As I read more and more of those stories I can't help but wonder at how things changed. I am from a formerly-eastern-europe-soviet-bloc country (Poland) and these kinds of oppressive techniques sound very familiar. The haziness of procedures, lack of basic rights, intimidation, no accountability of state officials -- we've seen all that until 1989. At the time, while the communist regime was imposed on us, the USA seemed like heaven: transparency, procedures, basic rights, free speech, accountable officials.
Look at where we are today. I can't even imagine being held captive without arrest for hours, being questioned about the purpose of my trip, about my religion and habits, all while travelling within my country. When entering the country, the passport clerk has exactly two options: let me in, or call the police and get me arrested on the spot. I feel free and I am happy to live in a free country, together with people who because of the past oppressive Soviet regime are quite sensitive to abuses of power.
At the same time, the U.S. is rapidly degenerating into something that isn't quite the sinister oppressive regime, but getting close to the point where it could become one, if a wrong leader gets elected. It's scary.
And the worst thing is -- American people got so used to the idea of living in a free country, that they do not even admit the thought that things are going the wrong way. Most people don't see the signs.
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 questions and they let him go.
You can argue about the techniques; religious questions, not giving him water, but it's all a well-documented psychological game that they're trying to play. If they make the suspect mad, the suspect is more likely to start yelling hysterically without thinking, saving the taxpayer the cost of a long trial. It's worth a try, right? (I think the correct answer to any question is, "my lawyer will answer that. get me my lawyer.")
Anyway, I look at this like the lottery, but in reverse. Sometimes you lose the reverse lottery and a day of your life gets fucked up. But ultimately, life moves on and you have an interesting story. You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost.
Let me ask you this: say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?
>>Anyway, I look at this like the lottery, but in reverse. Sometimes you lose the reverse lottery and a day of your life gets fucked up. But ultimately, life moves on and you have an interesting story. You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost.
The view you have expressed here demonstrates that you have literally no idea what you are talking about.
It is not a "lottery" when the TSA and their goons are profiling people based on race, religion, income, and a host of other criteria.
Chemical detection doesn't even get used except under "random" search.
There are so many chemicals to test for, and so many of them have other common uses that using chemical tests as a proxy for malicious intent has poor accuracy. Even assuming tests are extremely accurate, false positive rates would still massively exceed the incidence of threats.
What you look like will greatly increase your odds of being "randomly" searched and thereby odds of false positive chemical detection, at which point what you believe may become a liability during your interrogation.
Having an objective mechanism in the mix doesn't really put a dent how culturally and racially biased the present solution is.
Whether you feel a need for there to be such a system in place only changes whether such a bias is a matter of xenophobic overreach or a technical weakness against threats that resemble the majority.
Once they've determined he isn't carrying actual explosives he shouldn't be considered a threat anymore. The detection machine might single you out for additional searching, but once the search is complete you should be free to go.
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.
It is also about a lack of accountability. There is no penalty for going to town on the guy - for them its just a more exciting day on the job - for him it's a humiliating loss of personal autonomy.
> for them its just a more exciting day on the job
Yes. Get into their mentality. The lower ranks are underpaid would be burger flippers and In-and-Out. The go through their boring day pushing prodding people. If they get to "interrogate" someone or humiliate him or show off their power just like a bully would in the cafeteria you betcha they'll take advantage of that.
>Once they've determined he isn't carrying actual explosives he shouldn't be considered a threat anymore. //
Because people who handle explosives and cover it up when questioned, and aren't involved in handling explosives in their day job, are completely to be trusted?
Surely once they've determined he isn't carrying explosives they need to be sure as possible, if he claims not to have been around any explosives, that he's telling the truth; in order to reduce the risk that he's going to use explosives in an illegal way and/or manner dangerous to life. Don't people who're manufacturing explosives in secret deserve at least a passing glance to see what they're doing with them.
It looks here like they checked his apartment to corroborate his statements.
Now if they've established there are no traces of explosive present - for example they confirm the cause of a false-positive - that's different.
The problem with your line of thought is that you trust that machine to be somewhat reliable. We don't _really_ learn what set off the machine, but the author's guess is an over the counter spray..
If that's the high tech "You need to endure this process for the greater good, since the machine claims you're a threat" world you like to live in, I .. opt out. That thing is obviously next to useless and probably as effective as a look in the eyes of the stranger, with your gut deciding if he's going to stay put for the rest of the day or if he's allowed to move on.
IFF we had a reliable, working test with little to no false positive due to f*ing everyday stuff (or .. bad luck, being a 'random' match), THEN you might have a point. Right now, you don't.
>your line of thought is that you trust that machine to be somewhat reliable //
And your problem is you assume the machine isn't reliable. So then if it's set off, you just say "ah well, it's probably a false reading". At that point you just obviated the purpose of the machine.
Yes we don't learn whether it was the permethrin (? can't certainly recall the name) but the people who did the sweep of his apartment confirmed that there were no other indications of explosives manufacture [or you can plump for the slightly less cynical - 'the questioning confirmed he was not a threat'].
There's likely always going to be some false-positives: the needs of the many, yadda, yadda.
>IFF we had a reliable, working test with little to no false positive due to fing everyday stuff* //
Can you post your source and the pertinent stats for the number of false-positives for explosives detection at airports in the USA please.
Our friend Bayes and his theorem can help us here. Suppose you have an HIV test which is 95% accurate in detecting if you are HIV positive or not. The HIV rate in the US is about 0.3%.
If you subject a random American to this HIV test and the test result is positive, what is the probability that that person has HIV? I wont do the math, but the right answer is about 2%. Since the prevalence of HIV is so low it doesn't matter how accurate the test it, it will still generate many times more false positives than true ones.
Same thing with bombs. The number of American air passengers/year is about 800 million/year and of them, at most 5 are carrying explosives. Even if the bomb detector is 99.9% accurate it will generate thousands of false positives for each real bomb it catches.
It turns out when you actually get tested for HIV, they do two tests. One has a high false positive rate but a low false negative rate. If that comes positive, they do a second test that's the other way around.
It also turns out that we don't test everyone for HIV. In what I am sure is some form of irony, we probably test more folks for carrying bombs than we do for having HIV. When the numbers show there are more folks with HIV in America than there are those carrying bombs.
What that means is that people who trip these explosives detectors should be politely treated while it is determined whether or not they actually have explosives, since they are likely not really carrying explosives.
But this doesn't mean that scanning for explosives is a bad idea, or that people should just be merrily flagged to go on their way, otherwise what is the point of doing any screening?
After all, the vast, vast majority of passengers are just trying to go from point A to point B so each and every single scanning method will generate thousands of false positives every year.
That's weird. You're turning the argument on its head.
YOU started supporting the process and said something like
Don't people who're manufacturing explosives in secret..
Well, based on what evidence? The machine that detects chemicals here? It seems that this supports my claim, you think that machine is 'working' and somewhat reliable. Without having provided any kind of proof or source, by the way.
The article, the author, proceeds to talk about potential chemicals to set off the detector (and we had more posts like this over the years, for example from people working with plants, farmers etc). Chemicals you're able to get everywhere.
If that is a known issue and this machine can beep if
a) you've built a bomb
b) you've moved your plants from inside the house to your garden
then you should reevaluate the idea of this particular test in the first place. The author writes that one participant in that theater claimed to know the exact substance that triggered the detector. Really? In that case it should be possible to
- dismiss the idea, it's stupid. That stuff? Everyone can buy it
- ask disguised/hidden questions to reveal if he used one of the gazillion things that might trigger this warning and leave the man alone
The option
- keep him, make him feel like a criminal, treat him in an inhuman (no water..? Really?) way for as long as it takes to break into his appartment
is really not on the list of things you can rationally describe as necessary. That's insane.
Ah, well. I come up empty handed at the end and cannot provide a source for the reliability of the detectors used in the US of A. I guess that makes my whole post moot. Obviously you don't need to provide the same thing, since "It's used at the airports, certainly it works!"?
> If that is a known issue and this machine can beep if a) you've built a bomb, b) you've moved your plants from inside the house to your garden, then you should reevaluate the idea of this particular test in the first place.
It's more complicated than that. Anecdotal evidence suggests the trace analysis machine has a very low false positive rate. The fact that agents are trained to re-run the test repeatedly also suggests the machine has a very low false negative rate.
Given a sufficiently low false positive and false negative rate, the right answer may be, if it repeatedly triggers on a passenger, to question that passenger further.
Of course, with increasing reliability of the test comes increasingly severe questioning when the test repeatedly fails. In theory you want the level of the response to be commensurate with the reliability of the test. A perfect test convicts you as soon as you fail it. An imperfect test such as this requires humans to actually follow-up and investigate the failure.
The tactics, ethics, and legality of the how that investigation proceeds... I think that's another matter entirely, from whether we should be employing trace analysis in airports in the first place.
> It looks here like they checked his apartment to corroborate his statements.
Checked? That's being charitable. You mean it's okay to break into someone's apartment without a warrant and steal shit? What happened to the rule of law? Having said that, we don't know who broke in or what happened.
Not that the whole story isn't appalling, but why would you assume the break-in was without a warrant?
"This guy set off explosive detectors at the airport. He claimed it was because of chemicals he used while moving. We'd like to check his story out by searching his place." Looks to me like that could convince a judge.
I didn't say anything about trust. What I meant was he wasn't a threat to that particular flight. If the aim of the TSA is to keep a plane from blowing up, they've already accomplished it. Anything beyond that is just a fishing expedition. Given that they know their tests will detect compounds that aren't explosives this seems over the top.
Did you and I even read the same story?! The guy was clearly being profiled on race and religious background, not just the false positive of the explosives machine.
I'm not sure if you understand what "profiled" means. He was pulled into questioning because he repeatedly set off the bomb detector. The questions about race/religion weren't profiling, because they weren't used to select him for additional scrutiny. They are part of a psychological battery designed to evaluate him without a harsh interrogation. These sorts of batteries were pioneered by the Israelis and are very effective.
"You’ll have to understand, when a person of your… background walks into here, traveling alone, and sets off our alarms, people start to get a bit nervous. I’m sure you’ve been following what’s been going on in the news recently. You’ve got people from five different branches of government all in here - we don’t do this just for fun."
That's profiling.
Edit to add: in other words "The questions about race/religion weren't profiling, because they weren't used to select him for additional scrutiny" is false. They even admitted to subjecting him to additional security because of his "background".
What an investigator says during an investigation isn't testimonial. There isn't even any obligation that it be truthful; it's OK for investigators to lie in the hope that it'll lead the suspect to incriminate themselves.
Simple example: Cop tells Joe Blow that they have a witness to the crime, and Joe Blow may as well confess. Joe Blow makes a full confession. Turns out there was no witness. Perfectly legit; what Joe Blow should have said (if anything) was 'there couldn't be, because I didn't commit that crime.'
Yes, that means that agents of the state (LEOs, prosecutors etc.) have an incentive to misbehave, but in the common law system the adversarial nature of the legal process allows the defense to challenge that. In a civil law system the investigating officer is supposed to be compelled to search for truth above all else, but if the investigating officer is corrupt or inefficient it is much harder to challenge in court, and defense attorneys are much less aggressive on behalf of their clients.
I don't think I understand how your point applies here. The FBI agent's admission to having profiled the OP seem to be just that; I'm not sure how it could have been a ruse to get him to admit something. If we believe the story, it constitutes strong evidence that he was being profiled, and we should certainly see it that way and be outraged accordingly.
In terms of courts, I'm not sure what context we're talking about, since there are no courts involved. IANAL, but if the OP were to sue, rules about testimonial hearsay don't apply because it would be a civil case, not a criminal one. Even if it were criminal (if the OP had been arrested and was mounting a defense or the FBI agent was, I guess, arrested?), it's not obvious to me that the agent's statement qualifies, since its purpose has to be to assist the investigation. And finally, the rule that police are allowed to lie to get you to confess (as in your example) is actually separate from whether it's testimonial or not, and simply hinges on whether it's coercive. If I understand it, the testimonial hearsay rule as applied to cops lying is for when the cop says, "Oh, it's no problem; I make bombs at home too" in that it doesn't allow the defense to say, "see that cop makes bombs!" So that's all to say I don't understand what all that has to do with whether the OP was being profiled or not. Possibly I misunderstood something or have my legal facts wrong, though; can you clarify?
Edit to add: but regardless, it shouldn't change how much we're outraged at home, assuming we believe the OP's story, which I certainly do.
>What an investigator says during an investigation isn't testimonial. There isn't even any obligation that it be truthful; it's OK for investigators to lie in the hope that it'll lead the suspect to incriminate themselves.
Who cares if it's legal testimony? It's still racial profiling, which is still uncool for any reason.
The question is not why he was "picked" to be investigated. The question is why he was kept so long even after it was determined that he did not, in fact, have explosives, and why he was questioned at such length and aggressiveness. The opinions of the people interrogating him are precisely what determine that, as explained by the actual person interrogating him. It really couldn't be any more straightforward.
The FBI agent's statement rephrased in boolean logic:
nervous = background && companions && alarm
If the value of alarm is false, nobody gets nervous because the whole expression evaluates to false.
The FBI agent did not say "You are being subjected to additional screening because of your background and because you're traveling alone". That they are nervous because of his background and lack of companions is orthogonal to the fact that the additional screening happened because of the positive match for explosives.
Or are you suggesting that if a white person traveling with companions matched positive for explosives, that they wouldn't be subjected to additional screening?
I think you're missing that there is a sequence of things that happens here:
1. he sets off the chemical detector
2. he is pulled aside for questioning
3. in that questioning, they discover he has a background that makes them nervous
4. they hold him for a great deal more questioning
1->2 is standard and would happen to anyone. As other people have pointed out in this thread, it generally takes 15 minutes and is no big deal. It certainly doesn't involve the FBI. While it's never happened to me, it's happened to several people I know and while it was a bit of a hassle, it did not come anywhere near this.
The alarms have already gotten us to 2, and they're not even nervous yet, because they don't know his background and, like you said, without the background being true, the whole expression evaluates to false. That's why the 3->4 transition is a problem, and that's where the profiling comes in. The agent's explanation isn't some non-sequitur, like "yeah, this is totally standard and incidentally we're nervous". He's explaining why they're holding him longer and have brought in agents from five different departments instead of just having a TSA guy chat with him and send him on his way. Notice the escalation as they become more concerned; they care about his background because it makes them think he might be a terrorist. Holding people for questioning when they're nervous that the passenger is a terrorist is actually their job. That's why they did so much, even to the point that they felt the need to explain it.
If answers about his background would not change their behavior towards him, why would they ask about it all? The whole point of gathering information is so that you can make decisions with it.
So then we get to the crux of it: his background makes them nervous and their nervousness causes them to subject him to additional scrutiny, above and beyond the screening he would have endured had he set off the alarm and not had a nervousness-causing background. That's profiling.
I believe the issue with the alarm is that most people don't repeatedly flag the same alarm.
E.g. if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article, especially if the machine correctly doesn't alert on other innocuous articles.
So in the normal situation someone sets of the chemical detector, once, gets pulled aside for questioning. Their gear doesn't set off the detector again and so the agents are able to conclude it's a false alarm.
To be clear, I don't agree with the treatment OP received in this case, but I fail to see how it is sinister that someone repeatedly sets off chemical detector alarms (that no one else sets off repeatedly), has burned all ties to his residence, is religious and is going up to meet family for a religious gathering.
It's not that such behavior is automatically suspicious, it's that the behavior is still almost indistinguishable from those who previously have caused terrorist attacks.
In this case the FBI agent isn't trying to prove OP a terrorist as much as he's trying hard (and failing) to prove that he's not.
> if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article
I don't think that's true. Remember that the test doesn't actually detect bombs. It detects certain chemicals. Now, sometimes it might just randomly report a false positive and then you'd expect it not to trigger the second time. But some of the chemicals it is built to detect can be found in everyday products, such as hair products, soaps, some medications, and--as I learned today--bug spray. And so for those chemicals, it's going trigger repeatedly because the chemical it's looking for really is there. So that second failure mode is actually pretty common, and so even when that happens, it's normal to take the person into a side room, search them more throughly, talk to them for a few minutes, and send them on their way. What we see here is quite different.
Which leads us to the real reason, which you wrote:
> It's not that such behavior is automatically suspicious, it's that the behavior is still almost indistinguishable from those who previously have caused terrorist attacks.
That's precisely profiling: "the bad guys have profile x and you fit profile x, so we think you are suspicious" where x isn't inherently suspicious. It sounds like you're saying, "profiling isn't such a bad idea", which I strongly disagree with, but I suppose that's a different discussion.
> So that second failure mode is actually pretty common, and so even when that happens, it's normal to take the person into a side room, search them more throughly, talk to them for a few minutes, and send them on their way.
From what I am hearing from others, normally people barely even get that much special treatment after a non-transient false positive. Agents suggesting "Maybe it was 'Innocuous Product X'" so the passenger can say "Yup, that is probably it" seems to be common, but not the sort of treatment they are going to give to people that they have a bias against.
> E.g. if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article, especially if the machine correctly doesn't alert on other innocuous articles.
Well yes, I would. Some false positives can be transient, others are not. If I just came from the shooting range I would not be surprised if I got a non-transient false-positive. Now that is an obvious case and I would immediately tell them that I had been to the shooting range, likely resolving the issue, but it is just a simple example of a false positive that is not transient.
How common is a non-transient false-positive where the victim doesn't immediately have a good idea what the cause is? Well, there are several reports from HN users in this thread that describe situations in which it could allegedly occur. One cites hand lotion as a potential cause of non-transient false-positives; luckily for his wife the agents volunteered that hypothesis so she wasn't left guessing. The author of the article supposes that an over-the-counter chemical was the cause of his non-transient false positive; it's not like he was a lab tech working with synthesized stuff that nobody else ever comes into contact with.
Unless the machines are shit (a distinct possibility), I would expect transient false-positives to be relatively infrequent while non-transient false-positives would be reliably and regularly caused by a wide range of substances that share chemical properties with known explosives.
Most of these non-transient false positives are likely quickly resolved without much ado. His was not.
Edit:
Perhaps the real problem here is with the terminology. These machines are not really bomb detectors, or even explosive detectors. They are chemical detectors. Calling them bomb or explosive detectors is like calling a metal detector a "gun detector". Sure, finding those things may be why it is there, but that is not actually what it does.
> Well, there are several reports from HN users in this thread that describe situations in which it could allegedly occur
Which makes the detectors useless as an interrogation tool.
If the alarm sounds, then check the person for explosives. That makes perfect sense, it's a useful tool for finding explosives on people.
But if you cannot find explosives on the person, what do you do then?
Any even slightly training terrorist is going to know what other products would produce the same detection result as the bomb they just built. So they'll pretend to think for a while, and then say "I work in a supermarket, and a customer dropped hand lotion on the floor this morning, and I had to wipe it up... can that set off your machine?"
It seems like there's a magic answer you can give that will let you go free, you just need to know the right thing to say. If the investigator likes you (i.e. thinks you're probably not a terrorist) they'll give you hints about what you should say. If they don't then you're on your own.
Someone who can give the right answer is either:
* Good at analysis, so they can make a good guess of what
might be setting of the machine.
* Someone who's been through this before
* Someone who got a friendly hint from the investigator
* A not-so-dumb terrorist
Someone who can't give the answer is either:
* A normal person
* A dumb terrorist
Given the low prevalence of terrorists, that would be the least likely explanation in either scenario, so the whole line of questioning is pretty much useless, except as a way of applying pressure to someone who you've decided is worth applying pressure to. When that decision is based on some genuine piece of evidence, then it might be a legitimate law enforcement technique. When it's based on the gut-feel of the officers in question, it becomes a front for racial profiling.
> if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article
The last time I was travelling, I set of the metal detector in an airport in Germany. They took me aside and used the hand metal detector. It also went off. So they patted me down and scanned me again - the alarm still went off. So they patted me down a second time and scanned me again and the alarm still went off.
They then sent me on my way and I had no further hassle for the rest of the trip.
I understand what you mean now. Your original statement was:
They even admitted to subjecting him to additional security because
of his "background".
This is ambiguous and can be interpreted in more than one way. How I interpreted what you said:
1. He sets off the chemical detector
2. He is pulled aside for "additional security"
You can see why I disagreed as anybody ought to be pulled aside for additional security if they set off an explosives detector. Upon reading your reply, the interpretation you were going for was:
1. He sets off the chemical detector
2. He is pulled aside for "additional security"
3. They probe into his background to build a profile
4. This profile yields further rounds of "additional security"
that people not matching that profile wouldn't be subject to
I lack knowledge on whether or not making security-related decisions based on a profile is useful or irrelevant, so I'll bow out of this aspect of the conversation.
> "... because he repeatedly set off the bomb detector."
No, the initial pat-down set off a chemical detector. He set it off once before being pulled into the private room. From that point on, it doesn't matter how many more times it was set off. It shouldn't increase the level of suspicion each time.
Would they have let him go if one time it suddenly stopped giving a positive signal? I doubt it.
> "These sorts of batteries were pioneered by the Israelis and are very effective."
I .. don't want to offend and all (Amir? Sounds Israeli to me, but I don't claim to be an expert).
But this 'It works so well at Ben Gurion' statements get old, really quick. It doesn't.
Traveling to TLV is fine and no problem. Getting out just sucks. I feel treated like shit every single time, it's just borderline acceptable half the time (the other half it's really, really annoying, causing delays and trouble, stupid, braindead, unnecessary, idiotic, etc. etc.).
