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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#361

Post by rayiner »

greedo wrote: post #232
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…

Well, considering that red teams are routinely able to smuggle weapons and simulated explosive devices on aircraft fairly routinely, the current procedures are shit. Security theater at its finest. And you can't detain someone without reasonable suspicion which gives you the authority to investigate whether a crime has occurred. This detention can't be indefinite, and can't even come close to lasting 24 hours. Once y…

Setting off an explosives detector isn't reasonable suspicion?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#362

Post by ars »

ctdonath wrote: post #347
ars wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger question is why would they? To waste their own time?

No, because sometimes they need a plausible excuse to act on other suspicions. When working security, agents can sense something is wrong but not have it articulable enough in legal terms to act on. When the suspect says "why are you searching me?" it's a lot easier on everyone to say "the detector beeped, you heard it" than "I've got an uneasy feeling about you". (Not legal, not warranted, just easier.)

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.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#365

Post by michael_h »

csallen wrote: post #349
greedo wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, considering that red teams are routinely able to smuggle weapons and simulated explosive devices on aircraft fairly routinely, the current procedures are shit. Security theater at its finest. And you can't detain someone without reasonable suspicion which gives you the authority to investigate whether a crime has occurred. This detention can't be indefinite, and can't even come close to lasting 24 hours. Once y…

Can you cite sources for either of the two claims you made here? I'm genuinely curious.

"Most fake bombs missed by screeners" http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-10-17-airpor...

It's usatoday, I know, but the reporting seems straightforward.

Missed loaded guns: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-scre... http://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-lets-loaded-guns-past-security-...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#366

Post by danielharan »

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…

FTFA: "You’ll have to understand, when a person of your… background walks into here, travelling alone, and sets off our alarms, people start to get a bit nervous."

So it does sound like being brown-skinned had something to do with the ordeal.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#367

Post by jonah »

tty wrote: post #234
sukuriant wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the thread of conversation where false positives happen often and are explained away with lesser screening?

> where false positives happen often and are explained away with lesser screening Can you offer an alternative scenario of how you would have reacted if you were one of the officers?

Yes.

Thoroughly re x-ray and hand inspect the contents of his bags. Thorough pat-down of his person. Interviewing him as they went. Upon finding nothing, send him on his way. 30 minutes tops.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#368

Post by corresation »

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #300
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 think they get false positives all the time. I am a white male that routinely opts-out of the scanners. I've had many many pat downs. One time my bag registered a false positive and I was also subjected to the "enhanced pat-down". My experience was totally different from OP's. The TSA officers went out of their way to reassure me that false positives are not uncommon, that there was nothing to be afraid of, etc etc…

The machines are not binary. They trigger specific materials. Some are going to be much more common than others, and like every process where they have false positives they react differently based upon their incidence rate.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#370

Post by twoodfin »

waqf wrote: post #240
dragonwriter wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only way the people take this country back is to start a third party. If a party was started, it wouldn't be a third party, it'd be something like a fortieth party, excluding strictly regional parties. The reason additional parties aren't competitive is structural in the electoral systems used in federal and state elections, and adding more parties isn't going to change that.

Exactly. So you have to go back yet another step and look at who has power to change the electoral system. You might think the only answer is a constitutional amendment, which requires a supermajority of Congress, but in fact there's a backdoor: if you have the cooperation of a majority of state governments then you can certify any electors you like. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstat...…

I think that Wikipedia article is far too sanguine about the likelihood that NPVIC would pass Constitutional muster.

First, it's not likely that the wording of Article II truly grants state legislatures unlimited discretion in the selection of electors. A state law that required electors to be men or Methodists would surely be unconstitutional today. And as a result, there's almost certainly an equal protection argument to be made against NPVIC: Sure, each individual voter is participating equally in a larger process to choose the President, but that's not the process prescribed by the Constitution. The process demanded by the Constitution is a state-by-state selection of electors, and if a state legislature wants to have an election, it better be an election in which every voter of that state is participating equally. A thought experiment: Could the state of California pass a law that counted every vote for the electoral slate of the Democratic party twice? Surely not. So how can they pass a law which discounts the vote of every voter except those that voted for the nationwide popular winner?

Second, if this agreement doesn't trigger the Congressional approval requirement of the Compact clause of Article I, I can't imagine what would.

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