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Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

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Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#41

Post by mindslight »

tokenadult wrote: post #13

This is gripping reading for me, because "Mr. Mukerjee" is someone I know by first name, indeed nickname, even though I have never met him. (He was my son's roommate for most of the last year, and was the crucial connection for my son getting his job in New York City.) I appreciate seeing someone else's perspective on the incident that has appalled all my Facebook friends who have seen Mr. Mukerjee's own account http…

> Asserting my rights is not something the system makes easy to do, EVEN FOR A LAWYER, once the situational triggers of law-enforcement occur

Since it's apparently impossible to prevent the abuse of our rights, it seems the simplest remedy is easy-to-claim compensation after the fact, right out of the department's budget. Unjustly detained for 3 hours? That's a payment of say $500 (professional hourly rate plus extra for emotional distress). Denied your usual food/water/bathroom/medication? Physical distress add-on. Laptop stolen by goons at the border? Replacement value of laptop plus several hundred dollars for setting it up. Court acquittal verdict? Reimbursement of all lawyer fees + payment for your time spent in court and/or jail.

Until these agencies are no longer able to externalize their damages onto the public, they have little reason to lower their false positive rate.

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#42

Post by nandemo »

Zaheer wrote: post #6

"Mr. Mukerjee appears to have been flagged by the Behaviour Detection Officer (BDO) while in line for what appeared to be unusual behaviours. [...] it is impossible to assess what caught the Officer’s attention, but the TSA source indicates Mr. Mukerjee was already on someone’s radar before he chose to opt-out." What 'unusual behaviors' led to him getting flagged? While maybe Mr. Mukerjee had suspicious behavior I'm…

There's some info about behaviour detection here:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_profiling

It's been used by Israeli airport security and, if done properly, isn't based on ethnics or appearance. I don't think it's a bad thing as long as it's just used for screening.

However, the original account indicates that the questioning went far beyond "non-intrusive questions".

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#43

Post by sanderjd »

slg wrote: post #10

I know it won't happen, but I wish this blog post would go as viral as the original. Not that I accept this post as the complete truth, but because people deserve to hear two sides of the story. Often times all people will hear is the accusations of something like this and accept it as fact and the eventual acquittals (or explanations) never get as much publicity. Like Mark Twain said "A lie can travel half way aroun…

I agree, but perhaps for different reasons. The authoritarian-apologist doublespeak it's full of is even more damning than the original story.

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#44

Post by ars »

Yver wrote: post #3

> Mr. Mukerjee appears to have been flagged by the Behaviour Detection Officer (BDO) while in line for what appeared to be unusual behaviours. Well I'm sold. Serves you right for looking suspicious in front of the Looking-suspicious Detection Officer!

Every time people complain about the TSA and are asked how they should do security people say they should evaluate the person - look for signs of nervousness and things like that.

And now they do and you complain anyway. So - what's your preferred method of screening people?

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#45

Post by ars »

kyllo wrote: post #40
ISL wrote: post #33

If you cannot leave, are you not detained? "This is absolutely correct, at this time he was in limbo, he was not being detained, but he could not leave. A person cannot simply leave the security area of any airport once they are on the airside but have not satisfactorily completed screening. Once a person has passed through security, but is not cleared to fly and then chooses to leave, such as Mr. Mukerjee, s/he must…

This is complete bullshit. "Limbo" is not a thing. Either you are being detained, or you are free to leave.

No, there's a third option: You will be free to leave after some defined event occurs.

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#47

Post by unreal37 »

tokenadult wrote: post #13

This is gripping reading for me, because "Mr. Mukerjee" is someone I know by first name, indeed nickname, even though I have never met him. (He was my son's roommate for most of the last year, and was the crucial connection for my son getting his job in New York City.) I appreciate seeing someone else's perspective on the incident that has appalled all my Facebook friends who have seen Mr. Mukerjee's own account http…

I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism, before the TSA, before the NSA snooped on our phone calls or Hacker News posts, before all of this... I imagine there was a guy who wanted to do something, got stopped by police for a couple of questions, and got agitated by the hassle and it turned into something bigger.

Now 100 years ago, that guy couldn't write a blog post about it and get worldwide attention. But then again, it's just always been true that when dealing with the authorities, if you rub someone the wrong way, if you act belligerent, if you want to run the other way as soon as the police ask you a question, if you test positive multiple times for explosives... well, it's always been true that you're going to have a bad day that day.

Mr Mukerjee had a bad day. But then again, he tested positive for explosives multiple times!

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#48

Post by res0nat0r »

dthunt wrote: post #21
Zaheer wrote: post #6

"Mr. Mukerjee appears to have been flagged by the Behaviour Detection Officer (BDO) while in line for what appeared to be unusual behaviours. [...] it is impossible to assess what caught the Officer’s attention, but the TSA source indicates Mr. Mukerjee was already on someone’s radar before he chose to opt-out." What 'unusual behaviors' led to him getting flagged? While maybe Mr. Mukerjee had suspicious behavior I'm…

I call foul on behavioral detection. I sincerely doubt there's a way to differentiate between someone who is ill and someone who is pale and has the jitters because they're about to do something bad. I moreover call foul on the notion that there are enough of the latter set to build an effective training program to create effective BDOs. What's actually happening here is probably that BDOs are being used to justify r…

Israel has been doing behavior profiling beginning at the moment you get out of your car at the airport, and run one of the most secure airports in the world. Even though the word profiling has a bad connotation in the USA, it works.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#49

Post by wpietri »

codezero wrote: post #38

"I know many people want to believe in TSA and national security conspiracies." No, I think most people just believe the TSA to be completely inept and operated without much oversight or coherence. Complaining about (repeated) bad treatment doesn't make it a conspiracy.

Absolutely. Conspiracy is unnecessary. I hear nothing about the TSA that can't be explained through bureaucracy, politics, and the Stanford prison experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

Re: Did The TSA and JetBlue Deny Travel For Looking Muslim During Ramadan? No

#50

Post by InclinedPlane »

unreal37 wrote: post #47
tokenadult wrote: post #13

This is gripping reading for me, because "Mr. Mukerjee" is someone I know by first name, indeed nickname, even though I have never met him. (He was my son's roommate for most of the last year, and was the crucial connection for my son getting his job in New York City.) I appreciate seeing someone else's perspective on the incident that has appalled all my Facebook friends who have seen Mr. Mukerjee's own account http…

I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism, before the TSA, before the NSA snooped on our phone calls or Hacker News posts, before all of this... I imagine there was a guy who wanted to do something, got stopped by police for a couple of questions, and got agitated by the hassle and it turned into something bigger. Now 100 years ago, that guy couldn't write a blog post about it and get worldwide attention. But then ag…

That's an extraordinarily shitty excuse.
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