This coming from a German that lived for one year in TLV and works for a company that sits in IL, so I've been there before my relocation and afterwards. Currently I'm at 14 or 15 visits only, so .. my data points are obviously too few and I just managed to pick the wrong time? Right?
I wasn't clear enough in my comment. My point was that the entire process is different, so to single out the piece regarding questioning and suggesting that it works in this other context is not a fair comparison (regardless of how good/bad the Ben Gurion approach is overall).
Also, I'm not in the slightest bit offended. I'm not Israeli and although my name is Persian in origin (I think?), I'm British. When I travel to the US, I usually get sent to 'secondary', so I've hsd a little experience with this type of questioning. It's just tedious.
The Israeli procedures are kinda interesting, the second you enter the airport you are put in a line, you'll probably end up waiting in that line for about 15 min before you get to the "questioners" but once you're through everything else is really quick, especially the formal security check, you don't have to take off your shoes, remove your wallet, keys, etc or even take your laptop out of it's bag, just drop your bags on the belt, and walk through metal detector. Easily my favorite airport.
I wish I were wealthy enough to buy you a return ticket to Rome Ciampino airport, or Pisa for that matter and let you experience some of the easiest airports I've ever been to. Not like taking the train, but close…
Anywhere else I've been including UK, US, Ukraine Odessa, etc, there's intimidation in the air, ready to hit. And that's really unpleasant.
If the explosives machinery did indeed detect permethrin, then they still have a lot to account for. Excuse me if I doubt that a white Christian would have faced the same ordeal and found their home burglarized over insect repellant.
the problem is that as a Caucasian male even if i were to test positive for the same chemical and didn't realize the source I highly doubt I would have been detained for more than an hour or two
> It is not a "lottery" when the TSA and their goons are profiling people based on race
In this story, they were profiling based on the fact that the person set off explosive detectors. Repeatedly.
The fact that he was later questioned by tactless people making veiled racial hints doesn't change the fact that he wasn't racially profiled. A Caucasian would have been detained just the same.
It's nothing at all like going through a metal detector with your belt on. Metal detectors check your present state, trace analysis checks your PAST state.
False positives are possible, I've had it happen to me. When "the machine beeped", I got a thorough pat-down and re-swabbed, and the next time "the machine did not beep" and I was on my way.
It's my understanding that TSA agents will not allow someone to pass who is consistently setting off the explosives alarm. What would be the purpose of checking for trace explosives residue if the agents simply disregard it when it triggers?
Of all the 'sigint' they collect on each passenger, I would bet a "repeated trace analysis fail" ranks up there with carrying box cutters as one of the more alarming indicators an agent has to deal with.
It sounds like the agents did everything they could to try to get a green light from trace analysis. Failing that, the passenger is obviously red flagged and it's "all systems go" to determine if they are really a threat. I can't imagine how else they would handle it.
Passing a belt buckle through a metal detector repeatedly and passing a sample through an explosives detector repeatedly demonstrates nothing except that the alarm was not transient.
Just because it isn't transient doesn't mean it isn't a false positive as this story demonstrates.
With such an overwhelmingly massive chance that the alert was a false positive, the response the author received is indefensible.
They were specifically highlighting the pointless use of the word "repeatedly" for emphasis, I believe. Well of course it happened "repeatedly"; they just repeated the same test with the same articles.
It doesn't confirm that the machine results were not a false positive, it only provides you with some assurance that the results were not transient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6260688
Though you may call them explosive detectors, they aren't. They're chemical detectors, specifically mass spectrometers. All they can do is detect chemicals, and they obviously can't tell the difference between some common chemicals and a true explosive device.
Though I agree with the notion that racism is wrong, the issue of racial profiling is not as simple as we would want it to be. If we accept that the TSA is an organization of limited resources, and that any failure to capture a terrorist would have unspeakably terrible consequences, then it would be reasonable to try to optimize our efforts at thwarting terrorism.
It is the case that there exist certain profiles that would make a person more predisposed to terrorism (but I'm not claiming that I know what they are, nor do I feel that deciding what those profiles are is a decision to be taken lightly in the least). An equivalent statement would be to say that there are profiles -- such as being very old -- that would make a person less predisposed to acts of terrorism of this sort. So does it not follow that we should attempt to optimize given these conditions?
Note that I wholly agree with the objections to constitutional rights being violated in the account presented in the article, and I can understand the stance against any kind of profile. But it cannot be claimed that racial profiling has no good arguments going for it.
I personally am not entirely decided on what the appropriate course of action is in this matter; profiling is a more complicated issue than we may like it to be.
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.
This is a vast mischaracterization of what happened.
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 questions and they let him go.
He was detained without arrest, based on minimal suspicions. Yes, he should have shut the hell up and not answered questions.
You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost.
Except these dice are heavily weighted against you if you are brown and/or non-christian.
say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?
That's not happening here. He was not detained because he had an explosive or firearm, he was detained because he was subject to a different level of scrutiny than the other passengers who went through the scanner.
> He was detained without arrest, based on minimal suspicions. Yes, he should have shut the hell up and not answered questions.
Minimal suspicions? A young male flying alone who refuses the scanner and sets of the explosives detector?
Yes, he absolutely should have been cooperative and answered their questions after that. I always refuse the scanner, but I don't complain afterward that I have to answer questions and get a "firm" pat down (there is nothing "firm" about them, btw, they are overly careful and respectful if anything).
And if I ever set off the explosive detector, my first reaction wouldn't be how unfair it was that "harried" employees were "rudely" explaining that my options were leaving or a private pat down. That would seem utterly reasonable to me.
> And if I ever set off the explosive detector, my first reaction wouldn't be how unfair it was that "harried" employees were "rudely" explaining that my options were leaving or a private pat down. That would seem utterly reasonable to me.
He was told that leaving was not one of his choices. Even after pointing out the illegality of that to the security official, he was told that if he left, he would forfeit his luggage, including any electronics. So essentially, leaving was not one of his choices. Also, having his house broken into and possibly bugged does not seem utterly reasonable to me.
> Also, having his house broken into and possibly bugged does not seem utterly reasonable to me.
Now c'mon. By treating this like fact given the evidence from the story, you are engaging in the same unjust leaps and "profiling" that people are accusing the TSA of. No one, including the author, knows what happened to his picture or if any law enforcment agency was involved in its disappearance.
I'm not treating the bugged part as fact. I do believe that there's at least a 99% chance that there was a break-in and that it was related to his interrogation.
Would you mind to share your reasoning as to why you elect to forgo this option ? It would appear to me having a machine scan you is less intrusive than a full body search by a human agent.
1) It requires agents turn away from their normal tasks and clogs up the works to some degree. I disagree with the program and opting for the pat-down is a legal action I can take that will, ever so briefly, disrupt it.
2) I do it in the hope that the agents doing the pat-down will be uncomfortable while doing so. Any legal action I can take that makes their job ever-so-slightly more unpleasant is something that I will do. If it were done en-masse and people in their personal lives ostracized them for their job, then maybe (just maaaybe) the TSA would experience higher turnover.
3) To add one more data-point to the agents' awareness that a portion of the population does not approve of them or their job.
4) So that other people waiting in the line can see me skip the full body scan and learn that they can as well.
5) So that I get to tell other people what I just told you.
Personally, I decline the scans because it's my one way of protesting the security theater and its enormous waste. It's the one thing I'm allowed to decline, so I decline it.
Here's a really good way to protest security theater (albeit very much at your expense): write SSSS [1] on your boarding pass, and see how you're treated! (Security officers can write SSSS on your boarding pass, so it doesn't need to be printed on the pass, so this will work...)
I do it also, because I don't trust them to not save the images, and I suspect the images will either get hacked by or flat-out sold to a third party later. The pat-down doesn't make me feel like I'm being raped, although I guess I can see why others would be uncomfortable.
He went through security and set off an explosives detector. The cops showed up and asked some questions. Then he left.
"We gave him free room and board for 17 years, then laid him on a comfortable bed and gave him some medicine to make him fall asleep for a while".
vs.
"We kept him caged in a tiny, windowless cell and gave him just enough stale bread and dirty water to keep him alive for 17 years, then we executed him."
In this case, the pertinent detail is the fact the man set of explosive detectors.
The other details, far from suggesting oppressive state apparatus, suggested an assortment of rent-a-cops and airline staff that really weren't particularly well-prepared for the guy that couldn't account for the explosives and flagged other profiling alarms without actually giving any indication of being an actual threat. If you want to oppress someone you do a lot more than keep them waiting whilst you try and figure out who's best positioned to ask less silly questions.
The most objectionable behaviour was arguably JetBlue's decision to refuse to honour the return ticket, and you'd struggle to argue that was part of the crushing state apparatus.
In this case, the pertinent detail is the fact the man set of explosive detectors.
I'd argue that the pertinent detail is that he wasn't actually carrying any explosives.
The other details, far from suggesting oppressive state apparatus, suggested an assortment of rent-a-cops and airline staff that really weren't particularly well-prepared for the guy that couldn't account for the explosives and flagged other profiling alarms without actually giving any indication of being an actual threat.
A State doesn't have to be a finely-tuned, well-oiled, smoothly functioning machine to be oppressive. It just has to institutionalize (or just tolerate) the kind of treatment we saw here. If some of the individuals involved are simply bungling incompetents who more or less mean well, does that make the overall process less oppressive? I argue that it doesn't.
And because he turned out not to be carrying any explosives, he was let go. As above, what would you do if someone set off an explosives detector? Investigations should certainly be conducted politely and respectfully, but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.
As above, what would you do if someone set off an explosives detector?
I pat them down, and search their luggage. If I don't find a bomb, I let them go. It should take 3-5 minutes, tops. What I don't do is detain them for hours, grille them over and over again, and deny them food and water during the detainment.
but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.
It doesn't even matter what they say, they either are or aren't carrying a bomb. That can be determined through physical inspection. Persistence doesn't enter into it.
Don't checked luggage go through bomb detection and the like? Actually I'd be inclined to believe they go through even more rigorous checks than people and their carry-on luggage. iirc, they're stored in bomb-resistant containers inside of aircraft, too, ever since a bombing with a bomb in checked luggage some time ago (80's, I think)
Do you think the authorities behaved in a polite and respectful manner? I don't actually care if they do, I don't think that's a requirement; what I do care about is that they follow the law first, then use common sense. Detaining him for more than 30 minutes is very close to actionable in a sane legal world. Just because the TSA, FBI, and the local PD are full of bungling, ignorant idiots doesn't make what happened to the author less of a crappy thing.
I will argue that politeness and respect are actually essential, because otherwise that's where racism, etc., creep in. Impoliteness and disrespect set up a hostile atmosphere in which matters escalate and the cops/TSA/gov people feel threatened and thus justified in using more authority, while the "suspect" feels threatened and thus justified in pushing back or trying to get out by more dramatic means. This is where bad stuff starts happening despite everyone's "best intentions" and this is the place that white people who set off chemical detectors simply don't get to. (It's the same dynamic that can lead to bad police-minority relations -- the difference between leading with "I'm sorry sir, but we'll have to frisk you" or "You causing trouble? What are you doing here?")
> Investigations should certainly be conducted politely and respectfully, but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.
Do they really? How often do planes blow up because of a bomb a passenger brought on? Once a decade? Less than that? I'm frankly willing to live with those odds if it means I don't have to take my shoes off and submit to molestation every time I get on a flight.
I'm not sure whether you're arguing the state was "oppressive" because it had the temerity to put in place a policy of investigating people that set off explosive detectors, or because they weren't competent enough to establish his innocence within minutes, but I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree on both counts
Minimal security theatre isn't oppression, and neither is bungling for five hours.
Let's put things into perspective here. The Syrian government gasses its people largely indiscriminately. The Egyptian government shoots those guilty of the crime of public protest. This guy was, based on reasonable suspicion... asked more questions than competent interrogators would have bothered with and left rather thirsty and ticketless at the end.
Minimal security theatre isn't oppression, and neither is bungling for five hours.
Yep, we'll have to agree to disagree. As far as I'm concerned, being detained against your will for five minutes is oppressive.
But, I'm a radical individualist who believes in the primacy and sovereignty of the individual and who barely tolerates the idea of the modern nation-state at all. So I'm fairly biased.
Just because things are not as bad as they are in Syria or Egypt, doesn't mean we should not be seriously troubled by the conduct of our government. We should not have to wait until citizens are getting murdered in the streets by our government before we get concerned.
True, but I'd put "temporarily detains person who argues with security after setting off explosive detectors in airport" near the bottom of the list of reasons to be concerned, a long way below issues like "has death sentence" or even "has schoolchildren pledge their allegiance to the flag every day"
It's not even like there isn't a reason for increased security at US airports in the last 15 years.
The idea that authoritarianism requires competent enforcers is false. The Gestapo, the NKVD, the Stasi, the SD were all full of losers who were the mall cops and malcontents of their day. What they did have in common were a lust for power.
You miss the point. The most obvious explanation for the author's experience is that it was unpleasant because, rather than in spite of the various parties' inability to handle the situation. They were fumbling over what to do rather than lusting for power, and if anything half the problem was down to nobody having enough authority to insist that no further questions were necessary.
Of course, that's only an interpretation, and it's possible the individuals involved gain visceral thrills from asking questions about being "somewhat religious" or "very religious" and laughing as their fellow henchmen misunderstand the concept of venture capital, and only the last vestiges of American law prevented them from responding to his request for a drink by waterboarding him. It's possible they asked ignorant questions about Hinduism and then called their crack Hindi-speaking agent as part of a cunning plan to deter non-Christians from ever flying again. It's just.... I'm sure the concept of Hanlon's razor has come up on HN a few times before?
And you missed my point. I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether his experience is due to incompetence or malice. The fact is that his experience is not a black swan event. It's one that many, many people traveling to and from the US have to deal with. And yes, CYA is the norm in most three letter organizations, after all, no one gets fired for abusing someone.
If it's caused by malice, it's wrong and needs to be addressed. If it's caused by incompetence, it's wrong and needs to be addressed. If it happened to you, would you feel more comforted by the idea that hey, these are well-meaning but untrained and ignorant buffoons who couldn't use the common sense possessed by a housecat? Would it really matter?
> In this case, the pertinent detail is the fact the man set of explosive detectors.
Actually no, the pertinent detail is the fact that he wasn't carrying any explosives or planning anything nefarious.
> The most objectionable behaviour was arguably JetBlue's decision to refuse to honour the return ticket
You can't be serious. An innocent man was held against his will, questioned,with no water, for 18 hours, while in the mean some some secret police broke into his house, and the worst thing you can see about this is that he didn't get his money back??
> > I don't think this is that oppressive.
>
> Yeah, well, it didn't happen to you, did it?
Correct, and that's exactly what makes it not oppressive: the fact that it doesn't happen to random people pulled on the street. When this starts happening, then you are justified in claiming that your country is turning into a police state.
> "You can argue about the techniques; religious questions, not giving him water, but it's all a well-documented psychological game that they're trying to play. If they make the suspect mad, the suspect is more likely to start yelling hysterically without thinking, saving the taxpayer the cost of a long trial. It's worth a try, right? (I think the correct answer to any question is, "my lawyer will answer that. get me my lawyer.")"
This is about the techniques. As another commenter pointed out, details matter. "Securing our airports" is all well and good until you start "securing" them via forced detentions absent any charges, denying basic physical needs, "patdowns" that would qualify as sexual assault if someone not wearing a uniform did it, and so on. The whole point is that if you don't consider the details and only focus on the goals, then you only consider the benefits and not the costs. Judging from the public statements by officers of the TSA and DHS, this is exactly how they seem to think about these practices.
> "Let me ask you this: say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?"
They already had checked for guns and explosives. Both his bags were scanned and his body was repeatedly "inspected" as well. The statements made by the officers indicated they were well aware that false alarms due to various common chemicals are routine. Yet they decided to assume he was a terrorist carrying explosives because he was a brown person who hadn't eaten traveling during Ramadan, not because of any concrete evidence on his person or possessions.
Exactly. Should we start waterboarding all suspects because, hey, it might save the cost of a trial?
And besides, doesn't the government have armies of lawyers on their payroll already? The only significant cost to the taxpayer here would be if they lose.
> "Let me ask you this: say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?"
Politely. With the view that I'm dealing with people who are innocent unless found to be otherwise.
Edit: Please also note that permethrin is not an explosive. Should everyone who uses insect repellant be treated this way while going through security? I'm surprised the guy even knew the name of the chemical (I wouldn't have).
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 your investigation exceeds around 30 minutes, you have to either arrest the person (assuming probable cause) or release them.
I'm sorry, but this is relevant to the original article in what way? No such courtesies were afforded to the author until long into the ordeal. (By my count of the author's timeline, ~2.5 hours after he stepped into the security lines.) The author mentioned explicitly that he cleaned his apartment and the TSA agent refused to give any indication that that might be cause for the flagging for explosives.
Regardless, contrarian anecdotal evidence does nothing to diminish the questionable approach to how airport security is, and in the author's case was, handled.
I think you are misinterpreting what I'm saying (aside from stating an experience). If hand lotion can (supposedly) flag the machine, setting off the detector shouldn't be handled in this fashion.
Yes, it's reasonable suspicion for further questioning; meaning he can be detained for a short period. When nothing else came of it, he should have been released, or arrested. Obviously, they didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. They just abused their authority.
They also asked my religion. I said I'm Buddhist (sort of true, though I'm not a very good one) and after a brief chat, I was sent off with my beans. No pat down, no detention.
FYI, If you want to avoid this, handle as few volatile compounds as you can (E.G. Alcohol based products). Better yet, stop using that artificial malarkey altogether. You'll smell less offensive and it would probably be healthier for you anyway.
Of course, this is just a stop-gap measure to avoid getting inconvenienced. The real solution is to move from security theater to true security and that takes policy changes.
You cannot have true security. You can have acceptable security. The law of diminishing returns kicks very hard after a point.
Basically you should aim to keep terrorism the least of the risks for the society but to accept it as a non zero.
But the moment less people are dying from terrorism than lets say random obscure health condition then the money and resources are better invested elsewhere.
The point isn't the number of people dying. Its the chilling effect. Travel was way down after 9/11 due to fear. That has a much bigger economic effect than just the deaths.
In the 1970s there was no airport security. Airliners believed it would be cheaper to just pay off plane hijackers. That was before those hijackers started flying them into skyscrapers.
The lower airline travel isn't just from fear; it's also from the additional time and hassles of security.
. . . although after many years of not flying, in the past 2 months I've gone through security about 10 times and it's always been pleasant and professional and quick.
That's hard to say. How accurate is the detector? How susceptible to false-positives is it? Does it even detect anything at all? Do we really know that the "bomb detector" isn't just another ADE-651?[1][2]
I can imagine that the same logic was applied in our colonial period to unwarranted searches and seizures. The Loyalists surely said, "Hey, you just lost the lottery. Sure they came in and stole some things and roughed you up a little, but the bruises heal in a few days and they didn't steal that much. Overall things are pretty good, so deal with it and quit your whining."
> I think the correct answer to any question is, "my lawyer will answer that. get me my lawyer."
Hopefully. But their answer to that might contain the word "Guantanamo" and there's a chance, given that you're now an uncooperative brown person, that they're not bluffing.
I'm normally not one to buy arguments that the US is truly on a slippery slope to becoming a police state, but this year has made me seriously rethink that.
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.
It´s just the security girl that checks your ticket before you go with your bags through the bag cleareance (that happens before you check in). If you don´t know what´s happening you don´t notice it.
In fact Ben Gurion airport has one of the fastest and least unpleasent security screening I´ve seen, while being at the same time maybe the most secure.
Security people is very pleasent, even when they stop you for questioning, they do it fast and in a polite way. They are proffesionals that have to deal with daily and real threats.
The most unpleasent airport security is the TSA and then the British, and it depends largely on the guy you meet at the filter. After the 9/11 the german airport security were very strict for a couple of years, now they seem to be back to normal, stricter rules but not offensive searches and that.
Edit: I stand corrected the British security is mostly Heathrow. I flew from Edimburgh this April and the security was mostly the same as the rest of europe.
Also I have improved the wording a bit.
The British at what airport? There is no singular organization who carries out the security, and different airports subcontract the work to different companies. In general, my experience in the UK has been comparable to the rest of Europe.
4 hour immigration lines at Heathrow are normal for the rest of Europe? Schiphol is about 30 minutes. I am never flying in to Heathrow again, if I can avoid it.
4 hour? Wow. Longest I've ever had at Heathrow Terminal 5 was 15 minutes or so (it's been a decade or more since I last went to any other Heathrow terminal) — and I fly through both there and Amsterdam a fair bit. Typically quicker than Amsterdam, in my experience.
What terminal do you fly into? T4 is quite bad since it seems to handle all the flights from Asia. It really was 4 hours, but this was also before the Olympics while they were also busy doing renovations. If you are European, the experience is obviously faster (different lines), though being American doesn't seem to help.
Schiphol was still 30+ minutes (was in line behind a flight from...Iran), but not incredibly annoying like London was.
Terminal 5, as I said — nowadays all BA flights go there, so there are flights from all over the world there (the distinction between the other terminals is basically that of airline, the fact a lot of Asian airlines happen to be in T4 is coincidence rather than explicit planning, AFAIK).
