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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#781

Post by kylebrown »

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?

They appear more vigilant to their managers and overseers, for one. If every single traveler is simply ushered through, it could look like they're being lazy (not necessarily efficient). And there is a clear bureaucratic incentive to meeting a quota of passengers who will get extra scrutiny. Without marking at least some minimal number of passengers for increased scrutiny, the TSA interrogators, FBI stand-by, etc would have nothing to do and no opportunity to gain real-world "practice" applying their job training and skills.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#782

Post by yafujifide »

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?

Countries I'm researching: Panama, Chile, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam. All have ups and downs. Read the works of Doug Casey, Andrew Henderson (Nomad Capitalist), and Simon Black (sovereignman.com) for information on how to get offshore corporations and bank accounts so you can do business overseas, and second passports so you can optionally be unaffiliated with the US and don't have to worry about having your passport revoked by the US.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#783

Post by meapix »

u2328 wrote: post #658
meapix wrote: post #505

How did you remember all that stuff you wrote. The they said and you said. Either you recorded, you had a pen and paper. Or this article is full of lies.

It's obviously meant as an approximation. Look, you can believe it or not, but that's just your opinion. Everybody gets to make up their mind for themselves.

approximation? dude, that's some serious business.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#784

Post by prawn »

mikegagnon wrote: post #389
msrpotus wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the scariest parts of this is that it seems like surveillance (if not censorship) is much more targeted. If you aren't the NSA's focus or on a TSA watch list, you might not know anything is going on. But if you are unlucky enough to trigger something, you might be visited with unimaginable torment like @chimeracoder was.

Exactly. The biggest threat from surveillance and censorship isn't the imposition on average citizens. Rather, the risk is that surveillance, censorship, intimidation, selective law enforcement, and so on are targeted at specific political opponents --- such as Aaron Swartz, Barrett Brown, Glenn Greenwald, Marin Luther King Jr. and so on. Such authoritarian harassment presents a straightforward threat to democracy be…

Too many people view major, rival parties as opponents. Are they waiting for Democrats to imprison Republicans and vice versa? Those parties are brothers. The opposition includes the names you listed and because they don't have that glossy marketed façade and brand, they're viewed by the majority as crazed or rogues.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#785

Post by rdtsc »

pearjuice wrote: post #162

So what does the Ramadan have to do with this? It could have happened any month.

It has. They suspected he was somehow Muslim because ... wait for it .. he has brown skin. They suspected he was a terrorist ... because they wrongly suspected he was Muslim ... because they think most terrorist are Muslim. They suspected he was going to blow up a plane as a "celebration" or somehow connected with Ramadan.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#786

Post by rdtsc »

ctdonath wrote: post #291
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…

Israel does a marvelous job of it by a brief interview of every passenger. It's a matter of how each person reacts to initial eye contact; with proper interrogation training, ill intent is obvious. The TSA technique does everything but what works. Gross wholesale violations of multiple Constitutional rights doesn't work.

> ill intent is obvious

I always here about it. Is it true? Couldn't terrorists just practice being interrogated knowing this.

Double agents when working for secret agencies regularly get training in how to pass polygraph testing (i.e. interrogation) so it is very doable..

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#787

Post by ryderm »

Hey chimeracoder,

I went to school with you and saw you at some ADI events and hackathons from time to time. Even if I dont know you more than in passing, hearing something like this about somebody I know hits much closer to home than hearing it on the news. There isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said here, and you probably won't read through these hundreds and hundreds of comments, but if you read this, I just want to say that I'm so sorry. This is disgusting, and I hope that you never have to deal with a clear violation of rights like this again.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#788

Post by meapix »

yourapostasy wrote: post #676
makerops wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw some random headline today, that said something along the lines of "The US is in that awkward position, where we can't fix things within the system anymore, and yet aren't far enough along to start hanging the bastards"

That paraphrases Claire Wolfe's quote: "America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." – 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution (1996) She is a well-known libertarian writer, though she seems to have unplugged in the past few years. She has a Wikipedia article for more details. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Wolfe

Thank you. I read few lines on that book, I'll buy it.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#789

Post by smokeyj »

foobarbazqux wrote: post #724
nohuck13 wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about rule law is that it's not about critical mass. It's the edge cases that are important. It's easy to have justice the majority of the time. If the state can arbitrarily subvert the rules just because they think it's really really important, that's not rule of law. I know you're not arguing that it is, you're more talking about public opinion. I think you're probably right. But I wish that weren't the r…

Well, perhaps we can see things on a line from perfect rule of law to perfect authoritarianism, with the understanding that no state is ever completely at one end or the other. I think we're still less than half way to authoritarianism.

All governments demand obedience. That's why they have a monopoly on violence. Any entity which wields a monopoly on violence for the purpose of controlling the actions of others is authoritarian in nature.

I can't imagine what you mean by "perfect rule of law", but I do know it isn't the antithesis of authoritarianism. The opposite of strict obedience to authority is no obedience to authority -- meaning no hierarchy -- or anarchy.

My point is, we're judging how authoritarian a dictator is based on how benevolent they are. While a dictator is capable of ruling.. "equitably", the fact is you still have a dictator who could change his mind tomorrow. So it's not that we're mad about having a dictator, we're just mad this dictator is being a bigger ass hole than yesterday.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#790

Post by beedogs »

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…

Replying here because I can't reply to SmokyBorbon directly: your account appears to be hellbanned.
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