Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Don't Fly During Ramadan

varnull.adityamukerjee.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

881–890 of 986 posts

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#881

Post by girvo »

I've wanted to move from Australia to Silicon Valley for a few years now. I mean, I'm an entreprenurial software engineer: it's where I'm _supposed_ to be, right?

But, over the past few years, I've learnt more and more about the US of A. And I don't like how things are done over there.

Sure, Australia isn't perfect (if I hear anyone say "Boat People" once more, I'm going to punch them right in the face), and I'm a young, single upper middle class White male: I shouldn't have any issues, right?

But that's not the point. The fact that the US and even the UK have ended up this paranoid...

I no longer want to move. Hell, I want to move back to New Zealand to be honest, if it gets any worse here in Aus.

And that's a loss for me personally, and for your country as well.

:(

----

EDIT

Please convince me that it's not all that bad... that rights aren't being eroded, and that I wouldn't have to turn a blind eye to prejudiced treatment against my neighbours. Convince me that I should still come...

I really want to, but I'm honestly frightened of what might happen to me if I do.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#882

Post by girvo »

belorn wrote: post #677
jwr wrote: post #177

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. And she is right — the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state. But it i…

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…

It's like porn. You know it when you see it.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#883

Post by gizzlon »

jeremycole wrote: post #459
icambron wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The craziness of "he set of the detection machine but it's clearly a false-positive, but now that he's on our radar let's grill him in case he just happens to be a terrorist" should be obvious to anyone.

Yes, IMHO it comes from this: What would be on the news if he was a terrorist and they find out that he actually set off the explosives detector before doing his deed? So basically their response is more about fear of embarrassment (to an extreme) than actual effectiveness.

"What would be on the news if he was a terrorist and they find out that he actually set off the explosives detector before doing his deed?"

Yeah, Schneier calls it Cover Your Ass Security. It's not super effective ..

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#884

Post by pmorici »

enneff wrote: post #737
pmorici wrote: post #386

"Ironically, when I went to the other terminal, I was able to get through security (by walking through the millimeter wave machines) with no problem." Why go through all of that only to give into the body scanners!

Presumably at that point he just wanted to get on with his trip.

Why opt out in the first place then? Isn't that like boycotting the bus up until the point where you realize you have to get to work and then deciding it is too much trouble to walk so you take it anyways?

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#886

Post by honzzz »

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?

There are many people who enjoy controlling or even abusing others and positions that give people power over others obviously attract those people - psychopathy prevalence in those groups is statistically higher than in general population. This is not as rare as you might think - if you work in a home for elderly with Alzheimer's disease (who are especially defenseless) I can almost guarantee that apart from caring hard-working employees you also encounter a psychopath (although nowadays this problem is relatively well known and the screening of potential employees is much better than it used to be).

Also I can imagine a number of rationalizations and psychological mechanisms that can explain how working for this kind of organization affects people - the Stanford Prison Experiment etc.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#889

Post by anuraj »

chimeracoder wrote: post #442
blhack wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to say your name, for obvious reasons, but would you mind giving an example of an Indian name, and how all of that information is encoded in it? That's REALLY fascinating to me.

Any name that ends in "-jee" or "-ji" is a British variant on an Indian Bengali name[0]. Almost anybody who has it (Mukerjee, Banerjee, Chatterjee) is originally from West Bengal, a state in India that borders Bangladesh. Beyond that's, it's a Hindu name. Almost all Hindu names are specific to a particular caste (the origins of the caste system are simply a precise codification of socioeconomic status, so it's simila…

Only that caste names not just socioeconomic markers, but plain racial bigotry as well!! Regret what happened to you, but please don't defend caste which is almost mean the same racism in India.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#890

Post by lucozade »

catnaroek wrote: post #804
83457 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is... Ramadan is a holy month for Muslims. Many terrorists are muslim. Terrorism increases around Ramadan. He is brown, many Muslims are brown, TSA on high alert for Muslims. He is setting off an explosives residue detector. Many terrorists use explosives.

That is some really weird logic. If I were a terrorist planning an attack, I would carry it out as soon as all the preparations are ready, not wait until some specific date or month or whatever.

You may be underestimating the logical accuity of airport security.

Some years ago I used to regularly fly from London to Boston, see clients, take the Delta shuttle down to New York see more clients, then fly back from there to London.

Every single time I would be chosen for the "random" extra search going through security for the shuttle. And due to the sensitivity of the Boston-New York flight only a few years after 9/11, the extra checks were pretty thorough.

One time, while chatting to the security chap as he was metal-detecting my belt, I asked why I was stopped so often. He told me that it was a combination of my being foreign (British but fair enough) and the fact that I was taking a one way trip. Apparently they had concluded that suicide bombers only buy singles. I did point out that, under the circumstances, they probably wouldn't be overly concerned about the money wasted on the return portion. However, my application of reason didn't prevent me from being searched on all subsequent flights.

As an aside, I never experienced anything like the trauma of the OP. The security people were always very polite and friendly. I'd like to think it's due to the bonhomie of the Bostonians. I suspect though that it's because I don't look archetypically Muslim.

Post reply on HN