I am British — which helps somewhat — but I've known them to throw us on the back of the "All Passports" queue when it's been relatively busy, and never noticed it take any longer than otherwise. That all said, I more often than not pass through the passport control used for domestic transfers, rather than that for leaving the airport (though my experience is that that tends to have shorter queues than the one for transfers).
And no, I wouldn't expect being from the US to help, except for not requiring a visa.
> There's a difference in reaction between someone nervous of cops vs. someone about to die in the willful act of mass murder.
That's a pretty nuanced decision for the inspector to make. Polygraph machines and their operators routinely mess that one up.
I doubt that they themselves claim they can make that differentiation, and if they do so make that claim, I'd bet cash on it that it has been untested as far as accuracy regarding false positives.
Generally speaking, teaching 'technique' to a layman and expecting them to all be of equal caliber is just simply wrong.
True, but that's why they reportedly pay lots more than minimum wage, recruit carefully, and train heavily. And also profile the hell out of people.
The real difference is that it's only one airport. It would be very expensive and time-consuming to scale that up to secure every airport in the US.
Not much news about false positives for them makes it out, at least not in English-language media, but the worst I've heard of them doing is grilling suspicious people for a few hours.
Saying that there's a difference is a tautology. Of course there's a difference. There's also a difference between someone trying to decide between getting an apple or a blueberry danish.
The important bits are whether the difference is detectable in a manner that is convenient (putting each passenger through an MRI machine is out of the question), reliable (minimize false positives and false negatives), and so on. Just saying "there's a difference" adds no new information to the conversation unless you're able to expand on the quantifiable aspects of those differences.
The difference is that New York, in and of itself, has more airports than Israel. Israel also pays extremely handsomely for its security. We would have to massively increase the funding for the TSA to attract better people and give them more resources.
As someone who was in a fraternity in college that practiced a waterboarding procedure as part of the initiation process, around our time in Iraq, I have come to never accept torture as someone who experienced one of the basic methods.
So, go ahead, try it. Call me a troll but you should check your moral compass. Do not argue for the torture, psychological or physical, of others if you cannot hack or attempt to at least once. That is where I draw the line.
> Call me a troll but you should check your moral compass. Do not argue for the torture, psychological or physical, of others if you cannot hack or attempt to at least once.
That's a weird line of reasoning. For example, according to you, I shouldn't have an opinion on death penalty unless I'm willing to see what it does?
Besides, the debate is not whether torture hurts the victim or not: everybody on either side of that fence knows that it does.
The question is: is torture ever justified?
Surely I can have an opinion on this without having to lie down and have gallons of water poured into my mouth through a cloth?
> Surely I can have an opinion on this without having to lie down and have gallons of water poured into my mouth through a cloth?
You certainly are entitled to having an opinion on anything. Personally, on topics such as water-boarding, I will lend much greater credence to someone that has experienced water-boarding.
> the debate is not whether torture hurts the victim or not: everybody on either side of that fence knows that it does. The question is: is torture ever justified?
To determine whether torture is justified you need to know both the costs, and the benefits. It's far too simplistic to say the "cost" of torture is that "it hurts the victim". Pain isn't a binary condition. How much pain is being inflicted? For how long? Is it permanent? Is the psychological trauma of the fear of death part of the calculation?
I won't go so far as 616c as saying "Don't argue for it", but I will say "Expect a less serious consideration of your arguments from me".
What I was saying is that it is morally reprehensible to find ways to justify torture. If that does not work for you and you need to reconsider your side-stepping passive support of something so abhorrent, go the empirical way and try it. You will realize then why no person should have to go through it, even if you think there is a good reason. No one stands up to torture well for any given period of time, or no one would use it.
The prolem is not that he was interrogated. It's rather how he was interrogated and how the agents conducted themselves. They treated him like a spy and employed some psychological techniques. Was that even necessary? Doesn't e deserve to be treated with respect? Why did they immediately assume he was a criminal? Especially when they knew the machhines were defective?
Considering the fact that they knew the machines weren't perfect and that household items set them off, they should've considered him innocent until proven otherwise and treated him with respect. Even more so if he's a citizen. They should've atleast told him that "hey, the following items could set it off, have you used one of these?" They could've then verified his claims with the chemical that showed up.
All this will only become obvious once it happens to you I guess.
There are AQAP designs that involve zero metallic parts, and they've been attempted twice.
In both instances the bombs actually made it on the plane and the attacks were only prevented by other means. That's one of the reasons TSA is trying to shift to machines that detect explosive chemical residue directly instead of just magnetometers, but that necessarily brings with it false positives.
I certainly think false positives can and should be handled better than what happened to OP, but you have provided no insight on how to check for guns and explosives here.
So the idea is to give everyone a thorough pat-down on the way through along with an even-more-intensive bag search? Not that I'm opposed... it would be way more 'action' than I normally get, but somehow I don't see everyone seeing it the same way.
Just because you didn't find explosives on them doesn't mean there are no explosives. It could also mean they set them elsewhere and are now at the airport to make a getaway, like the guy who set up that unsuccessful car bomb attempt in Times Square.
Things have changed since 9/11. Explosives have gotten smaller and more stable. And nobody checks bags anymore, because it's cheaper to carry them on. So now you have to do the same screening you did before, but in "real time" and looking for something smaller.
9/11 did cause a lot of hysteria, but the risk profile has also changed since then. (Also, if you get TSA Pre, the security standards become essentially what they were pre-9/11.)
First of all: We can agree to disagree and stop this, I guess? At least for me, this will be my last post here.
You're a name that comes up a lot here, and frankly I don't want to start a "That's insane" discussion with one of the top HN contributors. I've got no idea what's going on in you to defend that process, I'm certainly surprised to see your "It is necessary" comments in this thread, but .. I guess I leave the discussion again after this post.
I really, really don't want to offend you, but I guess this might be taken personal anyway: I'm confused, surprised and - to some degree - disgusted that this pro-terrorism scheme could be supported here, by a hacker.
Regarding your arguments: I'm no expert on explosives (hello NSA?) and wouldn't know about that. Actually I don't believe that claim (think citation needed), I haven't heard about major breakthroughs in explosive materials. You might be right.
I'm always checking in my bag. It's more comfortable for me and allows me to put stuff in that thing that I cannot take on board (yeah, but it can be on board below deck of course..).
Real time is crap. Before and after you needed to pass security. It was always 'one check, at one point, every passenger'. Now they just go nuts and try mentally insane procedures on top.
I doubt that 9/11 changed the risk profile. I think some people, a group of interested parties, changed the risk profile instead.
TSA Pre: Wouldn't know about that. I'm not from the US, never been there, will never travel there. The whole country has so much to offer (culture, country, vast and large) and it was my teenage geek dream to move there one day. Today? I laugh about that. The requirements to enter the country are just not worth it and there's plenty of stuff elsewhere that I need to see.
The political opinions of Hacker News commenters aren't that different from the general public's in their respective nations. There's plenty of people around America, at least, who think the TSA is just fine.
You're surprised by this guy because it's hard to voice certain opinions on certain topics (like the incessant and almost always redundant TSA / NSA / Manning / Snowden coverage) without having someone condescend to you, which gets tiresome quickly. So all the people who agree with him usually don't bother to comment, and often avoid these threads entirely.
In other words, we've just the illusion of conformity around here, and the surprising thing isn't that someone disagrees, it's that they were masochistic enough to start arguing in the first place.
Everytime I travel, I notice a huge number of people checking bags. See how that anecdata works?
And if explosives have magically gotten smaller and more stable in the last 12 years (somehow defying chemistry and physics), why aren't we seeing more successful attacks? Or arrests of terrorists who underestimate how good the TSA is? Could it be that we're protecting ourselves against a miniscule threat? I bet if we invoked some type of placebo security where the guards just watched a rerun of South Park instead of the xray screen, we'd be just as "effective."
> I bet if we invoked some type of placebo security where the guards just watched a rerun of South Park instead of the xray screen, we'd be just as "effective."
I think they already do, except they're only showing that one early episode where Cartman goes all RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAYH
Even if you ignore the fact that the US government considers airports and a 100 mile border zone around the US to be a "constitution-free zone" [1] and assume that the TSA, FBI, NYPD, and Homeland Security officers would have respected his rights fully and treated him with courtesy, invoking the 5th guarantees that you will miss your flight, and the security apparatus at airports is well aware of this. So you can invoke your right to remain silent, but only by sacrificing your right to move about freely in the process.
fwiw, i started dating a lawyer and she and I went deep into the 100-mile free zone topic. Me, on the paranoid side and she, siding with the SCOTUS. We spent a few hours researching Supreme Court cases and eventually found lots of details. I'll try to relate the most important nuances. 1. it's not an official u.s. policy. i love the ACLU, i'm a member, but they're inducing some unnecessary fear. 2. you can't be unreasonably searched, they have to have some reason. typically, this reason is immigration. 3. this power to search has been challenged in the Supreme Court repeatedly. in some cases it was upheld, b/c the primary reason for the search was immigration. in others, the executive branch could not hold up the case and it was dropped. so, checks and balances still work. 4. after searching for immigration, anything they find such as drugs or explosives is utterly admissible. so immigration is often used as a pretense, but they can't get away with arbitrary immigration searches 5. it's not just 100 miles around the border, it's also around every port of entry, such as airports.
I hope this helps. I really wish she or other lawyers like her would interpret this stuff for everyday people like you and me. The government and the ACLU both seem to benefit from our ignorance (and the fear we inherit due to it), so neither is incentivized to present the true picture.. and that's the real problem.
I'd suspect he was guaranteed to miss his flight the moment he "admitted" his trip had a religious dimension, after having set off the explosion detector. At that point, I suppose you may as well try to cut your losses, stop talking and get escorted out of the airport as soon as possible.
You don't get protection from the 5th without actually using it. He didn't have to talk to the police/TSA/FBI/DHS but he willingly did. If he simply said 'I don't want to talk' and shut up that would've been the end of the questioning - but obviously not the ordeal.
how much of that applies to the TSA? I'd like to know for my own benefit during travel. I know how to speak to a policeman, but I was under the idea that the TSA had even larger authority.
Just because you exercise the 5th doesn't mean the police or Feds have to suddenly make you comfortable.
He asked for water and probably could've gotten some if he had pushed the issue, it didn't seem as though he was being very vocal about being hungry and thirsty.
It lies somewhere between being Vocal enough to be heard and being so vocal that you are charged with assault. Clearly his fault that he couldn't strike that balance in such comfortable conditions.
Because time and time again the aggressive treatment of passengers by the TSA has proven that we DO NOT have the same rights when dealing with the TSA.
Care to answer my question in a non-snark way? Regardless of the rules and laws in place, it's obvious (to a signifigant amount of other people) that American rights are being trampled on a near daily basis.
Am I the only person that thinks that he should have the slip of paper with the "10:40" time on it tested as the trace explosive trigger, or is that too cynical?
My luggage once set off explosive alarms at JFK. But my experience was completely different, and only lasted 5 or 10 minutes. They also told me what the chemical was, when I asked.
> 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 questions and they let him go.
They also broke into his apartment while doing that, and detained him for the better part of a day with no real probable cause other than "this machine said something".
You know, as probably causes go, that really isn't that bad. Certainly, people have been stopped for less, and kept just as long or longer. If they made a mistake, it was that they didn't have an efficient procedure for figuring out whether the chemicals detected by the machine were actually explosives or not. Incompetence is bad, certainly, but not as bad as corruption.
It is also my perception that as western european countries (France for me) want more and more surveillance and US-like "security" laws, former soviet block countries are adding to our safeguard in the European parliament.
The number of small level scary stuff I have seen discarded because the EU told us "seriously, you can't do that" is crazy (did you know that until recently, you could be detained by the police with no lawyer for several hours in France ? The EU forced us to fix that [1]). That is the one and only reason I have always been against turkish being in the EU, not religion or anything else like that like the medias like to claim.
One has to wonder what will happen when the former soviet countries start to forget what oppression means too.
It's an appalling story and the behavior of the TSA is often reprehensible, but seriously -- this is not a fair comparison.
So yes, security guys don't know Hindu from Muslim or Indian from whatever, but it's well-known there is a heightened alert right now, US embassies all over the middle-east and Africa are closed out of security fears, and this guy fit a crude profile AND did something slightly unusual (opted out of a security measure) AND triggered a gas chromatograph AND probably fired off several behavioral red flags. Sucks but it's just Bad Luck.
What a load of shit. "Security guys" should be fucking competent or they shouldn't be "security guys" at all. And who cares about some "keep the sheep fearful and in line" propoganda shit the US government puts out about supposed threats to embassies or whatever? The "opt-out" he elected is explicitly defined as a valid procedure by the TSA, so citing that as "suspicious" is bullshit. And "behavioural red flag?" Are you shitting me? What do you think somebody is supposed to do when they are detained against their will, subject to multiple interrogations, denied food and water, and otherwise accosted by a gang of jack-booted thugs?
The only part of this story that makes it anything less than a total clusterfuck on the part of the TSA is that their so-called "explosive detector" alerted on something. Fine, it should take about 3 minutes after that to manually pat down / search the individual and find (or not) any explosives they are carrying. If you don't find any (and seemingly they didn't) that's what we call a "false positive". They happen, but that does not justify all the follow-on bullshit.
Seriously, FUCK the TSA. Those assholes are the terrorists as far as I'm concerned.
> "Security guys" should be fucking competent or they shouldn't be "security guys" at all.
I'd say the same of Java programmers, but we know that's not true, and Java coders get much better salaries.
> And "behavioural red flag?" Are you shitting me?
In Britain for many years the main security measure at Heathrow was for security people to simply interview passengers on check in and ask them about their bags, where they were traveling, etc. -- the main purpose was to look for behavioral cues and not so much obtain answers to the questions. I believe this is one of the things TSA officers are supposed to receive training in.
So maybe he was low blood sugar and this triggered some kind of tic that also caused a false positive.
So you've got a bunch of things that all put you on the wrong side of checklist, voluntarily pick another one, and then add another couple from pure bad luck, and it sucks. I speak as someone who has been randomly detained for no stated reason at customs in Australia long before 9/11, and who since, having dark hair and complexion, is frequently on the wrong end of TSA profiling.
> Seriously, FUCK the TSA. Those assholes are the terrorists as far as I'm concerned.
In Britain for many years the main security measure at Heathrow was for security people to simply interview passengers on check in and ask them about their bags, where they were traveling, etc. -- the main purpose was to look for behavioral cues and not so much obtain answers to the questions. I believe this is one of the things TSA officers are supposed to receive training in.
I took the earlier post as referring to the events that happened after he was detained. I'm not arguing against the idea of "behavioural indicators", I meant to say that someone becoming upset at being detained, grilled, denied water, etc., isn't such an indicator.
As for TSA officers in particular - these are people who would be asking "Would you like a hot apple pie with that?" if it weren't for the existence of the TSA. Not exactly America's "best and brightest". I have serious questions about their qualification to make any kind of valid assessment based on subtle psychological / behavioural clues.
Says the guy who thinks someone traveling alone and carrying bug spray residue and being Hindu should set off the TSA's terrorism alarm. Perhaps you could move that bar a scorch higher?
> In Britain for many years the main security measure at Heathrow was for security people to simply interview passengers on check in and ask them about their bags, where they were traveling, etc. -- the main purpose was to look for behavioral cues and not so much obtain answers to the questions. I believe this is one of the things TSA officers are supposed to receive training in.
This is the case in US airports as well. I recently flew back to Belgium from JFK in NYC. Before you go through screening you get asked those questions by someone, who then writes something on your boarding pass.
That one comment just undermined 100% of any credibility I had placed in the remainder of your comments in this thread.
I'm sorry you feel that way. We probably have some fundamental differences in our worldviews and fundamental principles. Nonetheless, I respect your opinion, even if it makes me sad.
Right, I think it's that last sentence that bothers me too. Up to that point I pretty much agree with you (despite the fact you were responding so rudely to what I said). The TSA are a bunch of not very smart people doing a stupid, boring, ineffective job, but they aren't terrorists.
Somewhat unwillingly, but I agree with your comment. There was an acceptable level of suspicion given that triggered the event. Sure, this whole thing went far to long and the missing picture story is mysterious, but most of the other "bad" stuff can be attributed to typical bureaucratic incompetence combined with playing dumb in the hopes to trigger up some reaction.
> I can't even imagine being held captive without arrest for hours, being questioned about the purpose of my trip, about my religion and habits, all while travelling within my country
I also grew in an Eastern European country (Romania), and I remember thinking about those poor Soviet citizens who needed passports to travel inside the USSR. It all seemed very surreal, having to have special approval from your government in order to travel inside your own country.
Regardless of the geographic location you call home, I believe that it's not "if" but "when" the government will remove your freedom. They may do this out of "political", "religious", or any other "reason" they see fit.
The truth is that the world is changing.
People do stupid things.
You give people power and it's only a matter of time when something can go wrong.
That has already happened. You can probably go back to the last ten presidential elections and this statement would hold true in some form. I'd say the same about moat senators and representatives. It's a disaster we've been engineering with great consistency for 50 years.
I don't know what it will take for the US voter to wake up. Actually, no, I know, things have to get substantially worst. Most people don't pay attention to politics and how the country is being run often enough to be aware. They watch tv networks during elections to be told how to vote, and then they go back to sleep. Politicians love it. Whole blocks of people will always vote the same way. Nobody thinks. We are watching our destruction from the inside and there's precious little we can do about it.
"At the same time, the U.S. is rapidly degenerating into something that isn't quite the sinister oppressive regime, but getting close to the point where it could become one, if a wrong leader gets elected."
I think it has little to do with any leader who gets "elected." The actual leadership is safe behind the scenes, busy "electing" people with well placed capital. The faces change, but not what's underneath. I think we passed the point you worry we are getting close to, and I think the wrong leaderS have been "elected" for long enough that we're... just totally screwed.
Just from my experience, the Snowden thing was the best thing to happen for getting people to notice government abuses of power. Before him, if you were to say something like "the government is tracking everything we do on the internet", everyone would call you a conspiracy theorist. Now it's treated like common knowledge, and I even hear it taken even further than what has been verified.
> ...the USA seemed like heaven: transparency, procedures, basic rights, free speech, accountable officials.
That last part is interesting, and I think it may play a bigger role here. It is difficult to hold people accountable for actions that are hidden, and not well understood. James Clapper lied to Congress in his testimony, and has had little more reprimand than us bitching about it on the internet.
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 the noose so well fitted, that when the bottom drops out we'll only have the briefest of short, sharp shocks before we find ourselves in a terrifyingly efficient machine of oppression.
> 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 is on a slippery slope, and those of us who have experienced a police state and can detect certain symptoms are deeply worried.
What's even more worrying is that this quiet (it is quiet, Hacker News represents at a first approximation 0% of the voting population) change takes place in a country which is the #1 military, financial and political world power.
All of those criteria, plus I think an extra criterion that they have to happen to so many people that it reaches some kind of tipping point where there's a mass consensus that things are authoritarian. Just to be clear, I'm not excusing the abuses you've listed.
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 reality.
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.
That's a good point about anarchy. Although anarchy and authoritarianism are opposites, they behave in very similar ways: the people with power call the shots as they please. In the middle, you could say we have perfect rule of law. This means that no officials act as if they are above the law, and that every moral injustice is handled by some law or another. Clearly we'll never have that.
So the first continuum I proposed is actually one half of the continuum between anarchy and authoritarianism.
Exactly. Right now the "in your face" abuse is happening to a relatively small portion of people (privacy of millions being violated but they don't all feel it yet). Easy for everyone else to sit back in comfort and think it won't happen to them or the others somehow deserved it. When it happens to more people then an outrageous edge case can serve as the tipping point.
Do you seriously think that classic examples of XX century authoritarian states had mass consensus that they are authoritarian? That would be a post-modern authoritarian state.
I don't believe there's a mass consensus that it's an authoritarian regime. I'm not even sure there's a mass consensus that it's heading in that direction, regardless of what I personally believe.
No, and I don't think that a mass consensus is in any way relevant to determining whether something is an authoritarian regime or not.
There was never a mass consensus in the USSR that it was authoritarian, because it was not permitted.
When I say not permitted, I do not mean that they had people with guns going "THINK THIS!", but that social pressure and group-think were utilised to ensure that nobody broke ranks - just like media control in the US and UK ensures.
It's very easy to rule people by pitting them against one another, and putting them in a state of fear, envy or suspicion of their fellow cit.
So, okay, how do you determine it then? If those things listed each happened once, it wouldn't be authoritarian. (Would it?) What about twice? Three times? There has to be some threshold. I couldn't think of a better threshold than some kind of consensus, because it's essentially a value judgment. But, it's a good point about group-think. Maybe there has to be a consensus among people outside of the marginalized group? Maybe the fact that people are even openly questioning whether we have an authoritarian regime in the US means that we don't?
Perhaps things are authoritarian when a wide range of people expect abuse from the people in power, whether or not they recognize it as such.
Or, maybe it's more sinister than that, and we only truly recognize authoritarianism in retrospect.
All of these are abuses of power, and should be opposed.
That said, I'm confident that there is no nation state on Earth that hasn't done these things. Please correct me if you can think of examples.
The difference now is that they are affecting mainstream, middle-class, "normal" Americans.
While it's good that people are angry about these abuses, it also seems incredibly naive. This is what states do. This is what they've always done. This is not particularly more authoritarian than they've been in the past.
There was no glorious past. There were no good old days.
When it becomes illegal to oppose the current government?
When there is any political ideology it is illegal to espouse that does not involve directly inciting people to commit crimes?
