either because access to the means that make it possible has been barred from us or because the risk is too great.

On the contrary, allowing us all to fill their dossiers with our words and giving the thugs the rope with which to bind us when the time comes makes more sense, and also fits better with an automated solution.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#763

Post by jlgreco »

jervisfm wrote: post #637
jonahx wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was detained without arrest, based on minimal suspicions. Yes, he should have shut the hell up and not answered questions. Minimal suspicions? A young male flying alone who refuses the scanner and sets of the explosives detector? Yes, he absolutely should have been cooperative and answered their questions after that. I always refuse the scanner, but I don't complain afterward that I have to answer questions and…

> I always refuse the scanner Would you mind to share your reasoning as to why you elect to forgo this option ? It would appear to me having a machine scan you is less intrusive than a full body search by a human agent.

I do it for a few reasons.

1) It requires agents turn away from their normal tasks and clogs up the works to some degree. I disagree with the program and opting for the pat-down is a legal action I can take that will, ever so briefly, disrupt it.

2) I do it in the hope that the agents doing the pat-down will be uncomfortable while doing so. Any legal action I can take that makes their job ever-so-slightly more unpleasant is something that I will do. If it were done en-masse and people in their personal lives ostracized them for their job, then maybe (just maaaybe) the TSA would experience higher turnover.

3) To add one more data-point to the agents' awareness that a portion of the population does not approve of them or their job.

4) So that other people waiting in the line can see me skip the full body scan and learn that they can as well.

5) So that I get to tell other people what I just told you.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#764

Post by taeric »

philwelch wrote: post #626
bjourne wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It turns out when you actually get tested for HIV, they do two tests. One has a high false positive rate but a low false negative rate. If that comes positive, they do a second test that's the other way around.

It also turns out that we don't test everyone for HIV. In what I am sure is some form of irony, we probably test more folks for carrying bombs than we do for having HIV. When the numbers show there are more folks with HIV in America than there are those carrying bombs.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#765

Post by angersock »

laureny wrote: post #494
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…

> 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 U…

As venomsnake points out, the concern is not these "unfortunate episodes"--aberrations of justice do happen from time to time, and though we ought strive for perfection it is only human that sometimes we'll goof.

No, no, what is troubling is when you look at the system as a whole and how it is evolving, and you start to ask questions:

1. Is there a best effort attempt at justice for all?

2. Is there any ongoing program to limit and reduce .gov security organs?

3. Is there anything to be done peacefully if the .gov security organ decides to attack dissenters?

4. What is the cost of non-peacefully reigning in a malfunctioning .gov security organ?

1 is far from sure, 2 is a no, and 3 is an empathic "oh shit", and 4 is just a shitshow.

The concern must not be "how bad are the outliers today"--the concern must be "are we setting up a system which will be infeasible to repair in the next five to ten years".

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#766

Post by moocowduckquack »

jrockway wrote: post #742
Someone wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the reality is, you have no right in the US to travel" http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ , article 13.1: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." "and the government can set whatever standards they want for public spaces" So, in your opinion, a government can decree that whites can't travel first class in planes, or that women must wear a burkha on the st…

No offense, but you're the one misinterpreting what I wrote with hyperbole. Show me the line of the Constitution that lets you travel by air.

Funnily enough, they didn't bother dealing with legal references to air travel before planes were invented. You will also notice that they made no references to space travel either, or computers.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#767

Post by smtddr »

jrockway wrote: post #742
Someone wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the reality is, you have no right in the US to travel" http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ , article 13.1: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." "and the government can set whatever standards they want for public spaces" So, in your opinion, a government can decree that whites can't travel first class in planes, or that women must wear a burkha on the st…

No offense, but you're the one misinterpreting what I wrote with hyperbole. Show me the line of the Constitution that lets you travel by air.

I can't believe what I'm reading from jrockway, a Google employee whose past comments seem very level-headed, in these threads. I _REALLY HOPE_ your account has been hijacked because if a person like you really holds these opinions then I must be a very, very horrible judge of character. Makes me wonder about all the people around me that I think are on the same wave-length when it comes to the whole terrorism & FUD thing. I feel betrayed somehow. If this is really you then it shows just how far & deep the terrorism-FUD has reached. Or maybe it's just me who had no idea until now, just how fearful the american public has become. Reading these comments from you is almost like imagining Stephen Colbert saying this stuff. I'd just assume his twitter account was hacked or it was April fool's.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#768

Post by lukifer »

brown9-2 wrote: post #493
ck2 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you don't think there are people who derive enjoyment from authority or torment for its own sake, you don't know the human race very well.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#769

Post by rdtsc »

esalman wrote: post #328

I find similarities between this incident and the interrogation technique of the secret police in East Berlin. I learned about this in a movie I watched a few days back- "The Lives of Others" or "Das Leben der Anderen" (2006). The secret police used to detain people and question them repeatedly for many hours while forcing them to sit on lie detectors with their palm faced down under their thigh. Under pressure, inno…

Great movie! But those were not lie detectors they were pads to collect sweat.

Those were put in jars, cataloged, and saved for later. They would be used in hunting someone down using dogs. It basically saved their scent and then years later if they want to find you and you are running way they could bring in the K-9 unit.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#770

Post by Cryode »

baddox wrote: post #713
rsingel wrote: post #237

Do not try to talk your way out of anything. And you do NOT have to and should not answer any questions from law enforcement or the TSA. Ask repeatedly: Am I being detained? Am I free to go? Cops can ask for ID (which you do have to provide, sadly) and can briefly frisk you to look for weapons -- if they have reasonable suspicion to believe a crime has or is about to happen. One other thing of note and what makes thi…

> Do not try to talk your way out of anything. And you do NOT have to and should not answer any questions from law enforcement or the TSA. Ask repeatedly: Am I being detained? Am I free to go? Unfortunately, this is a pipe dream. At that point, they can do whatever they want to you . Legally? Probably not. But they can still do it, because there is simply nothing you can do except try to fight or escape physically (w…

And when do we finally decide that those principles are worth fighting for? When do we decide that "absolutely nothing you can do" is unacceptable?
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