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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

#51

Post by nikcub »

This story is told from a perspective that rather than being a right, flying and travel is a privilege awarded to those who satisfy the TSA

Who cares what the Behavior Detection Officer thought, he was wrong

Who cares what the screening machine thought he was carrying, it was wrong

Who cares what behavior the TSA officers and supervisors 'noted', they were also wrong

If a person cannot simply get up and leave the TSA area if they haven't been arrested, then the law is wrong.

If the TSA can't do their job without threatening the rights and freedom of movement of a large part of the population then they shouldn't be doing it at all. All this inconvenience for an organization that in its 12 years has yet to even catch a real terrorist.

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

#52

Post by unreal37 »

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.

If you're in an airport security section, you're not free to go wherever you like. He wanted to go to the back of the line. They said he could leave the airport. But his bag still needed to be searched. He was free to leave, but he didn't want to leave. He wanted to go catch his flight.

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

#53

Post by InclinedPlane »

neotek wrote: post #25
ck2 wrote: post #4

Sorry I am still taking his side. This writeup is not only just nit-picking his story - it's using the TSA as witness against itself. I am most certainly not going to the take TSA's word for what happened. That would be like taking the NSA's word to congress for example. What do you think happens by lesser agencies on non-sworn testimony when they see what their big-brother can get away with? And the "behavior detect…

>Prove to me they didn't search his home without serving him a warrant and then we'll talk about the accuracy of this story. Can't really prove a negative - what would the evidence look like? The reasonable question to ask is "prove to me they did search his home without serving him a warrant."

Did you read the original article? If so re-read the very end of it to acquaint yourself with the evidence that his apartment was searched without a warrant.

Edit: P.S. note that I said evidence not proof.

P.P.S. I find it somewhat weird how people are so eager to jump to the defense of law enforcement with shouts of "that evidence proves nothing!" while at the same time supporting the idea that a now known to be false positive explosives test is more than sufficient to justify someone's ill-treatment for hours at the hands of law enforcement.

I'm not saying that Mukerjee's story of missing and tampered items in his apartment is sufficient to convict any law enforcement agent of wrong doing but maybe it's enough to justify an investigation (which could easily be rolled into the investigation into LEO behavior around the entire incident).

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

#54

Post by sker »

sanderjd wrote: post #43
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.

Agreed. I'm upvoting because everyone is calling out the author on his bias and BS.

Funny how if a stranger on the street infringes on your rights, you're allowed to get agitated and aggressive, but if the government does it, you're supposed to be submissive and cooperative.

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

#55

Post by icelancer »

mindslight wrote: post #41
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…

>Until these agencies stop externalizing their damages to the public, they have no reason to lower their false positive rate.

Completely agree. This seems like a completely reasonable course of action (compensation for lost time) but instead they just aggressively search and detain people and the only punishment they get is if someone gets "uppity" and asserts their rights, at which point some low-level nobody will be suspended with pay. Wonderful.

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

#56

Post by DannyBee »

sseveran wrote: post #28
DannyBee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've got a better way to distinguish trace amounts of explosive chemicals, i'm sure they'd love to pay you millions for machines to test it :) http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/tcrp_rpt_86v6.pdf looks relavent here. Completely skimming it, the test sites had false positive rates of 0.6 - 1.8%. I'd classify that as "not uncommon".

And what is the false negative rate?

Varied depending on the type of explosive and contamination. I don't have it open anymore, but it's in there

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

#58

Post by cpayne »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #53
neotek wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Prove to me they didn't search his home without serving him a warrant and then we'll talk about the accuracy of this story. Can't really prove a negative - what would the evidence look like? The reasonable question to ask is "prove to me they did search his home without serving him a warrant."

Did you read the original article? If so re-read the very end of it to acquaint yourself with the evidence that his apartment was searched without a warrant. Edit: P.S. note that I said evidence not proof. P.P.S. I find it somewhat weird how people are so eager to jump to the defense of law enforcement with shouts of "that evidence proves nothing!" while at the same time supporting the idea that a now known to be fal…

I read the article. "Something missing" is not evidence of a search without a warrant.

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

#59

Post by simonster »

ars wrote: post #45
kyllo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does this "defined event" actually have any legal status? How long can it take until the defined event occurs? It's possible that this is an intentionally murky area of the law (i.e., a judge can decide that preventing a person from leaving for an hour in case X is okay but 1 minute in case Y is not). Even so, it seems like if there's a person in front of you with legal authority to let you out of a secured area and you are asking them to let you out, then either they have to let you out or you are being detained.
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