When it becomes illegal to stage mass protests about anything?
When the media is directly owned by the state, as it is in many places?
When journalists and activists are jailed, as they are in many places?
When the media feels in any way uncomfortable roundly criticizing the government?
When the media feels too uncomfortable to openly publish government secrets which were previously leaked?
When most people think the government is authoritarian and needs to be reined in?
When enough people think the government is authoritarian that, under a democratic system, they would be a powerful voting bloc?
When at least enough people think the government is authoritarian for the idea to be given serious consideration in mainstream debates? (Debate about specific programs that need to be curtailed, without a general sense that the government is comparable to a police state, do not count.)
When we don't see things happening like
a rightwing antigovernment political movement becoming very popular and taking over a significant portion of the legislature;
a leftwing anticapitalist political movement staging provocative long-term demonstrations around the country with, at the end of the day, mostly pretty reasonable interactions with various municipal police departments, and managing at least to significantly influence the debate;
a judge placing harsh limits on a practice by a city's police department that was found to be unconstitutional?
Wikipedia cites the following elements of authoritarianism:
(1) "limited, not responsible, political pluralism"; that is, constraints on political institutions and groups (such as legislatures, political parties, and interest groups), (2) a basis for legitimacy based on emotion, especially the identification of the regime as a necessary evil to combat "easily recognizable societal problems" such as underdevelopment or insurgency; (3) neither "intensive nor extensive political mobilization" and constraints on the mass public (such as repressive tactics against opponents and a prohibition of antiregime activity) and (4) "formally ill-defined" executive power, often shifting or vague.
Let's see:
(1) Not applicable.
(2) Nationalism and emotional support for the government in general is alive and perhaps too well, but politicians almost never attempt to use such emotional arguments to support keeping themselves in power rather than electing the other party.
(3) Political mobilization is fine. No repression. Prosecuting leakers, whether you oppose it or not, does not count.
(4) There are issues regarding Congressional oversight of certain executive programs, but there are certainly limits on the President's power. In fact, on the kinds of issues (economic, social) that the current President spends most of his time talking about, he seems to get his way remarkably rarely.
It is possible to criticize moves that are abuses of power or resemble those of an authoritarian police state in some aspects without literally, and incorrectly, calling the US an authoritarian police state.
The problems with many of these, is that a lot of obviously authoritarian governments like to pretend they're doing just fine. Note that I'm not arguing the US is yet an authoritarian police state, or that many of these apply to the US, but rather that it is also not helpful to make the criteria too strict - a key feature of many authoritarian governments is that they try to superficially appear, at least to their supporters who may especially in early phases make up a substantial proportion of the population, as "gentler" and more open than they are.
> When it becomes illegal to oppose the current government?
DDR on paper was a multi-party democracy. It was legal to oppose the current government. Even take part in parties other than the socialist party. Just if you did, Stasi might invent other ways of making you shut up, or you'd run afoul of other laws.
Of course the other parties all took part in a single electoral block with the SED (except for in the DDR's last ever election which was also the first where people could actually vote for more than one party), which somehow always totally dominated the parliament, and the other parties representatives also always voted the SED line, but it was of course all "voluntary".
Setting up the electoral system so that real opposition is near impossible is a gentler approach than actually outlawing opposition. Or make actual opposition start from an extreme financial handicap.
Mao, which we'll get back to, also provides plenty of demonstrations of how to do this without making it explicitly illegal: A central element of the Cultural Revolution was to build up a "social movement" that would fight supposed capitalists and counter-revolutionaries, but implicitly also anyone opposing Mao, and let a bunch of misled youth do the dirty work (not unlike Hitlerjugend). A lot of their work then later led to trumped up charges or various people recanting or "voluntarily" relinquishing their power.
If you want to make it look like you have popular support, it's much better to let "social movements" harass the opposition than to do it yourself, but not any less authoritarian.
> When there is any political ideology it is illegal to espouse that does not involve directly inciting people to commit crimes?
Most Soviet-era dictatorships would argue that they did just fine on this. You could espouse anything that wouldn't incite people to commit crime, they'd say. Of course espousing capitalism or actual democratic rights would be interpreted as inciting people to commit crimes.
> When it becomes illegal to stage mass protests about anything?
Even most Western democracies require permits for mass protests, and this is easy to exploit. A typical authoritarian government response to this is to make it legal, but only give permission when the protests are not seen as a threat, or to copy approaches also used by democratic states: Kettling, "Free speech zones", or simply refusing permits on security groups, or approving it for a time/date that kills its impact.
But a smart authoritarian government will welcome demonstrations that are not seen as a threat, or that are aligned with their interests. Mao's Cultural Revolution is a good example of mass demonstrations being used in support of an authoritarian government.
> When the media is directly owned by the state, as it is in many places?
What about when the media are owned by companies that know full well they exist only at the grace of government and "behave" and/or are owned by people beholden to the government? The effect is entirely the same.
> When journalists and activists are jailed, as they are in many places?
Inventing other crimes is easy. So is intimidating them instead of jailing them. Jailing them is the unsophisticated approach.
> When the media feels in any way uncomfortable roundly criticizing the government?
There's a sliding scale here that is incredibly hard to judge, because a lot of the time the media is "uncomfortable" criticising the government because they care about access, or because they don't think their audience or their advertisers will want to read/hear/watch it. Arguably the US is already in a situation where it takes extreme situations before the major media outlets wants to rock the boat.
> When the media feels too uncomfortable to openly publish government secrets which were previously leaked?
I'll grant you this is probably a good indicator - I can't think of any examples of obviously authoritarian governments that'd tolerate this other than for documents obviously "leaked" with permission.
> When most people think the government is authoritarian and needs to be reined in?
> When enough people think the government is authoritarian that, under a democratic system, they would be a powerful voting bloc?
This doesn't make sense to me as it's incredibly hard to judge, and a government can be authoritarian but still be roughly aligned with the interests of a majority in a way that makes it seem relatively open on the surface. By the time a government is authoritarian, you won't be able to get good data on this.
> When at least enough people think the government is authoritarian for the idea to be given serious consideration in mainstream debates? (Debate about specific programs that need to be curtailed, without a general sense that the government is comparable to a police state, do not count.)
> When we don't see things happening like
> a rightwing antigovernment political movement becoming very popular and taking over a significant portion of the legislature;
You mean like the NSDAP? (Yes, I know what you're actually referring to, and no, I'm not trying to compare them to the NSDAP other than the fact the NSDAP also campaigned massively on how bad the establishment were doing, and got substantial public support, as have many other movements that have had both good and bad intentions).
This is making assumptions about the power structure of an authoritarian government that are too simple. There's been plenty of authoritarian government where "mass movements" were built promising massive change and an opposition to current government practices, but where they were used simply for internal power struggles and getting a "clean slate".
Again, Mao is a good example - the Cultural Revolution was used as a means to imprison or disgrace a long list of high powered opponents of Mao, some, like Deng Xiaoping, who later eventually managed to run China despite never taking the posts that would have given him official leadership (making him another good example of how looking at formalities of who are officially in charge doesn't work very well).
> a leftwing anticapitalist political movement staging provocative long-term demonstrations around the country with, at the end of the day, mostly pretty reasonable interactions with various municipal police departments, and managing at least to significantly influence the debate;
Occupy was never a threat to anyone - it was horribly disorganised, had no understanding of actual left wing politics or the history of these kind of struggles in the US to the point where they were largely a joke. If anything "occupy" was a useful outlet to let people take out their frustrations without achieving much. A smart authoritarian government should "encourage" demonstrations like that - if nothing else they'd be greatly useful in charting "persons of interest".
Mao is again a perfect example of why "influencing the debate" in itself is meaningless: His "Hundred flowers campaign" is a textbook example of how to encourage debate, give the debaters room to get their frustrations out, and then shut the door (option extra for advanced authoritarians: carefully observe the debates and take note of who might be a continued threat, and find ways of making sure they aren't - up to and including arrest, or simply ensure they are ridiculed).
> a judge placing harsh limits on a practice by a city's police department that was found to be unconstitutional?
What about high level officials being arrested for corruption and abuse of powers? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23776348
China prosecutes or persecutes even high level party officials on a semi-regular basis, and has since Mao's time (e.g. again Deng Xiaoping is a good example) - it's a great way of getting rid of people that have lost internal power struggles while giving an aura of accountability. It's also just good practice to apply harsh limits on parts of governments that does not impact your ability to rule - the more people are led to believe that the government does actually abide by the rules the less impetus there is to rebellion even if everyone realises that they live in an authoritarian state.
The US will become an authoritarian police state when it starts silencing all opposition to the state as a matter of course. That isn't the case yet. However, the processes, institutions and technology available to the US government already seem quite capable of facilitating authoritarian control. Personally, I suspect that it's just a matter of time. All the things you talk about have happened, but they happen rarely. With the right leadership in power, they could easily start to become commonplace. The thing is, anyone who says something that doesn't conform to state ideology can be said to be aiding terrorists, by spreading an "extremist" message and implicitly encouraging others towards terrorism. The general public seem quite happy with whatever treatment "terrorists" get, so I can't see there being much standing in the way.
When we can longer have this discussion, either because access to the means that make it possible has been barred from us or because the risk is too great.
On the contrary, allowing us all to fill their dossiers with our words and giving the thugs the rope with which to bind us when the time comes makes more sense, and also fits better with an automated solution.
I considered it, but it would mostly distract from the otherwise very interesting discussion surrounding the definition of an an authoritarian police state.
For example, when ever someone say the word torture, there is always someone who would argue that simulated death and forcing up hoses into peoples noses to force-feed them is somehow not torture. By focusing on the general case rather than specific cases, the discussion in this thread has been of so much higher quality.
That said, if any of the statement sound surprising, I am more than happy to re-locate the source which inspired that sentence.
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"
"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.
This is how things worked in the Cold War. Country after country was swallowed up by the "Evil Empire." "Unpatriotic" intellectuals began declaring that something needed to be done to stop the totalitarianism. Unfortunately, by the time the masses were ready to listen to these intellectuals, it was too late. Everyone was frozen in fear and the only thing left to do was assimilate.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Doing something now is the only way to prevent things from getting worse. I just wish there was a clearly defined, nonpartisan plan to fight back (peacefully). The sooner someone can create this step-by-step plan, the sooner the masses will know what to do. It must be spelled out for them and packaged right, and maybe advertised on the Discovery channel (little joke).
> "She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about... "
It is too expensive and inefficient to follow everyone personally. You can instead shoot a satellite in the space that each second takes high-definition infrared photos of Earth and can pinpoint/track/identify each person by their uniquely located veins/blood packets on their shoulders. See? Khazakhstan v. 2.0.
FYI, drivebyacct2: you've been hellbanned for some reason as well. I looked through your comment history and have no idea why. Just thought you might want to know, as it looks like it happened 2 months ago.
> "She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about... "
The thing is, they don't need to follow you around the same way as in the 'old days' because, like many things, modern technology makes it easier and more efficient.
The tyranny of the future isn't going to be like that of the past. That makes it difficult to explain the dangers to people.
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 because it stifles political dissent.
Democracy is incompatible with the stifling of political dissent.
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.
1. The ignorance on the part of the police and agents was stunning. Conflating Hindu and Muslim?
2. The explosive alarms.... Evidently they are set to detect some very common household chemicals. Based on the story I am assuming the culprit in this case was household ammonia. It isn't clear to me that the agents would have any idea as to what could trigger a false positive either.
About the "ignorance" on the part of the FBI guy, I wouldn't believe anything an interrogating officer tells me. Playing dumb is one of the oldest tricks in the book: "So, tell me about the religion you claim to profess and about which I know nothing so you can bullshit me, really".
The detectors are most certainly cheap ion mobility spectrometers. They ionize the sample and sort the resulting cloud by the speed at which the ions move in an electric field in a low pressure gas. The resulting spectrum is fairly unique to each chemical.
The obvious problem is that you get a superposition of spectrums of multiple chemicals from the sample and that the devices being cheap and fast produce "blurry" spectrums, so you get a lot of false positives.
It isn't a far leap to theorize that a good deal of oppression and aggression comes from an ancient, primal racism: the desire to remove competitive males and tribes from gene pools. Look at the mass number of black males incarcerated in the War on Drugs, and how eagerly we label any military-age males as "enemy combatants" in the War on Terror. You can even read this into Russia's paranoia that the West's "gay propaganda" is a plot to destabilize their collective male fertility.
To say that we're the only species to engage in murder and genocide is flat wrong: chimps will happily murder other chimps, even infants [1]. Maybe we're not as civilized as we think we are, and all the narratives and uniforms and laws are just theater to subsume and rationalize our animal savagery.
Nothing is ever simple, so I can't imagine this tells the whole story, but it's a big big factor, and it doesn't help anyone to ignore it.
Personally I find the racist overtones to be the least scary aspect of this story. I grew up in rural Texas; for police/government officials to conduct their work with a base level of racism is, while frustrating and sickening, pretty much to be expected. Kafka-esque detention, authoritarian abuse of power, and the hinted-at FBI search of the OP's apartment scare me a lot more.
Hell, casual racism is basically an (awful) American tradition. Unreasonable search and seizure most emphatically isn't.
"Unreasonable search and seizure most emphatically isn't."
Anyone who has been investigated for a DWB might disagree.
Casual racism and unreasonable search and seizure have been pretty consistently tied together as a common standard in policing, not just in the U.S, but across the world. There is something in the way that police organisations operate that makes them particularly susceptible to treating racist stereotypes as probable cause.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. but at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You have to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
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.
I grew up in a communist totalitarian regime and I am not amused at all. We live in different world now and even oppressive regimes do things differently but that does not mean they are less dangerous... I would say exactly the opposite. Some person claimed in this discussion that "the US continues to be one of the most free countries in the world in all respects" - I am not sure I personally believe that but my main point is that this does not matter at all even if it were true. There is huge inertia and a country might still seem relatively free even years after it passed the point of no return on the way to oppressive regime. When the situation is so severe that it is visible to everyone... it is already too late and the most likely scenario in that case is that the whole generations will be lost.
It is my impression that people from countries which in their modern history never experienced totalitarian/oppressive regime severely underestimate (or in most cases are totally blind to) warning signs.
For those who are interested please let me offer personal view of someone who does have an experience with totalitarian regime - you might think I am oversensitive but despite the fact that years ago I had spent few months in the US and I loved it and despite the fact that I believe there is nothing about me that could trigger their attention I would still be afraid to visit again and I decided to strictly avoid even flying over the USA.
P.S. The fact that the guy was even refused water just makes me sick.
> 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.
She's right, and like her, I have found it next to impossible to explain this to Americans who think the US is turning into a police state.
People making this claim should spend a few hours reading on history and learn about the Gestapo or the Stasi.
What's happening in the US occasionally produces unfortunate episodes, such as the one above, but by and large, the US continues to be one of the most free countries in the world in all respects.
It seems like I'm saying this a lot lately on HN: Better than the worst is not good enough.
Most especially, better than the fucking Nazis is not good enough.
Tyranny does not happen overnight, and it's helped along by people like you who scoff and say "oh, it's not that bad really" until it's too late. "First they came for the Communists..."
> Don't you think you're taking this a tad too seriously?
Those words echo through my head every time I click open one of these threads on HN. It's like suddenly the rich white guy is getting oppressed, so we're obviously in a police state! Never mind for the years leading up to this point, the US was doing much worse shit; they just happened to be doing it to minorities.
And you can see it in this thread. Everyone concentrating on the fact he was detained, not the reasons, when the whole damn article is about how the US treats people who look like they're from certain countries like default terrorists.
I'm half-black. There was never a glorious past that would have suited me better than this moment, right now. Yes, I do worry about total surveillance.
For me as an outside observer it is the rate of change of the rights and freedoms that is scary and stunning, not the decline in absolute terms.
US involuntarily have all pieces of the puzzle for a very high quality totalitarian state. The question is whether someone will be able to assemble them before the immune system of the american society activates in full force and dismantles them.
Surveillance capabilities: check
Militarized police: check (Balko has some scary data, but haven't checked it thoroughly)
Obedient propaganda machine: not quite there, but as the lead up to the Iraq war showed - achievable.
Secret laws: check
Btw - KGB means "Комитет Государственая Безопасност" which translates into " Committee for State Security" not that far from "Department of Homeland Security"
As John Oliver said a few weeks ago about NSA: "We don't say you broke any laws with what you did, we are surprised you didn't have to."
Lets just hope that the US society will be able to reverse the trend.
If 'vaterland' is intended to be the German translation of Homeland, then Homeland == Heimat. And although usually an innocuous word, in certain contexts some Nazi connontations cling to it.
The word 'Homeland' actually creeps me out more than 'Heimat'.
Vaterland is "Fatherland". It's the same semantic meaning - although I now note that the NSDAP didn't actually ever use it, and it was allied propaganda that set this in perpetuity in the non-german world. Did not know.
The Gestapo and the Stasi were evil because they were dedicated to preserving the power of a very small section of the population.
That hasn't happened in the US (yes, it is true that some sections of the population are victimised more than others but nevertheless the US is still a mostly functional democracy).
OTOH, it's not 1981 anymore - they don't need to physically follow people around. Additionally many things that are happening at the moment in the US are reminiscent of the very things that former-communist states were criticised for.
Some specific examples:
* There was outrage when the Berlin wall fell and people discovered that the Stasi had records on 1/3 or the East German population. Now the NSA probably has record on close to 100% of the US population.
* The US used to believe in the idea that everyone had to obey the law and especially the constitution. Now it is accepted doctrine that the President can evade this by using executive orders. That appears to mean that the president has complete, unchecked power and is almost completely above the rule of law.
* Eastern block countries were criticised for the fact that police could stop people and demand to see their papers.
"the US continues to be one of the most free countries in the world in all respects"
I suppose if you ignore the fact that we have an order of magnitude more prisoners than any other country that is true. You cannot claim we are one of the most free countries in all respects when we have so many people in jail (which is basically the polar opposite of freedom).
"People making this claim should spend a few hours reading on history and learn about the Gestapo or the Stasi."
So if we have not yet descended to the level of the Nazis, we could not be a police state? This kind of "race to the bottom" attitude is dangerously misguided. We already have soldiers enforcing the law. We already have combination law-enforcement/intelligence agencies. We know that the police are lying to judges and prosecutors about how they gathered their evidence. Peaceful political protesters have discovered undercover police spies sent to their groups. Even if we accepted your extreme definition of a police state, we are in a lot of trouble as things stand right now.
As venomsnake points out, the concern is not these "unfortunate episodes"--aberrations of justice do happen from time to time, and though we ought strive for perfection it is only human that sometimes we'll goof.
No, no, what is troubling is when you look at the system as a whole and how it is evolving, and you start to ask questions:
1. Is there a best effort attempt at justice for all?
2. Is there any ongoing program to limit and reduce .gov security organs?
3. Is there anything to be done peacefully if the .gov security organ decides to attack dissenters?
4. What is the cost of non-peacefully reigning in a malfunctioning .gov security organ?
1 is far from sure, 2 is a no, and 3 is an empathic "oh shit", and 4 is just a shitshow.
The concern must not be "how bad are the outliers today"--the concern must be "are we setting up a system which will be infeasible to repair in the next five to ten years".
It depends, some other possible explanations could be that the US justice system is that much more effective or that US inhabitants are that much more disobedient to the same laws than those of other countries. Not saying that's the case, just wouldn't be so quick to dismiss anything. US can indeed be said that are among the most free countries, but that doesn't really say anything without clarifying who we are comparing them with! My impression is that US is one of the least free countries by a relatively small margin when we compare them to most European countries and one of the most free ones, by a relatively large margin, if we consider the state of most African and Asian ones -but I think that if someone is even bothering to seriously make that last comparison, that alone is an indication that something is wrong in the US.
"could be that the US justice system is that much more effective"
If the effectiveness of a justice system is seen in terms of rate of incarceration, then the society that takes that view does not sound particularly as though it believes in freedom as a fundamental value, but rather prefers values like retribution and security through deferment to authority.
"US inhabitants are that much more disobedient to the same laws than those of other countries"
This doesn't hold any water either. For one thing disobedience is an aspect of freedom itself, so that a free society would presumably have a reasonable tolerance to simple disobedience and wouldn't use disobedience in and of itself to justify incarceration and would need to establish harm and public interest. Also, the rate of incarceration in the US is so massively higher than other countries that it becomes patently ridiculous to try and justify it by claiming people in the US are that much less moral than other people and so need locking up more.
I know you don't subscribe to these stances and say that they are just other possible explanations, however I do not think they qualify as possible explanations, as they have some incompatibilities with the general concept of freedom, and the actual situation in the US.
"If the effectiveness of a justice system is seen in terms of rate of incarceration, then the society that takes that view does not sound particularly as though it believes in freedom as a fundamental value, but rather prefers values like retribution and security through deferment to authority."
There are certain behaviors that the society has to be protected from, right? After all, freedom doesn't mean much if i.e. you can be attacked, killed or have your properly stolen without consequences. Incarceration might not be a particular effective method, but how else do you propose such cases should be dealt with?
it becomes patently ridiculous to try and justify it by claiming people in the US are that much less moral than other people
Not saying that people in the US are "less moral", as this could create the wrong impression, still US do appear to have significantly higher rates in homicides and violent crimes. I.e.
"In 2004, there were 5.5 homicides for every 100,000 persons, roughly three times as high as Canada (1.9) and six times as high as Germany (0.9)"
"I know you don't subscribe to these stances and say that they are just other possible explanations
The reason that I am looking for other possible explanations is that I don't feel the massively higher number of incarceration that you are mentioning is reflected by a similarly massive difference in the laws, culture and practices of the US compared to other developed countries. I mean, simply put, what are the things that in the US would get you in jail and they wouldn't in, let's say, the UK? Somehow I don't feel they are that many to justify a massive difference in incarceration numbers.
"I mean, simply put, what are the things that in the US would get you in jail and they wouldn't in, let's say, the UK?"
There is no way in the UK to get a life sentence from a small crime in the way that the three strikes laws do in the US.
In general our jail sentences are much shorter for equivalent crimes in the US and we have nowhere near the rate of incarcerating children either and are much less likely to get the police involved for misbehaving in school.
We are also much less likely to incarcerate for drug possession over here.
There are also crimes that simply do not exist in the UK, such as jaywalking, which got the Oxford historian, Professor Felipe Fernández-Armesto, locked up for the evening when he visited Atlanta for a conference. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jan/11/highereducation.ed...
The US also has a habit of handing out sentences far longer than the possible lifespan of the accused even for non-violent offences, such as the 124 years that Hector Monsegur is being threatened with for his role in lulzsec, or the 150 years handed out to Bernie Madoff, which the Judge stated was "to send a symbolic message".
Overall, for the same acts, in the US you are much more likely to be jailed than in the UK and also, even if you would have been jailed in the UK, the length of sentence is far far higher in the US.
I was in Kazakhstan recently. I am Muslim, religious, have beard etc... I had interview with nice КНБ (http://www.knb.kz/) agent right after customs. It was about 1 minute after which I was free to go. Nothing like experience described here.
I'm white, not religious, had a car spray painted with maltese crosses and puerile jokes.
We stopped and chatted for a few minutes on the border from Russia to Kaz, and they let us go on their way. No in-depth search, no bribes, no nothing. Oh, and they take their border security seriously - they just don't do security theatre.
> She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about
You know, it strikes me that one of the large differences between most of these countries, and the US, is the relative size of the population to the government+military. For having a population of 300mm people, somewhere less than 5 million people (~1.7%) work in the US public sector.
What this means is, we could have just as many secret police following people as happens under any repressive regime--but the vast majority of US citizens would never be aware of it, since in relative terms "being followed around by a black van" would be about as rare per capita as "being struck by lightning." You wouldn't personally know anyone it had happened to, you'd only read about it--and so you'd think it wasn't really a thing that happens here.
"The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten the noose so well fitted, that when the bottom drops out we'll only have the briefest of short, sharp shocks before we find ourselves in a terrifyingly efficient machine of oppression."
The ex-soviet central Asian republics are packed full of secret police -- until 2006, Turkmenistan boasted one of the world's most famous totalitarian regimes under his Amazingself-for-life President Niyazov, and although his successor has made some reforms, things haven't gotten much better since Niyazov's death. The other republics share the same kind of government to a greater or lesser extent. IWPR at http://iwpr.net has amazing independent coverage of Central Asia, the Balkans, and Africa, and is a good place to keep abreast of what's going on in those regions.
You may be thinking of the former Eastern Bloc countries, which with a few notable exceptions have followed a much more democratic path after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
I agree, and shouldn't have painted all the Central Asian republics with the same broad brush (that wasn't really my intent, but I see how it came out).
Agreed. Kaz is very free, compared to, say, Kyrgyz, or Uzbek, or Turkmen. It's also very free compared to the US. You can see the "secret" police. They stand out like sore thumbs, as they're mostly Russians, and dress different, and harass people.
I think that she may have mistaken overt police corruption for a police state. The two are not synonymous.
I'd say this is probably true for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as those countries have powerful authoritarian leaders that fully enjoy the benefits of the security apparatus left over from the USSR.
Tajikistan is different as the president's power is somewhat limited the further away you go from the few important cities.
Don't know much about Kazakhstan, but I suspect it's more or less like Uzbekistan.
Been there. Nothing like Uzbekistan. And Uzbekistan is nothing like Turkmen. Just because they're in the same (HUGE) part of the world doesn't make them all the same.
Mexicans, Americans, Ecuadorians, what's the difference?
It is common mistake to count all countries with names ending "*stan" as one totalitarian region. I live in Kazakhstan whole my life (30yr) and I or all my friends hadn't any issues with police. We have one big drawback, it's called corruption, but all countries have to pass through this desease.
Turkmenistan is something special, I've heard of that.
I'm not saying anything about "democratic path". That I am saying is about nobody caring about anything (probably with an exception of taking bribes) in most of ex-USSR countries.
The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten the noose so well fitted, that when the bottom drops out we'll only have the briefest of short, sharp shocks before we find ourselves in a terrifyingly efficient machine of oppression.
"With little fanfare, the agency best known for airport screenings has vastly expanded its reach to sporting events, music festivals, rodeos, highway weigh stations and train terminals."
I was afraid I was going to be put on the no-fly list afterwards and would have to travel back to NYC by train (a four-day trip).
Even before this experience I used to avoid flying in favor of taking the train. I don't know what I'd do if the TSA became commonplace at train stations.
I haven't flown since shortly after you had to take off your shoes to get through security, taking Amtrak instead, and I've only ever even seen two people searched by TSA. You barely even see them, and if you do, they're usually sitting around looking bored.
I suspect that they only bother to do the random searches if they've gotten some specific alert or warning.
Many, many trips between Chicago and SF, Portland, and Texas, or rather, California Zephyr, Empire Builder, Texas Eagle, and Spirit of New Orleans etc. Haven't had any need to go through Bloombergville, though so ymmv.
A terrorist would have to put a single bomb on a single train to drastically change things. The TSA would then step in and do all the heavy lifting for them, creating terror and removing freedom.
Yes, I have the bad luck of not being white also. I've gone through secondary screening a few times although luckily never anything like this and I've never setup the bomb alarms. The double clinch is that we're all paying a lot of money to keep this program going that just slows us down during our travels with out actually increasing security in any meaningful way. It's just a secret form of welfare as far as I'm compared. Making up busy work for a bunch of people to do to make people feel more secure, falsely, and boost employment numbers.
Have you driven near the border? Driving through west Texas I was met by stop and go traffic for 5 miles. Middle of the desert. I kept driving and realized border patrol had blocked the interstate and was diverting traffic through a checkpoint. Hundreds of cameras and drug dogs everywhere. I drove up and the agent asked me if I'm a US citizen. Then I was free to go.
It's not that simple. It's very very hard to travel if the government doesn't want you to.
There's a permanent roadblock across northbound lanes of interstates in New Mexico (and, I think, Arizona), and across many of the smaller roads in southern Arizona (and, presumably, New Mexico).
Try driving from San Diego to Los Angeles: there are permanent checkpoints a solid hour's drive from the border — and quite a few non-white residents complain about getting unpleasant levels of attention.
Doesn't this mean we shouldn't have any laws, because one day the laws could be used to imprison everyone and use their internal organs to produce email spam?
The point is, I think we still have travel alternatives and legal protections from abuse.
The federal government only has the authority to affect travel between states, not within a single state. If the TSA starts interfering with movement in a single state (like on the NYC subway system), we'll see pushback from the state and local governments.
> If the TSA starts interfering with movement in a single state
You mean, if the TSA starts screening (and, thus, assuming the power to reject) passengers for intrastate air travel, like they have been since day one of TSA operations?
If the TSA starts interfering with movement in a single state (like on the NYC subway system), we'll see pushback from the state and local governments.
Nope, in fact NYC welcomed the Terrorists' Surrogate Army invasion of the subway.
Just because I'm not hysterical about the TSA doesn't mean I can't comment here.
When you travel by air, you are cramming yourself into a small metal tube with 300 other people. The other 299 people want everyone there to be checked for weapons, so the government does this.
If you want to be able to travel without being screened, there are tons of options available to you. But the reality is, you have no right in the US to travel, and the government can set whatever standards they want for public spaces. There are plenty of options available for traveling without being screened. They cost more than the mainstream ones. (Buy your own plane and see how many TSA checkpoints you go through.) But just because something is expensive doesn't mean that you are being deprived by the government of some right.
If you want to fight the TSA, shouting "police state" just makes you look stupid. You should figure out how to examine the effectiveness of the TSA numerically, and explain that to your elected representatives. Has the TSA slowed the growth of the air travel industry? Are there racist patterns in the TSA's profiling? If you can prove something with data, people will listen. But whining about the end of the world on a website nobody reads isn't going to solve any problems. It just makes you look like an out-of-touch anti-authoritarian teenager.
Look: I really believe that you can get around the TSA and that it isn't a police state. This is not the Holocaust. This is not the end of the world. It's just an inconvenience you have to pay to get a $200 round-the-world flight.
I can't believe what I'm reading from jrockway, a Google employee whose past comments seem very level-headed, in these threads. I _REALLY HOPE_ your account has been hijacked because if a person like you really holds these opinions then I must be a very, very horrible judge of character. Makes me wonder about all the people around me that I think are on the same wave-length when it comes to the whole terrorism & FUD thing. I feel betrayed somehow. If this is really you then it shows just how far & deep the terrorism-FUD has reached. Or maybe it's just me who had no idea until now, just how fearful the american public has become. Reading these comments from you is almost like imagining Stephen Colbert saying this stuff. I'd just assume his twitter account was hacked or it was April fool's.
Show me the line of the Constitution that lets you travel by air.
Show me the line that says it has to have such a line.
Article the eleventh .... The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Article the twelfth ... The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights)
Further, show me the line of the constitution that specifies the technology by which any of its rights are to be executed.
Show me the line that says it has to have such a line.
This! I may be an atheist European very fond of our socialist democrat government, but the bottom line is: the government should regulate what the population thinks should be regulated and not a bit more.
If I want to fly and apply myself fulltime, I can have my flying license in a month, being free to roam most of the national airspace (as long as I tell some people where I'm going, so they can help me prevent collisions).
I would surely expect it to be the same in the US: everyone has the right to travel by air, provided they adhere to a minimal set of guidelines to prevent them from endangering themselves or others in ways obviously directly related to the 'flying' itself (and not to e.g. the suspicion that someone might have a 1% higher change of using the plane for a terrorist attach).
Funnily enough, they didn't bother dealing with legal references to air travel before planes were invented. You will also notice that they made no references to space travel either, or computers.
I don't understand why everyone is so outraged that I don't think the US is a police state. "Airport security is horrible", so I say to take the train. Have you ever taken the train? The security is not that bad. But instead, I get downvoted to -4 and people accuse me of having a stroke.
All I can say is that the hysteria is at an amazingly-high level. I am not sure why I even read TSA-related articles anymore.
In many, many cases, trains are simply infeasible. Family across the country? Budget a week just to get there to visit them, with all that awesome plentiful vacation time American companies are known for? Come on. Modern life makes flying necessary for a ton of people. They have to fly or they don't go. That is de facto control of your travel: risk assault and detention if you're brown. Control of your travel is a major aspect of every modern authoritarian state, and that's why people are alarmed.
I think the reason people are incredulous because your claims are blinkered. You're a sharp dude. I like most of your posts. But you are just not aggressively shortsighted enough to be excusing this with a straight face.
And your argumentum ad leaderboardum sucked transcendentally. You are totally, totally better than that.
But I do think that the answer to someone being mistreated at airport security shouldn't be to "take the train". It is true that the train will probably not have as onerous security requirements, but then that isn't really the point either.
If we put restrictions on a mode of transportation those restrictions should in general be in keeping with some legit governmental goal. "Airport security" does meet this, but I don't think we can say the same for all of the treatment OP actually received.
> But I do think that the answer to someone being mistreated at airport security shouldn't be to "take the train".
It should be at least part of the answer; a big part of the idea of the TSA (and one of the reasons the airlines got on board to help lobby for it) was that it moved the responsibility and potential liability from the airlines to the government (who, incidentally, has a whole host of immunities to deal with the "liability" aspect.)
Voting with your dollars away from industries whose services require being subjected to the TSA sends a message -- not directly to the government, but to the industries involved.
That's not to say its the only response, but voting-with-dollars ought to be part of the response.
Take the bus? Drive? as a suggestion to avoid the TSA is not valid, I am not sure whether you are aware of this, by the way train travel is covered too:
I no longer fly since the TSA started. I have also looked into taking the train, once from Ft. Lauderdale (where I live, close enough) to Las Vegas (where some friends of mine live). To say the results were amusing is an understatement.
First, it was easily three times the cost of a round-trip ticket. Okay, I'm willing to pay. Second, we're talking about four or five days worth of travel, which, again, might be okay, except that I end up at Salt Lake City (yeah, that far north) on a bus headed south to Las Vegas.
So much for a train to Las Vegas.
Okay, how about Seattle? The company I work for (in Ft. Lauderdale) is headquartered in Seattle. That was an easy $2,000 train ticket taking a week to travel one way.
If I wanted to take the train to Washington, D.C.? No problem there. Same with a train to New York, New York. Boston. In fact, if you are somewhere along the east coast of the US and want to head to the major northeast cities, you will probably have no issues taking the train. Elsewhere? Probably not.
And before anyone asks, taking the bus. I just did a quick search for a bus trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Las Vegas. It was $430 one way, taking two days. Better than the train, but three times the price of an airplane. (http://www.rome2rio.com/s/Fort-Lauderdale/Las-Vegas)
"This is not the Holocaust." yet.
"This is not the end of the world." yet.
I'm sure many Germans and Italians (or any society on the brink of autocratic rule) felt as you do now. But the end result is strikingly similar. Small erosion of liberties leads to escalation until it becomes the status quo of not having those liberties in the first place. Funny how this world works, labor is restricted yet capital can flow freely. Smith and Ricardo must be turning in their graves.
Indeed. A lot of the dismissers should have a walk through the Holocaust Memorial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorial_to_the_Murdered_Jews_o... ) to "understand" how does it feel to enter an autocratic regime: When you just start walking, everything seems OK, columns all look the same height and you can easily see the other side. But suddenly you are in the middle of a huge maze with very tall walls, which does not seem to have an end in sight.
People won't realize the problem until it is too late.
What, because of the cursing? [EDIT: which has now been edited out; too bad, I always appreciate a sincere "Fuck you!"] Let's not be censorious. I can think of some hellbanned who didn't obviously deserve it, but most of the ones I've seen did obviously deserve it. Are you seriously going to argue that jrockway is as bad as the guy who posts all his personal revelations from the Lord? [EDIT: I'm talking about the richly-deserving-of-his-hellban "losethos": that guy's ramblings are always worth a drag of the trackball.]
And like jrockway said, he is somehow on the leader board. That probably ought to mean something.
I'm not going to jump on the "hellban jrockway" bandwagon, but I will say that I don't see any reason that being on the leaderboard should net anyone special treatment. The "board" shows history... what you did in the past doesn't change the effect or merit of your current behavior.
By analogy - should someone automatically be pardoned for a crime they commit today (let's go extreme and say murder), because they had displayed good behavior in the past?
All of this said, I am a bit surprised by some of jrockway's comments in this thread, given his posting history. Almost enough to wonder if someone else has taken control of his account.
The fact that he's on the leaderboard means precisely nothing except to indicate he's on the leaderboard.
Plenty of other people have been banned for saying "Fuck you" on here, and it's interesting that jrockway silently edited his comment to remove his swearing at someone else on here, as well as removing his invitation to check that he's a huge karma accumulator - which he seems to think actually means something.
Anyway, I"m not a mod, just someone who's a bit tired of one set of people being treated differently.
[EDIT: I'm talking about the richly-deserving-of-his-hellban "losethos": that guy's ramblings are always worth a drag of the trackball.]
losethos is a talented programmer with schizophrenia. The reason his posts deserve to be killed is because they are 98% content free and occasionally disturbed, paranoid, and racist, hallmarks of schizophrenia. But losethos the person, as a human being in distress, doesn't deserve any of that.
Of course, thanks for the clarification. I'm not sure what it would mean to "hellban" an actual person as such, but I should have made it more clear that I was referring to the handle "losethos" rather than the human or humans associated with it.
While I agree with the idea that there needs to be some type of security screening for aircraft, I don't think it necessarily follows that we should tell people to either accept episodes like this one or take alternate transportation.
With AQAP's bomb-making experts (who can make bombs with no metal parts whatsoever now) I can see why they need to make super-duper sure that a hit for explosive material is absolutely a false positive.
But that doesn't explain the rude treatment, the confiscation of gear, the refusal to provide water, or having 5 different government agencies (and JetBlue) all gang up on him.
There has to be a more "public serving" way to handle the necessary task of public safety.
Instead of forcing others to waste their time and money to suit your irrational need for a security theatre, why don't spend your own time and money moving somewhere else with lots of security - like North Korea.
Given the actual behavior of the government, I think it's a perfectly reasonable hypothesis that some of our "elected" officials have actually just decided to play supervillain.
Rail has the advantage that they can just shut down commerce across the country for a few days if the government does anything they don't like, and they have the balls to do it.
Amtrak doesn't actually own the rails (except in the northeast, I think). That's where we're talking about here, but in Seattle BNSF owns the track so TSA would have to deal with them.
Do they? Seeing as how tech companies aren't allowed to divulge they're the NSA's bitches and have to hand over all their data, I don't think that public services like trains (or electricity, etc) are allowed to shut down their services if they disagree with the government's imposed security measures. Pretty sure there's sections in the anti-terrorism laws that say companies need to comply when the government brings in counter-terrorism measures like searches and the like.
Besides, they'd probably comply willingly. The airline companies and airports do; hijackings just ain't good for business.
T.S.A. officials respond that the random searches are “special needs” or “administrative searches” that are exempt from probable cause because they further the government’s need to prevent terrorist attacks.
From a legal perspective there's actually a valid point here: they're not conducting universal searches for evidence to use in criminal prosecution, which is mostly the sense that the 4th Amendment is interpreted as applying to. Rather, they're simply enforcing a mandate not to let certain types of objects enter a specified area. Effectively they're arguing that it's no different from, say, a courthouse which has a "No Firearms Permitted" sign on the door and guards and metal detectors to enforce that policy, and for the most part such things are widely accepted to be constitutional.
The main way to fight these "administrative searches" is to show that they are too invasive, or not narrowly tailored to achieve their purpose, both of which are criteria US courts have shown they care about.
> In April 2012, during a joint operation with the Houston police and the local transit police, people boarding and leaving city buses complained that T.S.A. officers were stopping them and searching their bags. (Local law enforcement denied that the bags were searched.)
> The operation resulted in several arrests by the local transit police, mostly for passengers with warrants for prostitution and minor drug possession.
Not really meeting the criteria you're talking about.
Meanwhile, universal searching (at first by metal detector, later by other means) of passengers at airports has long been held constitutional by courts; if they step outside the boundaries of what's permitted, you can haul them into court over it.
You can take the train for now. The TSA is already nosing around trying to insinuate themselves into train travel, and it's hard to see what could stop them if they decided to make a serious push for it.
Once you get out of your mom's basement and step out into the real world you may realize that the train is not a realistic option for the majority of the US population.
tbh, when it comes to terrorist threats, I don't get it. The train is a much more obvious target - no security checks whatsoever, and yet, a bomb exploding in the front of a high-speed train (or just one at a particular location) will cause massive casualties. Hell, you don't even need a bomb, just look at the accident with the high-speed train in Spain the other day, just speed and not breaking is enough.
Everything about this story, right down to the questions, agents involved, luggage inspections and the man's apartment being broken into and searched, fits very well with my own experiences in 2012 with entering the United States. I'm a recent Lebanese immigrant to Canada, male, in my early twenties, and to top it off I work on encryption software. I imagine the only worse thing I could be is an Iranian nuclear scientist.
I was asked questions ranging from whether I am affiliated with Hezbollah to why I was developing encryption software (and one time there was even a technician who asked me about its technical aspects), and specifically detained for questioning more times than I can count.
I was never refused entry, but I just wanted to attest that this man's story is completely credible to me, right down to the fine details he describes.
Possibly an interesting side-story for HN folks: By astronomical coincidence, I bumped into David Petraeus at a strange social event in D.C., after being harassed at the border every single time, and told him conversationally, casually, about my background and what I work on, just to see how he would react, if his reaction would line up with the knee-jerk reaction at the border. He smiled, raised a glass of champagne, and said, "cheers."
No, and I honestly can't think of how you interpreted that. Please explain.
EDIT: Oh, wait, I think I get it: you see the U.S. as a safe heaven, a place people should go to escape dictatorships, a place where their rights would be respected. Is that it?
Iranian government officials have repeatedly stated that their goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Even if you don't believe them, their nuclear weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists who do have that goal.
If you support the US allowing Iranian nuclear scientists to return to Iran, you are supporting that policy.
As a side note, an advanced Iranian nuclear state would likely entail a massive war in the Middle East to stop them, so there's also that.
This is what I find surprising about security checks, don't quite understand. When I entered Israel I was out hailing a cab within minutes of debarking my flight. When I was leaving, they had me detained and searched thoroughly. I couldn't understand why they let me enter in the first place if I was such a suspect personality.
Travelling into/out of Israel the extra security checks are all about getting on an airplane (due to historical attacks on air travel). Getting off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport is always easy, but you probably went through extra screening getting on that plane at the other end (in my experience, usually done by Israeli security guards at foreign airports).
Most striking and appalling is the lack of common sense and basic empathy throughout this whole ordeal. For example, he asked multiple times for water, a basic necessity for life, and was denied multiple times. That can't be rationalized in anyway—what did they expect, him to drown someone? His requests as to the nature of his detention were denied. His rights to privacy were utterly ignored. And it goes on…
We need to wake up and see that those that "protect" our safety have reduced us to a state of fear worse than that which we are trying to prevent. We are now being terrorized by our own terrorism prevention. Merely because we happened to clean for bed-bugs and look Middle Eastern.
When will we say enough is enough and do something about it?
The most popular argument against the TSA that I have heard? They spend too much of their time searching the "wrong people". You know the kind that wouldn't "hurt a fly"? Weasel phrases that in essence mean that the TSA should do what Israel does. Racial profiling. Not that they don't do enough of it. At least on paper, they try to mess up that by searching white grandmas from the midwest and little blonde girls. Of course, the latter is what America complains the most about really.
That would be extremely gutsy on the part of the TSA employee... I go through the pat-down dance at least once a month, and that test is always done while I'm standing there, and the pass/fail reports are quite obvious (big green/red boxes with text).
Is that dependent on the airport? I've flown as recently as two months ago, and I went through four pat-downs over the course of the trip. I never saw any green/red indicator when they tested the pat-down gloves.
Regardles, I wouldn't exactly put it past the TSA to make up a positive hit. It's not like we haven't ever had a police officer claim someone committed a traffic violation on someone based on appearance and ultimately find drugs or some other criminal behavior.
Even if the chemical detector did trigger an alarm: These devices are not faultproof, and if you can't find an explosive, can't find surgical scars, can't find anything in the baggage, you could safely assume the passenger does not have any explosives on or in himself.
The only explanation that makes more sense if the TSA, NSA or FBI had warnings about very cleverly implanted explosive devices and want to keep that knowledge hidden. That would explain why the pat-downs didn't convince them (maybe they tried to evoke a pain response), why they didn't give him anything to eat or drink, and why the JetBlue representative didn't want him to fly on this day, but was fine with the next day...
I think it's more than a little hyperbolic to describe their actions as 'rabid racism'
They had a legitimate reason for suspicion. That reason wasn't the color of his skin, it was the color of a computer screen (a screen that flashes green hundreds of times a day flashed red in this case).
It's quite obvious that much ignorance and xenophobia followed, but I don't think it crossed (laughably subjective) line of 'rabid.'
A friend of mine who is about as 'all American' looking as you can get (white, tall, former marine...) tripped the same alarms after he had been firing a gun at a range the day before. He had an obvious and clear explanation for the alarm, so his experience wasn't as invasive, but they certainly gave him a hard time about it.
>It's quite obvious that much ignorance and xenophobia followed, but I don't think it crossed (laughably subjective) line of 'rabid.'
I suppose we could get into definitions of racism here. We're likely talking about "institutional racism", for which "prejudice plus power" is a pretty good definition, but I think perhaps "prejudice multiplied by power" might be even more apt. The prejudice was clearly considerable, but the power, and how it interacted with that prejudice, is what raises it to the level that I think could be called "rabid".
Seriously, you cannot support that level of incompetency. How many people pass airport gates everyday? How many people are caught with explosives everyday? The second pat-down should have been enough to decide that the machine was triggered by some chemical not directly related to explosives, as they were enable to find any bomb anywhere. Worse, it is very clear in the story that they know it can happen.
I've heard the same arguments. Sadly, I have no good answer for how the TSA should do their job. However, treating someone rudely and, to an extent, inhumanly, doesn't fit the bill.
The point to realize that America is not fucking Israel. We are not under threat the way Israel is. That is a country that is struggling for its existence; in missile range from Iran; surrounded by hostile forces on all sides.
In America, things are different. Sure the borders are porous; sure there is a low probability that the muslim guy down the street is a terrorist, sure there is a possibility that the war of 1812 could be repeated by the Canadians.
However, is the country really going to live its life based on insignificant probabilities? It has been 12+ years since 9/11. Surely, there is a time limit after which this insanity can mellow down.
Problem is affirmative action rentacops that the TSA has become. Israeli security personnel are highly trained, intelligent folks. The ethnic profile of such a TSA would be > 90% white. Cry racism, and there goes your competent force.
As someone who has had a harrowing experience at an Israeli airport, I would dispute the claim that they are highly trained or even intelligent. I don't even want to recount my experience at Tel Aviv, its much milder than OP's but it spoils my mood just thinking about it.
Competence in pattern detection is pretty much an IQ test. When you go higher on the scale, the number of non-whites, non-asians, and non-jews drops precipitously.
I wouldn't bet my house on this prediction, but I would bet a few hundred $. For one, maybe the competence required is not that high.
But you are surely wrong about Special Forces. They are overwhelmingly white. See here: http://e-ring.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/10/budget_watc...
> Sadly, I have no good answer for how the TSA should do their job
Shouldn't we be "profiling" based on assessed risk? And isn't the NSA making those assessments? It should be a simple as submitting the user's identity and circumstances and getting a guided response back: "no likely threat", "detain immediately", etc.
Not that I'm a fan of the NSA, but isn't that what they are ostensibly there for?
> When will we say enough is enough and do something about it?
Sadly, much later than most people think. Look at how long things have gone on in history, before people realized how bad it really was. In hindsight, it's easy, but when everyone just seems to be accepting it, it's not so easy. E.g. Germany in the 1930s.
This is a manifestation of the US institutionalized xenophobia.
Good manners and taste should keep me from using this submission as another soapbox against how the US views foreigners, but when you see foreigners as enemies, a citizen who looks or acts vaguely "foreign"— I can't offer a precise definition of what "looking foreign" entails, but it's a combination of being a part of a small demographic group, and being a part of an ethnicity that is regularly caricatured in the media and in public discourse—will be treated with the same respect and care dispensed to a real foreigner.
Are you an American? I'm curious, because in my experience the American interment of Japanese is fairly well known among Americans and Japanese, and not well known by everyone else.
"Concentration camp" has been used to describe Nazi death camps for a long time, and has come to be more-or-less synonymous. None of the Japanese camps systematically killed people, as far as I know. Manzanar was an atrocity, but it was not in the same league as Dachau. To call them both by same name is misleading.
That said, 'internment camp' sounds far too weak. From what I've read, every piece of property they couldn't carry was taken, and they were rounded up and forced to live in horse-stalls for the duration of the war. Every single family, as far as I know, had to not only suffer the indignity of being held without cause, but then had to rebuild from zero after the war. I can't think of a better term, but it needs one.
Concentration camp (KZ) sounds about right. The term for places like Dachau and Auschwitz is Vernichtungslager (extermination camp). A concentration camp is not set up for industrial mass-murder of its prisoners.
In modern English the distinction is not consistently made. Sometimes you see extermination camps and concentration camps talked about, but other times you see both talked about just as 'concentration camps'.
I certainly agree. Concentration camp is an umbrella term, both in German and English. However, if we're talking about the exact type of camps, it makes sense use the proper words and inform readers of the distinction. It's only fair to the victims to use appropriate language and not play down the severity of their situation.
Yes, I agree. To be clear, I do prefer using the term "concentration camps" to refer to what the US did to the Japanese, but I understand that others object to that and find their objections fairly reasonable.
I wouldn't necessarily argue the use of "concentration camps," but as I said in this thread, my grandparents and many of their family and friends were interned and they all use "internment camp" as the preferred nomenclature. They have generally avoided the use of "concentration camp."
Yes, "interment camp" is a euphemism for "concentration camp", but to be fair at about the same time "concentration camp" become a euphemism for "death camp".
> Yes, "interment camp" is a euphemism for "concentration camp", but to be fair at about the same time "concentration camp" become a euphemism for "death camp".
And "concentration camp" is itself a euphemism for "prison camp". So its probably better if we strip out the euphemisms and refer to:
1. "Prison camps", and
2. "Death camps" (or, even more accurately, "Extermination camps")
(Recognizing that the second is a subset of the first, not a disjoint category.)
And avoid "concentration camps" and "internment camps" entirely.
The term "concentration camp" really only came to mean "death camp" during/after WWII. Before then it was used more or less literally, a camp where people are concentrated (which is not to say that they were not often brutal and deadly... but the purpose of the camps was not extermination)
I'm not sure wether to chalk that up to ignorance or just a cultural understanding of the word. I realize here in the US, "Concentration Camp" has become synonymous with the Nazi death camps. However, a concentration camp is just another word for a place to intern people. A death camp is where people are sent do die.
"the American encampment in a higher ethnic concentration of Japanese" doesn't roll off the tongue quite as easily.
I'm not sure what the distinction is you're trying to make. That calling them 'interment camps' is somehow better than 'concentration camps'? Both words refer to holding a designated group of people, perceived to be a threat against their will without evidence or trial.
The distinction he is trying to make is quite clear... The term 'concentration camp' has a far greater negative connotation associated with it for glaringly obvious reasons...
I can't say I agree. My grandparents were interned at Tule Lake and they (along with my other Japanese-American family) prefer "internment" as the nomenclature.
"Concentration camp" implies something else entirely, to them.
He is using the term "concentration camp" in the original sense of the term to mean "prison camp". What we call "Nazi Concentration Camps" were often "death camps" and/or "labor camps", but those are not what he means by "concentration camp".
"Internment Camp" is a euphemism for "concentration camp", which is itself a euphemism for "prison camp". "Concentration camp" has also come to be a euphemism for "extermination camp".
So:
Is a: | Can be called a [...] Camp
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Prison camp | Internment, Concentration
Prison camp with labor | Internment, Concentration, Labor
Extermination camp | Concentration, Extermination, Death
He is talking about the first line, you are talking about the third. In modern English, the term "concentration camp" is most strongly associated with the third.
(Actually, IIRC some Japanese prison camps were in fact labor camps, though I think the work they did was almost entirely agricultural. No bomb-assembly to my knowledge.)
@dragonwriter suggests avoiding the terms "concentration" and "internment" entirely and only using "prison" and "extermination" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6260756). I think this is a reasonable suggestion.
I am. Most likely I learned about it in passing in a history course and have since forgotten because it didn't make an impact at the time. I doubt I'll forget again.
It should be noted that other Asian people of non-Japanese descent were also wrongly forced into the same Japanese concentration camps. This occurred both in the United States and Canada.
> It's amazing how many people don't know we had concentration camps in the USA in recent history.
When you say "concentration camp" people think of gas chambers, crematoria, and genocide, which were not components of Japanese internment. The term is still technically correct, but that may be why people are confused and surprised.
Maybe my school was odd... Japanese internment was at least mentioned every year in US History between 7th and 11th grade.
I think you mean 'internment' or 'relocation' camps. The rational for the camps was to relocate people of Japanese heritage away from the coasts or other military 'exclusion zones'.
There are plenty of reasons to criticize this policy but calling the camps 'concentration camps' is factually wrong and only serves to obfuscate the rationale (right or wrong) for the camps.
It's actually a manifestation of the US security state. Foreigners or foreign-looking people are just the first victims. Rest assured, before long everyone in the country will be suspect.
Differential treatment of foreigners is hardly a unique US phenomena. And don't interpret that as my support for any particular US border control or security policy.
This makes me so angry. This was one of the reasons I got out of consulting. Every fucking time, I would get an enhanced check. Surprisingly enough, it is nothing new. This is something you face if you are a minority. Hell, I remember a friend from back in Africa whose dad got blacklisted in the nineties because he had a beard. Brown catholic guy with a beard got blacklisted. The only difference now is that at least this guy is articulate enough to vocalize organized discrimination.
If I were a consultant today, I'd look into buying an RV. No more dirty hotel rooms or questionable restaurant food. And a much lower chance of a TSA encounter.
#1. I have a MiFi device, so I can get started with the preliminaries as my spouse drives. And of course, once I arrive I'll be on-site with your team.
#2. Because I provide my own living arrangements, my expenses will be much lower. I'll charge you diesel from my current location instead of a round-trip business-class airline ticket, and the RV park is $300 a month, vs. $150 a night at a hotel. Since I tow my car, you won't be paying for a rental. And you won't be billed for bi-weekly weekend trips home, as I bring my home with me.
#3. (fudge it a bit...) I can be there as soon as I finish wrapping things up with my current client. Probably on the 9th.
#2 A huge enterprise company would probably reject you for nickel and diming on their behalf. The billing rate is incredibly high mainly because they just want their job done.
#3 A consequence of high billing rates is that you will be required to be there as soon as possible.
Do not try to talk your way out of anything. And you do NOT have to and should not answer any questions from law enforcement or the TSA. Ask repeatedly: Am I being detained? Am I free to go?
Cops can ask for ID (which you do have to provide, sadly) and can briefly frisk you to look for weapons -- if they have reasonable suspicion to believe a crime has or is about to happen.
One other thing of note and what makes this situation a bit odd is that once you get into a TSA line (basically past the first TSA person), you legally have to complete it. But the TSA is not law enforcement and they cannot detain you.
This is different for foreign nationals trying to enter the country (you can be turned away), but U.S. citizens have a right of return (though you can get held for a long time if they make up some reason to suspect you for simply refusing to answer questions.)
And the OP ought to file a complaint with TSA and FOIA the incident report. He should also talk to CCR about a possible lawsuit. Being detained for 18 hours without food or water is dangerous and illegal.
Also fuck JetBlue. Remember they voluntarily turned over their entire customer database to the feds in 2002 to help with datamining. Sounds to me like JetBlue also violated common carriage rules. A captain can refuse to transport a passenger for any reason, but an airline cannot.
> Do not try to talk your way out of anything. And you do NOT have to and should not answer any questions from law enforcement or the TSA. Ask repeatedly: Am I being detained? Am I free to go?
Unfortunately, this is a pipe dream. At that point, they can do whatever they want to you. Legally? Probably not. But they can still do it, because there is simply nothing you can do except try to fight or escape physically (which won't work). There's no cops to call, no lawyers to call, absolutely nothing you can do. Unless you value your principles more than your time, or even your safety/life, you will compromise those principles to placate your captors.
Of course you should fight for your principles, but don't do it in a situation where you're guaranteed to lose. To pick a losing fight when there's no attention, no context, and no message, is not martyrdom. Its just dumb.
To create a Rosa Parks moment, it takes a lot of strategy, planning, and cooperation. Not spur-of-the-moment frustration.
This is pretty harrowing to read. I've been fortunate enough to never go through any of this (but I don't _look_ like a 'terrorist'). I think America needs to take a hard look at itself and the compromises it has made on civil liberties in the name of this supposed 'safety' that we have now.
Sadly, I lack the faith that such re-examination of our country will happen anytime soon. The inmates are in charge of the asylum and replacing them is going to take decades.
The only way the people take this country back is to start a third party. A REAL third party, somewhere between the moderate liberals and the libertarians.
Without any outside competition, it's just recycling the same type of candidates, with the same policies and with the same disregard for basic civil liberties.
> 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... for an attempt to change the U.S. electoral system in this way.
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.
Yes, something like that note is more or less exactly what I'd expect SCOTUS' position to be. And I don't think it would be a close decision.
Then the question becomes, if Congress endorses the pact, could it go into effect? The success of an equal protection claim against the agreement is a little trickier to forecast, since the justices who typically support a broad reading of equal protection are likely to be the most sympathetic to arguments for eliminating the disparity between the popular vote and the EC. But I think the Court would see NPVIC, rightly, as an "end run" around the amendment process, and require that state elections remain state elections: States do not have the power to facilitate national or interstate plebiscites outside the usual Constitutional order.
> Exactly. So you have to go back yet another step and look at who has power to change the electoral system.
For most elections (including most changes to election rules for federal offices), the correct answer is "the legislature (and sometimes the people directly, by initiative, to the extent that they have reserved legislative power) of the state in which the election occurs." This includes, incidentally, most of the procedures surrounding elections for the state's slate of Presidential electors in Presidential elections, as well as most of the rules for elections for most other offices.
There are some mandated aspects of the setup of elections for federal office (e.g., single member districts for Congress) that are set through federal law and require Congressional action to permit changes.
There are a few non-mandated-guidelines aspects of the setup of some elections for federal office (e.g., the safe harbor rules for the conduct of Presidential elections) that likewise involve Congressional action, but, as these are not mandates, states can change them without federal action, but there might be greater risk of Congress disqualifying the electoral votes of those states (but since the safe harbor rules are rules governing purely discretionary Congressional acts, its not clear that Congress would actually be barred from discounting electoral votes based on elections which complied with the safe harbor rules, and in any case its not clear that they actually would bar votes based on elections which didn't.)
There are very few aspects of federal elections that are governed by the Federal Constitution (e.g., that elections to the Presidency are by way of the electoral college and how electors are apportioned among the states, etc.)
> You might think the only answer is a constitutional amendment, which requires a supermajority of Congress
You might, if you have absolutely no idea about election law in the US, and have compounded that ignorance by only paying attention to one of the two methods of amending the Constitution specified in Article V, and, on top of all that, only considered Presidential elections.
> but in fact there's a backdoor
Or, rather, a whole lot of obvious, clearly marked, wide-open front, back, and side doors, windows, cat-and-dog doors, etc., as described above.
For that to work, we need a new voting system, such as Instant Run-Off, or Approval Voting. Luckily, that can be implemented on a per-state basis, as every state determines its own voting procedures.
The Constitution imposes a lot of constraints on the government that make its job more difficult, presumably because those rights would not be protected if it was necessarily to rely on some inherent bit of goodness in bureaucrats.
Let's not forget that the Bill of Rights almost didn't make it into the Constitution and was only really tacked on as an afterthought to shut down anti-Federalist attempts to scuttle the Constitution before it was ratified.
And now several of those 10 Amendments have been eroded/defeated through recent law.
Great job that Constitution is doing us... but I guess it paints that much worse a picture of a country without it.
Right: laws are needed because of an inherent lack of goodness, not because of an inherent lack of common sense. There's a big difference between the two...
A caricatured example would be the serial killer who looks both ways before he crosses the street. We can agree that some of his 'core goodness' is certainly off...but his common sense is spot on.
So my brother is a doctor. He told me a story about one of his colleagues, also a doctor, one of the smartest doctors my brother knows (which is no light praise), who happens to be a brown colored Muslim. My brother's brown colored Muslim doctor colleague tells him that it is increasingly humiliating to be constantly harassed by TSA when traveling and that he is thinking of leaving the country. My brother follows up by telling me that one day someone is going to need this brilliant, brown colored Muslim doctor and when that day comes the brilliant doctor may not be here.
The bottom line is that we need to ask ourselves what kind of environment are we creating for the country, it's citizens and it's visitors. At some point very smart people, who happen to be non-white, are going to realize that they would rather be somewhere else and we will be the lesser for it.
Last week I flew into SFO from Paris. I was called out at the Paris airport with another person (of Muslim origin). The person at the counter started asking me a few questions, and then asked me if we're colleagues. I said we weren't, and that I don't know the guy. He let me go after that, but I was then flagged for security at every single checkpoint after that.
I was pulled for a bag check after scanning my boarding pass. In SFO I was flagged for 'secondary screening' during immigration. The immigration officer took me in a room and basically asked me to give details on pretty much my entire life and activities for the past year. After I got out of there, I was then flagged at the customs, where the officer rummaged through all my bags.
I'm terrified now that this will become a regular thing, and that was only because I was accidentally associated with a young Muslim male. I now understand what they must be going through pretty much every single time they fly.
It really seems like "Flying While Brown" is this century's "Driving While Black". These and similar stories are shocking and demeaning all involved.
Since the OP is here, and it wasn't totally clear in the story, I'm just wondering: if and when did you point out you were a Hindu not a Muslim†, and whether doing so and possibly additionally pointing out the historical enmity between those two groups might have helped or hindered.
And it seems minor amongst everything else, but them making jokes about your credit card in that situation really pisses me off. Its adding insult to injury. However, it seems to me that people make jokes when they are uncomfortable. That guard probably was uncomfortable with that he was doing, and if he was, maybe he should complain to their bosses, stop doing their job in that way and/or quit.
† Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I do not condone this intimidating, brown-shirted bullshit for anyone; I'm just wondering if it is possible to get away from being pigeon-holed.
> Since the OP is here, and it wasn't totally clear in the story, I'm just wondering: if and when did you point out you were a Hindu not a Muslim†, and whether doing so and possibly additionally pointing out the historical enmity between those two groups might have helped or hindered.
A few of the officers did noticeably relax their body posture when I told them I was Hindu (just as the man from Homeland Security relaxed when I told him I didn't even speak Hindi).
I didn't point out the historical conflict between the two groups in India. Given how little they seemed to know about Hinduism in general, I suspect that wouldn't have helped, but who knows.
>In all my life, I have only felt that same chilling terror once before - on one cold night in September twelve years ago, when I huddled in bed and tried to forget the terrible events in the news that day, wondering why they they had happened, wondering whether everything would be okay ever again.
Perhaps the terrorists knew this would happen all along. They knew our paranoia would surpass any efforts they could ever hope accomplish. Instead of terrorizing a few thousand, they could terrorize a whole nation—daily and officially.
There's no "perhaps" here. Of course they knew this would happen. That's the whole point. It's right there in the name: they're terrorists because they create terror. The US is now terrified and burning piles of cash and lashing out at its own citizens, which is exactly what the terrorists wanted to happen.
Sometimes I wonder. When Seal Team Six stormed his compound, an attack launched from an occupied into a sovereign country and killed him although he was unarmed. I wonder whether he felt dread or achievement.
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life." - Osama Bin Laden (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/01/31/gen.binladen.interview...)
Terrorism isn't a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed -- even if their attacks fail.
– Bruce Schneier
I found that sentence to be a non sequitur, illogically and gratuitously tacked on as an appeal to sentiment over rationality, and absolute bit of overwritten purple prose.
I'm so sorry... that I can't yet downvote your comment. What an incredibly derisive and pointless appeal to grammar you're trying to make. Having read the entire blog post, that line sounds like a very accurate description of the end feeling.
The last part really got me thinking, when the author mentioned that his apartment was probably searched by some agency. He would obviously have noted if he had received some sort of notification that his apartment had been legally searched.
Is it legal for the police, the DHS, FBI or any other agency to search your apartment and belongings without notifying you? Are there warrants that will let the authorities do this? What are the circumstances which allow them to do this?
I am not a lawyer, but this is how I understand it: Hypothetically if they had issued a FISA warrant to the landlord, then the landlord could have let them search the apartment and additionally would not be legally allowed to inform his tenet that a warrant had been issued [1], must less that his apartment had been searched.
They won't go to the FISA court for every suspicious guy they see at an airport. What the author describes must happen every day at most major airports.
How often does this happen and not get blogged about? If you want to help stop this from happening again, I suggest donating to the ACLU: https://www.aclu.org/donate/join-renew-give
I didn't want to relive the experience - I wanted to forget about it, but a friend of mine convinced me that I needed to let people know that these things happen, for that exact reason. That's why I wrote it.
I immigrated to the U.S., but I grew up here, it's my home, I love this country (perhaps even more than some people that were born here), and I consider myself an American.
So, from a fellow American, thank you for having the courage to set aside your emotions and write about this experience. People need to hear about these incidents. Your post won't change the political system, but it changed, ever so slightly, the consciousness of thousands of people that read it. It counts for something, and it's important!
Just wanted to let you know that as a fellow Indian, I find your experiences extremely traumatic. However, you did the right thing to raise awareness about the issue. I've written strongly worded mails to JetBlue (CEO and their CS Director). Commercial airlines cannot continue being dicks and ignore tons of complaints without affecting their profitability. I'm sure a personal apology from them will be forthcoming (with perhaps a refund for the extra payment).
There is an episode of Crossing Jordan I saw recently that is similar to what you experienced.
What triggered the government to hold the guy in the show was that he actually traveled to India for a week, you were merely trying to fly across the country.
Thanks for sharing your experience, nothing will ever change unless enough of these stories come out.
The ACLU has abandoned any pretense of actually being concerned about civil liberties in favor of being a generic left-wing advocacy organization. For example, just recently they were perfectly happy to throw out a commitment against double jeopardy in order to stoke some standard left-wing racial grievances[1].
I used to think if you donated to both the ACLU and the NRA you could cover all your civil liberties pretty well, but I don't think the amount of good coming out of the ACLU is worth it anymore. At least the EFF is still pretty good, even if airports are a bit out of their domain.
Have you actually looked at ACLU's policies, legal actions it's taking, or talked to anyone who works for/with the ACLU, especially at the state or local level? They are absolutely defending our civil liberties.
To me one of the more troubling aspects of this is that in 2013 and after 12 years, the specialists we have fighting this "war" still have trouble distinguishing between Hindu & Muslim (though obviously Muslims should not be treated like this either). It might be easier for me b/c I'm Hindu but just looking at a name is usually enough to at least get past that part.
To anybody who's vaguely knowledgeable about these things, it not only points out my nationality, but also which region of India I belong to, my religion, and also my caste[0].
[0] Not that I pay attention to caste, but as you can see, Indian surnames contain a lot if information, to anybody even remotely trained in reading them.
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 similar to someone being called "a Trump" or "a Kennedy").
Priests can also tell further information from the name, such as the gotra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotra . In layman's terms, this is a way of identifying one of your earliest known ancestors.
[0] The British changed a lot of names of both people and places when they were in power - ex., they changed "Mumbai" to "Bombay", although people are now starting to use the original name again.
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.
I'm Canadian, Indian heritage, and I practice Hinduism. Based on Aditya's article, I feel like we're probably similar with respect to our "religiousness".
What happened to him is horrendous, and scary. I'm currently living in Palo Alto for work, but every time I travel to and from the USA, I'm always in fear. That said, I have never had an issue; mind you, I've never made the explosives detector beep. I always elect for the pat down too.
While the TSA employees aren't always the friendliest, I haven't had any memorable run-ins with them. On the contrary, they've been actually nice at times. It helps that I always travel clean shaven, and speak to everyone as politely as any Canadian can. :-)
As a counterpoint, the only instance of racial profiling that I encountered while flying was actually in Sault Ste. Marie, ON, Canada. I was traveling with some colleagues back to Toronto; they were Caucasian, and I was the only non-Caucasian. The security agent at the airport decided to "randomly" select me for explosives screening. She was the lone agent, and it's a tiny airport. No one before or after me was "randomly" screened. No one else was non-Caucasian.
I'm not saying that security agents should be fearful of choosing a non-Caucasian for random screening, lest they be accused of profiling or racism. I'm saying that random screenings should actually be random. Also, I can't verify this hypothesis myself since I sucked at probability theory, but I'm pretty sure that only selecting 1 person out of 250+ passengers traveling through the airport is an insufficient sample size for actually detecting a person who may be carrying explosives; you should probably be randomly selecting more people.
That's interesting, because every Canadian airport that I've been to (and admittedly I've been mainly to the larger ones) has had an electronic mat that you stand on that lights up a sign with an arrow to the left or right, telling you whether you should go to the standard metal detectors or the millimeter wave scanners (or a patdown if you so choose). The idea presumably being that when a machine is choosing, it leaves no room for profiling. I've never seen those in any American airport I've been to.
i was detained by airport security in SFO upon arrival for two hours without setting off any alarms. Security kept asking me questions, disappearing into a room, then coming back asking me the same questions. They basically took the phone number of my entire contact list and told me they were calling them.
After i saw them take a few trips to that room, i started suspecting that they are watching me from somewhere and trying to analyze my behavior. i don't know why that idea came to me, but i realized i was extremely nervous and sweating. So i decided to bluff that i am pissed and this is outrageous.
When the security guys came back i started bluffing a bad mood. i turned the table by asking them questions instead. "is there something wrong?", "people are waiting for me outside" were some things i started saying. One security guy asked me to calm down but i kept on bluffing, i told them my flight was twenty one hours long non stop and that they are wasting more of my time. at this point i wasn't bluffing anymore i got really upset.
They disappeared one last time, i started huffing and puffing, and looking for the cameras that were watching me since i was convinced that was the case. When security came back, they simply told me you're good to go. They jokingly asked if i'd rather stay there. i said yes. They both raised their eyebrows and looked at me surprised as if they were about to interrogate me again. Then i jokingly said, i'd love to stay and watch all these hostesses passing by, at that point there was a team of hostesses passing by and we all laughed. They told me that this helps them endure their night shifts!
But the funny part was when i reached home, and started calling my relatives whom the security officers said they are calling. My relatives all said that they received no call, and told me of course those guys always bluff. I don't think i can take security seriously after that incident ever.
Police includes any federal agents, border patrol, CBP, et c.
Do not talk to the police. You cannot talk your way out of being arrested or explain your way on to a flight. They record everything and even an accidental misstatement is a felony.
You gave them address history, work configurations, business associate information... why? Did you somehow think you could talk them out of being afraid? This sort of breach of privacy (volunteering private corporate information to cops) is a firing offense in my book.
Umm, you definitely can explain your way on to a flight.
When a TSA agent asks if they can search your bag, saying "yes" has always lead to me catching my flight, and I'm pretty sure saying "Let me talk to my lawyer" would lead to me missing my flight. Also when they asked if there was any reason you might have set off the bomb detectors, answering with a valid reason can definitely lead to you catching your flight.
However, as soon as its clear you're going to miss your flight, I would agree its the time to stop talking.
That's awful. I'm half-Mexican and look like a really tan Jewish man and the treatment I received in the wake of 9/11 (having also been the first time I decided to grow a beard) was awful. I had to show two forms of ID to deposit money and the bank for some reason was rude and ended up refusing to let me deposit my paycheck, several people threatened to beat me up and chased me out of stores, and I wasn't able to make it through security at the airport without a "random" patdown until last year. I'm not even Middle-Eastern, I just KIND OF look it. I can only imagine what others go through.
A few years ago, a US border official didn't even know about my visa type (O1) and put me through secondary because he didn't know that the visa existed.
This also happened on the US/CA border to me - the official told me I had the wrong visa to which I responded I had the correct visa. We went round 15 times in a row back and forth, with me stating it was the correct visa until he gave up and let me go.
A close friend of mine also had a gun put on the table to intimidate him in a secondary screening when coming from the UK to the US.
So much for wanting to be an "immigration magnet" like the Google hangout tomorrow with the CTO of the US.
I recently read an article about the Stasi. I was strangely fascinated by Zersetzung - as I understand it, one of the main objectives was to supply other people with evidence against your own sanity. "[R]eplacing one variety of tea with another" - No really, that and other ridiculous things happened. Agents of the Stasi went into homes and did that. It is designed to make you seem like a lunatic when you try to explain yourself and get help. Imagine that, being subject to a procedure designed to make you feel utterly helpless and alone. You are right and everything is real, but everything real is now designed to seem strange to other people.
I wonder why wikipedia translates it as "corrosion" or "undermining". The term Zersetzung is more often used as meaning a biological process of degradation. It's dissolution. It's being eaten away by acid.
The United States (Government) are a bunch of unenlightened, racist, xenophobic people bent on oppressing people by treating every non english/anglo-saxon as a terrorist. Please, someone tell me this isn't the case in an absolute sense.
Eh, I think it's a tad more complex than that. The US is a heterogeneous culture with lots of people of varying cultures, religions, and skin tones. Though I'm certainly no fan of the TSA, and wish the US gov't would reform the system in a direction more like Israel's, they actually aren't treating every non-white person as a suspected terrorist.
Overly generic and condemning criticism about a group of people whom you are angry at for making overly generic and condemning criticisms about groups of people!!
I lose points every time I criticize Noam Chomsky. Who are the other sacred cows on HN that if you criticize you automatically lose Karma? I'll take a stab:
Maybe the people who criticize Noam Chomsky should actually listen to what he says first.
He condemns America more than other regimes who also abuse power because he considers it the moral responsibility of every citizen to correct their own nation's behavior first, taking the principle straight from the Bible: "Remove the speck from your own eye."
Condemn Chomsky's anarcho-socialist ideals if you like: he actually has those. But calling him an America-hater both misunderstands his views and demonstrates his point about nationalism trumping democracy.
It seems most commenters here are missing the fact that somebody had been in his home. Without notifying him of the fact, he just noticed that things were slightly off, picture missing, etc. Is this legal in America? I mean, don't they have to tell him at some point if his private premises have been breached? Or are there special rules when you say "terrorism!", like in the London airport detention case?
Look at it from the TSA/Police/FBI perspective:
Someone goes to the airport on the first day of Ramadan, refuses the scan, sets off the chemical detectors, then asks to leave. During further interview he indicates that he hasn't eaten yet that day, is travelling for religious purposes, has just moved and is travelling alone.
This further investigation doesn't seem insane to me. In fact if there was a clear profile for someone I would investigate it would be him.
That said, it doesn't hurt to show basic human decency.
I'm a religious American Muslim who fasts every day of Ramadan every year. So, what you're saying is that if I am Muslim, it's Ramadan, I'm fasting, and I'm traveling for religious purposes - that's suspicious? What your religion or ethnicity is, or how religious you are, or what your specific religious practices are - none of these should even be a factor to consider in security to the TSA/police/FBI/etc. I find this view to be utterly disgusting.
Muslims calling Ramadan "a fasting month" is a serious devaluation of the word "fasting". It's not actual fasting if you only eat at night. It's fasting if you don't eat for at least full day. Say, eating once or twice only every other day.
Also, doing this for one month in a year is another sham. How very useful!
Dear gngeal,
I represent "the Muslims", yes all 1.6 billion of them. Upon receiving your comment we immediately held an emergency meeting (because we care) and decided to apologize for carrying out this sham for the last 14 centuries. What would you have us call it instead? I'm sure it'll make a huge difference.
The problem is that the lack of decency is critical to the whole situation. If they had shown decency in the first place, he wouldn't have reacted in a way that they construed as "suspicious", and then they wouldn't have wasted several hours and harassed an innocent person.
I tend to apply some expectation on him as well as the TSA.
He knows they might think he's fasting. Say: I ran out the door and didn't have a chance to get breakfast. I'm pretty hungry.
He knows that they might be suspicious of religiosity. Explain the details of your trip.
Yes he doesn't have to and it should have been easier for him, but use some common sense.
It's the same reason that when you're pulled over for speeding 5 over you don't refuse to answer any questions. You try to be polite and hope the officer will let you off with a warning. The likely outcome is better.
But fasting because you're religious isn't illegal, and it shouldn't be grounds for suspicion of terrorism. There is a big difference between being polite to a cop after breaking the law, and trying not to offend the bigoted sensibilities of when you're totally innocent. Blaming the author for the completely innocent and honest answers he gave is rather similar to blaming a rape victim for wearing revealing clothing.
And it seems to me that he did use common sense. He knew from experience that people didn't really understand the deal with his 7 week family sabbaticals, so he tried to keep it simple. And you certainly can't expect a person placed in a stressful and unfamiliar situation to give perfectly tuned responses to optimize their outcome.
And, to be the devil's advocate, if I was EvilGenius, I would test security in a dry run in a fashion similar to this. Have someone get residue on their clothing, and see how the authorities responded. The sad thing is that EvilGenius would learn that the authorities are bumbling fools that make Barney Fife look like a model LE agent.
On an offbeat note, this reminds me of the only time I've ever been thoroughly patted down at an airport. It was in Shreveport and during a weekday, with very little foot traffic. I was with a friend who looks like the classical all-American girl and me, well, I'm a minority but a "Golden Minority" (being facetious about that term, not serious...). Anyway, the TSA people were very nice about pulling us aside and patting us down and nominally going through our stuff. I thought it was weird but then I looked behind us and saw a woman and child, both dressed in hijab, who subsequently also received the full pat-and-search routine.
I was going to joke about how you must not have grown up in the 80s-90s, but doing a Google search just now, I see that I might have used the wrong term...
The better known term is "model minority," in which Asians, in America, were held up as what minorities should be like: smart, hard-working, non-confrontational to the status quo:
I swear "golden minority" was also a common term, because Asian-Americans were perceived as achieving toward high-pay professions (doctors, engineers, etc) and, well, we're also referred to as "yellow"...but there seem to be very usages of "golden minority" and Asian
Well, you are still kind of lucky. If you come from so-called "developing countries" or middle east don't even think about going to Europe or USA. The attitudes are almost the same besides US having better devices and more officers.
i'm form the middle east. i go to europe and USA often. although i was patted down twice in the US, one random check and the other for no apparent reason that i describe in another comment here (which was hilarious by the way), the worst experience was going to Netherlands, at the final check point the officer looked at my passport, asked me what i was coming for, and then gave me a disgusted look and handed me the passport back. That was really awful. I had so much fun there though the people were exceptionally welcoming. i would highly recommend middle easterners to travel as much as they can, safely of course.
That's false. I am from a so called 'developing country' and and lived in Europe (lived in UK and Germany, travelled around lots of countries) for more than 7 years. In no way did I felt as bad as the original post. Moreover, there's no way to compare the security theater in the US (take your picture, hand digits and questioning) with the approaches in Europe (sheesh, even in Germany when I go stopped by some kind of officer during my entry to the country once... even counting for the fact that my German was very limited... imagine that in the US).
For the lawyers out there, this sounds like an excellent business opportunity. 20-minute legal emergency response to people in trouble at the security checkpoint. Could assist directly with regards to asserting rights, filing suits if the passengers' rights have been violated and extracting every dime that can legally be extracted from airlines that involuntarily re-book passengers.
Sorry that you had to go through this, and thank you for the very well-written account of how this ordeal looked first-hand.
It would be nice if there were some sort of dead man's switch functionality in-case phone access was denied. I'm not sure exactly how this would work, but I think it's an interesting idea.
Use GPS and cell tower tracking to determine if you are inside an airport. If you are inside for longer than X minutes, send a message to selected people stating that.
People sometimes spend much more time in airports than they'd like to for legitimate, non-interrogative reasons.
Perhaps take into account authenticated activity, or lack thereof? Activate this special functionality when you anticipate possible issues (e.g. going through airport security) and you've got a timer waiting on some element from Action Set Y to occur every X minutes before notifying emergency contact(s) Z, specified previously.
Not true at all! My rep. is very kind and does actually listen to her constituents. I won't say the same for my senators but my rep is pretty level headed and listens to her constituents.
Also, your apathy is what is causing the problem! Get out there! VOTE! Talk to your elected officials. Absent you, the lobbyists and mountebanks out there sure will. Monopolize your rep.'s time. You matter! You count! Act like it!
Sad but lets not make the mistake of thinking this is limited to the United States. It's how most governments respond to what they feel, correctly or not, are security threats.
I'm of indian origin as well and was traveling in India a few years ago. At the time, in response to the Mumbai attacks, the government had instituted a requirement for non Indian nationals to require permission to re enter the country should they leave within 2 months. I found this out when I arrived, as I was scheduled to travel to another Asian country and return within a week. While traveling, I visited the Indian embassy and sat in the commissioners office while he was on the phone and, later, while he was purchasing bananas from a vendor visiting his office. He took my passport and told me to return the next day- which screwed up my trip- but I did it. After my visit was complete I went back to India. When leaving India for the US, they noticed I had left the country within 2 months. I pointed out I received permission from the local embassy. They then claimed upon return to India I should have registered with a local government agency. I explained I didn't know this, no one had told me. They removed me
from my flight. I checked into a hotel and the following business day went to the agency. When it was my turn, they asked for copies of where I was staying, who my local relatives were, copies of their passports, copies of their electric bills - fortunately I had a uncle who helped me and sweet talked them a bit. I got a permission booklet, that night tried to rebook my flight, but nothing was available on my airline all week. I had to return to work, so i spent $800 and bought a one way ticket on another airline.
Maybe not as humiliating as what this poor guy had to go through, but my point is, governments can act incredibly irrationally in response to security threats. I realize the need to keep its citizens secure - but when they claim they don't want the terrorists to win, one has to wonder if they haven't, in fact, actually won already by slowly decimating our democracy.
I went through the same BS about not registering myself.
The system is incredibly bureaucratic and frustrating. But on the other hand, you never really threatened.
Flying from France back into the states through customs in Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport was the worst experience I've had with TSA.
First of all, a woman who was supposed to be managing the maze of lines tried to take my passport from my hand when I wasn't looking. I held it tight as she attempted to pull it away from me and she was clearly mad, yelling "I'm trying to help you!"
In line for the body scanner I was pulled aside for one of the random pat-downs. I didn't think about it at the time but it could've easily been the TSA employee who tried to take my passport form my hand.
The employee who was supposed to be giving the pat down was obviously reluctant to do it and asked me 4 times if I was okay with being touched inappropriately. I agreed 4 times, it took him 10 minutes to actually start giving me the pat down.
While I was being patted down another employee asked me if the bag that went through the scanner was mine. I said yes.
He began removing my clothes and charge cords and a few items I had purchased in France, and spreading them out on a table away from me.
I told him to stop and he asked why. I said I didn't want him to go through my belonging while I wasn't there and he didn't respond, but stepped away from the table.
After the pat down I re-assembled my luggage and continued boarding the plane. Just as I was about to leave security the officer came and put his hand on my shoulder and said that I "wasn't done with the security procedure yet."
He said I had to stand back from the table while he removed the items from my bag which I had just put back in. Apparently he removed my laptop and set it in one of the item-scanner bins at the end of the conveyor belt. He took 15 minutes to go through my bag, put everything back inside and sent me on my way.
Just before boarding I noticed my laptop had not been placed back in my bag. I darted back to security where the previous staff had been replaced by all-new employees. I spent the next 30 minutes trying to get them to dig through bins to find my MacBook, which was buried in a stack on the other side of security.
Wow this is shocking... I think a lot of this is probably related to the issues that the "bullshit jobs" article that was up on HN earlier this week ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6236478 ) covered. A pithy quote I heard from someone earlier this week seems to ring true here:
If Al Qaeda’s plan was to cause a massive overreaction that would destroy the very idea of America from within: wow, good plan.
I couldn't even finish reading it - The fact that someone is being questioned about what their religion is, is not something I would expect in the land of the free. I'm not religious at all, but if someone in authority asked me my religion just to make sure that I'm not one of 'those people', it would piss me off to no end.
The problem here is that he set off the explosives detectors. Regardless of what color skin he had or what religion they thought he was, the second he did that, repeatedly, he was in for a lot of questioning.
I'm sure that there is a common way to make explosives with pesticides, but it's more common to use pesticides to kill pests. Right? The sensors obviously create false positives in most cases I'd expect.
Giving people water should be a bare minimum requirement in any interrogation.
If you're going to go through that much trouble, the Colorado School of Mines does a high-speed photography workshop every so often. You are photographing explosives of various types. I would imagine clothes worn during the workshop would be very interesting to airport scanners with a bonus of learning about high-speed photography.
This story had nothing to do with Islam/Muslims/Ramadan, but for reasons only known to the author, he has implicated every bit of his story and ordeal to Muslims. This is just amazing.
If they denied you water for 18 hours, you have a lawsuit. Get hold of a lawyer.
What I can't understand is why they were so motivated that they had people doing leg work - they had field agents check you out, go to your apartment. That's a lot of effort in contrast to an electronic trawl of your records.
You must have really scared them. I really wonder what chemical it was that showed up on the sensor...
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.
Thank you thank you thank you thank you so much for writing this comment.
I had no idea that this blog post would blow up the way it has, reaching far more people than I ever thought. I originally wrote it with people like you in mind - people who know me personally, and otherwise would never have realized that someone they know personally was affected by our policies like this.
The post was really difficult to write - I didn't want to have to relive that experience again just to put it onto the page - but seeing a comment like this makes it worth it.
I saw the title earlier today and didn't read it, but then when it later had so many comments I figured it was important. I was pretty shocked when I recognized the picture and github username. I'm really glad that you did write it, and I'm glad that I could make it worthwhile for you :)
I am a Muslim, and I share openly my thoughts on religion, faith, and related subjects. I frankly do not mind being singled out (once in a while) because I am Muslim as long as it is it is not assumed from the beginning that I am guilty.
What I have a problem with is people assuming someone is already guilty because they are Muslim, or Black, or White, or Hindu, or short, or Blonde. When you are start there it becomes a struggle for one person to prove they are innocent and it rarely ends well because from the get go it is set for someone to be wrong as opposed to both parties getting to the truth.
I was once asked by a FBI agent to meet and answer questions, which I did happily and readily. He was very polite, and more importantly, he started with an explanation of the situation and why he had to ask questions, we had a chat, and that was the last time I heard about it.
This is one of the best written accounts I have read in a very long time, the ending is just beyond belief, but in this climate I'd say totally believable. It says to me one thing so clearly that has been somewhat lost in all of this:
WE MAY HAVE STOPPED TERRORIST ATTACKS BUT THE TERRORISTS DEFINITELY WON.
I realized on the drive home that if we could sneak a sed script into the tools used to write appropriation bills in Congress, and had it swap budget allocation for NSA and NASA (only one letter difference!) next year we could be looking at half a dozen space stations and a base on the moon!
Some of those enablers are posting in this very thread. Instead of feeling shocked and even somewhat embarrassed at the state of their nation, they denigrate the author's ordeal - minimizing his trauma, denying his mental recall, and ultimately blaming him for causing a TSA test to issue a false positive... all while ignoring the common courtesy that should have been afforded to the accused. Give the guy a drink of water. Treat him with respect. Get him on another flight. Notify him that you searched his apartment.
Regarding the last part, have you asked if your landlord (or someone on their behalf) entered your apartment? For a newly rented out apartment, they may have had some kind of work to do or something to check over, and since you were away, may have just let themselves in.
Every time I visited the US I was subject to so called "secondary" checks that looked more like interrogation, so I understand the author's feeling very well. Last time I was denied entry at all. I'm just a regular remote IT contractor living in Canada who happened to have a passport of an Eastern European country. I don't want to come to the US anymore because of this humiliating experience of crossing the US border. I'd better focus on serving customers in Canada. Canada feels much more like a country for people .
For at least a decade, but more markedly so in the last eighteen months or so, I can't get on the Internet without seeing a story like this. Authorities of all sorts ignore any laws they feel like to provide the appearance of security against threats that usually don't exist in the first place. Revelations in technology that show absolutely nothing is secure unless you are manually rolling dice to construct one-time pad keys, and god help you if you try to store them on a post-2000 PC. I'm coming steadily closer to panic, as a citizen, as a technology professional, and as a human being. What can we do? No rational discussion of this ever takes place, both online and off, because of the hordes of comments insisting that the US will NEVER be as bad as a real authoritarian regime NO MATTER WHAT, and the equally radical comments that we are already WORSE than the USSR. So far as I am convinced, there is nothing an individual can do. This is a Big Problem, and going back over history texts, political activism only solves about one Big Problem per decade. So, for the sake of argument, I ask we suspend whatever structural beliefs we have. Assume, for this comment thread, that the current decline into a rightless police state will continue unabated, only stopped by the random sudden social upheaval that, without fail, takes place sooner or later. What can an individual do to be safe, or feel safe? Anything? Or is the only option to shut up, take our Xanax, and live with the Cold War-esque existential fear that you could be violated or killed at any time just because an agent doesn't like your ethnicity/choice of cleaning supplies/fact that you work in technology?
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.
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.
I took a look at the ID and calmly pointed out that it said “August 2013” in big letters on the ID, and that the numbers “8/10” meant “August 10th, 2013”, not “August, 2010”. I added, “See, even the expiration sticker says 2013 on it above the date”. He studied the ID again for a moment, then walked out of the room again, looking a little embarrassed.
People have some funny ideas about the "explosive detector" machine. It can rightly be called an "explosive detector" in exactly the same sense that the TSA clown who takes everyone's regular-sized liquid containers and throws them away can be called an "explosive detector."
There might be an explosive there, but there almost always isn't, and the whole thing is for show.
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?
Hindu guy here. I'm sure I'll be buried but the last time I opted out of a millimeter wave scan, I was also tested for explosives. I did set it off multiple times and was taken to the back room for a private screening. I was held in there, questioned for ten minutes, then I was on my way. I have not opted out since.
As others have said, horribly misleading title. It has nothing to do with Ramadan! How about don't fly when you have some weird chemical on you that sets off airport security.
What's happening? Where is the Hacker News I knew? I have up-voted at least 4 grayed-out comments that were opposing the prevalent view (that TSA is pure tyranny, an US government by extension) but nothing our of the ordinary - people contributing their opinion to the conversation.
While I personally don't agree with some of those who were grayed-out, I agree with this sentiment.
Thing is, I sometimes want to know how many people disagree with a comment. I almost wish there were thumbs up/down icons to signify how many people agree with a comment, separate from the downvote/up system that indicates if a comment is off-topic or has no content.
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.
I didn't make the assumptions I am guessing what assumptions they made and what assumption he thinks they made about him.
Read the blog again and then my comment what show which one of those horrible assumptions I made. Those are guess of why he was profiled more than he should have been. If you look closely all the sentences start with "They suspected" not "I think he has brown skin and thus is a terrorist".
I've had this happen to me before as well, but in Australia, and the similarities and differences are interesting.
I set off the explosive scanner for TNT when flying to see my family at Christmas (and was told straight away what I was found positive for). Was immediately taken into another room with my carry-on, and had my checked-in luggage located and brought in as well.
A lot of things were very similar - I had the full pat down, the numerous questions, and everything was looked over. However they did it all just once. They took everything out of my bag and it was full of Christmas presents, which they then wanted to open, but I persuaded them to put them through the X-ray scanner still wrapped.
I also had a 'guard' watching over me and making sure I didn't leave, and multiple people coming in to ask me questions and verify my answers.
In the end they were able to X-ray all my stuff to their satisfaction, re-checked my bag, and I was was on my way in about 20-30 minutes.
They never did figure out why I set it off btw, and it's never happened again. Very strange.
The thing that sticks out to me from the experience, was how on alert everyone got once the explosive detector went off. Suddenly everyone was _very_ uneasy and wary of me, especially when it came up positive a second time.
So although I think the recent incident was poorly handled, I do understand to some extent the measures in place - i.e. being taken away to another room to be checked, having all their stuff looked over, etc.
And although it seems nuts they didn't let him leave, if he did show positive for explosives then what else should they have done? It's a difficult problem - surely they are compelled to investigate him if that happens?
Does anyone know if it would even be legal to search his place while he was away btw? Surely not, since he checked out and they were happy to let him go.
And how ridiculous Jet Blue denied him boarding (and yet were happy to let him board the next day!)
I get the feeling that we need public defenders in all airports and at borders. The complete lack of an adversarial process there is downright dangerous.
It sounds like the phone was nearby during this entire inexcusable ordeal. Too bad it wasn't recording the entire time.
The names of everybody involved in detaining or interviewing or interrogating should be released and they should explain from their point of view.
How can we stop the TSA from thinking religious boom boom terrorism is a real thing in the US when it obviously isn't?
[Sidenote: I've had the "uncontrollable shaking without being cold" thing before too (due to lack of food). It's really bad. Only solution is to eat something immediately. The shakes should go away within 30 seconds. I imagine if you let them continue for more than a few minutes, you'll collapse/blackout/seize/Something Bad™.]
Oh for crying out loud. A well-nourished human body can go for between a week and a month without food. Nothing bad would have happened to his health (he stated he is not diabetic) after a day or so without eating.
It was probably because of the inexcusable treatment and stress that he received. That is more than enough to be angry about, no need to make stuff up.
I find similarities between this incident and the interrogation technique of the secret police in East Berlin. I learned about this in a movie I watched a few days back- "The Lives of Others" or "Das Leben der Anderen" (2006). The secret police used to detain people and question them repeatedly for many hours while forcing them to sit on lie detectors with their palm faced down under their thigh. Under pressure, innocent people would start to answer different versions to the same questions, while suspected revolutionists would keep narrating the same 'stories'. I think sooner or later every government starts acting the same way. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Great movie! But those were not lie detectors they were pads to collect sweat.
Those were put in jars, cataloged, and saved for later. They would be used in hunting someone down using dogs. It basically saved their scent and then years later if they want to find you and you are running way they could bring in the K-9 unit.
I'm a random American white guy with an insulin pump. I (my pump) set off the explosives detector once. They took me into a back room, closed the door, patted me down twice, took all my bags apart and swabbed EVERY single item (like 60+ things) and ran them through the detector. After none of them set it off, the guy say "That was weird, go ahead" and I left.
Given my anecdote and the OP's anecdote the racial and religious profiling aspect of things is clear. Also, the TSA's willful ignorance of just a few basic religious details that I (and presumably any other educated person) learned by simply paying attention and reading, is chilling.
slightly tangential, but I wonder how they would/could treat sterile medical equipment (insulin vials, syringes, epi-pens, etc).
It's not something that's exactly conducive to hasty disassembly and swab analysis.
I suppose the paranoid approach would be to confiscate it on any suspicion, and require you to purchase/be credited with 'certified' replacements post-security, although I'm sure there are exotic things that would be tricky to get everywhere.
Sigh, it's this hard even being a citizen and resident of the country. As a former international student, and now just living here and working (and soon to be booted because...immigration laws), this experience is so commonplace whenever interacting with the government it's not even funny. These topics on HN are commonly discussions about curbed American freedom under the government.
But there's a significant topic of interest for people all around the world when the (arguably) most powerful nation decided to stop playing Mr. Nice Guy with even its own citizens, and what that could mean for the rest of us.
I have pretty much stopped traveling except out of necessity (I cut down from 12 flights a year till 2011 to 1 flight in 2 years since) because of the huge hassle and strain security can become. Imagine what it was like when my (Indian) passport had Arabic stamps on it because it was issued in Oman (where I lived before I came here). I'm not even religious, but I was so often picked for "random checking" the booth probably knew me by name.
What bothers me more than the inconvenience and trauma this causes for people like me and the OP (although that bothers me a lot), is the massive waste of resources this form of civilian harassment is -- at least 7 officers were involved shuttling documents of some guy going on vacation for 4+ hours. All because of their (grossly incorrect, at that) racial profiling, lack of cultural knowledge, and general fear of people who don't look like themselves. Geez.
This is just disgusting. I feel terrible just reading it. Like I'm invading this person's privacy simply by bearing witness to his pain at the hands of these imbeciles.
What I don't understand: If you are detained for several hours, why don't people call a lawyer? Why did he speak to the police (end even the FBI!) without legal counsel?
Alright. It was a genuine question - ok, they said you weren't detained at the beginning, but the moment you were forbidden to use the phone and the door was guarded you effectively were. I'm just surprised that didn't trigger the "I want a lawyer/I will leave now" impulse. But I admit to not having been in the same situation myself, especially not in a dangerous country like the USA.
The symptoms you described are most probably caused by an extreme low blood-sugar level - combined with the stress of the situation, you were close to collapsing. Or it was simply shock, dangerous as well. I was glad when not reading about that collapse.
Edit: Just to make that clear - the situation wasn't your fault regardless, didn't want to imply that (just realized one could interpret my comments that way). Absolutely unacceptable treatment by both the airline and the police.
It sounds like the best course of action is to just have an attorney present if a situation like this happens again. You knew you were being detained, no matter what the authorities said. As far as I know, there are no provisions anywhere that forbid you from having a lawyer present when and wherever you want.
I often see "have an attorney present" arguments, but they make me wonder - can you really afford to have an attorney on retainer if you're not independently wealthy? Or is it as simple as calling a plumber and asking them to come over?
Should I shop for an attorney and keep their contact information with me just in case I might need one?
Will the attorney be willing to come over at a moment's notice if I've never used their services before?
I suspect it is like any market. Some will be there within the hour, some will need ramp-up time. However, regardless of the attorney, I would suspect that any criminal defense lawyer would be able to effectively navigate the particular situation at hand. If it were me, I would tell them they can arrest me and charge me, or let me on my way. I would be shocked if the results of this finicky machine are admissible in court (given that polygraph results are not). Does anyone know whether or not that is the case?
It's easy to say that in retrospect, but at the time I would probably think that the questions will end in just a few minutes and I'll get on your flight eventually... So why involve a lawyer and make this an even bigger deal.
Not on speed-dial, but I would not need too many calls to get one.
In that situation, you don't need to have him on speed dial. It's enough to stop talking and demanding one and you have to be given the opportunity to call one (in my country including internet access for research) - it was my understanding the the US justice system has the same rules.
Seeing where the airline operates and since I'm not in US, I won't have a chance to boycott the airline. However, if I ever get a chance to travel to/out of US(which is bound to happen), Jet Blue will not be my airline of choice.
If my friends happen to have to use an airline, I will let them know what I've heard of the airline, and suggest them to find an alternative. That's pretty much it. It's not much, but I won't forget the name Jet Blue.
As a TSA officer if a person/his baggage sets off an explosive detector alarm, I think I wont let him fly until I am fully convinced that he is traveling with no malicious intent. How soon and how well I get convinced will depend on how competent I am at my job. Clearly the officers that handled this person were incompetent, unsympathetic and ignorant. That is a different problem altogether nothing related to freedom.
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.
The greatest damage done by 9/11 was not the actual destruction of the towers and the deaths of all those people, but the (sadly predictable) reaction of our government, particularly the Patriot Act, the creation of the TSA and the Dept. of Homeland Security, and the emboldening of the NSA, CIA, FBI, and the NYPD.
Exactly. Even a couple of nights ago, I had a dream about going through airport security on my return trip (even though I returned over a week and a half ago, with no problem).
That makes sense. Most of my traumatic memories have been of events that have literally lasted a few seconds, but I can see how the same effect could happen for a longer one.
Guess I should count myself lucky I don't have those!
Yes, they're called flashbulb memories and they feel 'stronger' and more detailed than other memories. People assume that they're therefore accurate, but really, they're no more accurate than other memories.
In fact, the repeated recall can cause them to become distorted over time.
If you want to preserve a memory, write it down immediately while it is fresh. Don't trust that an old memory is accurate.
Wikipedia says the difference between flashbulb memories and traumatic memories is stress, and that there is "a shortage on studies regarding personal events such as accidents or trauma".
Memory is a funny thing. You don't recall a snap shot of all the details at once. You start telling a story and during the playback of the memories you'll be able to recall deep details.
Reading On Intelligence really solidified my thoughts on how memory (probably) works.
If you were in a similar situation, would you not try to mentally note as many details as possible? Especially if something came of it, you would want to remember as much as possible about the cops who interrogated you, what they asked, etc.
"Oh Beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain..."
What has happened to my beautiful country? The one that I learned about in 2nd grade, the one that always gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling, the one that I was proud of even before I knew what 'proud' meant. Where is that dreamy land?
In a way, we do it to ourselves. We elect officials that are 'tough on crime' that support enormous police forces. We empower the police state (not just the police but the gov't at large) out of fear. People in this country need to grow a pair. One of my friends actually said something to the effect of, "No, I don't care if the NSA searches through my private stuff, so long as it makes me safer." Mr. Franklin would've had a word with that young lady. Unfortunately that sentiment prevails a large number of people.
The way they treated him is appalling. Even if he was Muslim, this shouldn't have happened! I travel a lot and have seen things like this happen before my eyes in the UK and Australia. People that look slightly ethnic and taken aside and "randomly" stopped.
EDIT: Sorry for the typo.
I actually tried turing testing chatbots a while ago (chatterbot, jabberwacky, etc.) to see if they've improved. No, they don't pass even remotely, and they all get very offended when you suggest they've failed (Chatterbot quote "Are you insulting me?"). Chatbots have a terrible temper.
Agreed. I tried having a conversation with Chatterbot, I asked it a question and it replied "Do you listen to the sounds", then I said what sounds and it replied "I am not a guy". Chatterbot basically spouts random responses its gotten, from a database.
The fact that they refused to give him any water stuns me the most. Is this really not illegal in the US? Is this not considered a torture? Is this not so obvious abuse of power that the huge media scandal is assured? Is this not the thing that officials who do that to the detained person lose their job or even go to jail for? Because I believe that in my country all of those would be true. How can any country in which all of those are not true call itself "the land of free"?
EDIT: People are discussing here whether or not the US is on their way to became an oppressive regime. I don't understand that. In my book if the country allows this kind of behaviour of their officials and if I understand the word 'oppression' correctly... it already is an oppressive regime. Simple as that.
It's sickening to hear that you had to go through such experiences. Funny that the 'default' scanner technology didn't set off any alarms. Many of these policies just seem to provide the sense that we're safer, rather than actually do anything to remove real dangers.
Aditya, if you're reading this: the next time a TSA agent threatens to call the cops, let them. If you hadn't made any outbursts, you haven't broken any laws.
Plus they'd be calling REAL cops. Ones that have to enforce and abide by real laws or actually face consequences.
I think it's pretty clear that this whole thing could've been avoided if you went through the normal security screening process that everyone else normally obliges to do. On the other hand, what happened to you is sick and disturbing. I really found the way they treated you disgusting and I'm sorry you had to go through that.
I also think that your title is misleading and mildly offensive. Ramadan is a holy month, and more so a time of peace (although it's a time of peace every part of the year). I doubt this wouldn't have happened to you if it had been a few weeks earlier or later. I don't think it's right of you to say this only happened because it was during Ramadan that you coincidentally decided to fly.
Clearly misleading title. What does it have to do with Ramadan/Muslims. You are just trying to create a bad effect. I think clearly this is a publicity stunt. What did you get from writing this? Happiness? Stop hurting other's sentiments.
This story seems at odds with the idea that the NSA collects massive amounts of data about everyone, or at least with the idea that it is capable of making use of that data, by sorting and qualifying it properly.
If the NSA needs to know so much about people to protect us from terrorists, why did the TSA, NYPD and FBI have to ask this guy these questions? Shouldn't one telephone call to the NSA have resulted in 'no known risks'?
Of course, putting on my tinfoil hat, this may be on purpose. A few such incidents may be necessary to give us the idea that they are in the dark. The entire thing may have been a charade, caused by the 'telephone call' not helping out.
Bin Laden promised us that "America will not be able to dream of security until we live in security in Palestine." The TSA and NSA are making Bin Laden's dream come true. Our overreaction to Bin Laden is causing more harm than Bin Laden did. Bin Laden killed 3000 Americans, but more Americans -- over 4000 -- were killed in the Iraq war. We also did ourselves a lot of economic harm, having spent close to a trillion dollars on the Iraq war alone. Spurred by Bin Laden, we are doing this to ourselves. And I am not even counting the over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed in the war and the damage to goodwill towards Americans.
Not that anyone should be treated like this, but I suspect they literally don't even know the difference (or even that there is) between Hinduism and Islam. If you're gonna profile, at least know your freaking religions!
Sounds like it's a good idea to invest in a good alarm system and video tape entrance. This way you'd at least know if they had entered without a warrant.
Camera would need to back-up to something remote though, and notify you quickly.
I feel terrible that this happened to the author and his experience clearly shows the incompetence of the government bureaucratic agencies - no water?! that is outrageous! I wish I could say that this will not happen again (to him or others), but the truth is that it probably will. Perhaps one positive aspect of this horror story is that the author has shared this with everyone and hopefully this can help educate people for positive change. I felt chills reading the author's anecdote and I am astonished by his courage and composure; I don't know if I'd be able to handle it myself.
He reliably set off the chemical detectors. We can assume that earns anyone additional scrutiny.
So the claim here seems to be that he received too much additional scrutiny because of his background. This certainly seems plausible, but he's not the first person to miss their plane due to the TSA either.
But unless we know how people of other backgrounds are scrutinized after they set off the chemical detectors are traveling alone, we can't conclude that he was racially or religiously profiled.
Even still, this is a substantially reduced claim and none of it really supports the conclusion "Don't fly during Ramadan".
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.
Terrorism (by Muslims) doesn't increase around Ramadan. Ramadan is the worst time for extremists to do anything. Ramadan for Muslims is a time of spirituality, being with family, and discipline. While that may not be across the board, being thirsty and hungry makes all activity more difficult, and that applies to all - especially during the 17+ hour fasts while Ramadan is in the summer.
Makes me sad about what happened to the author, but Ramadan has very little (if anything) to do with it.
so? Question was how in his case it was related to Ramadan? he was beeping for explosives, he wanted a pat down, he wanted answers.
Was he questioned initially because he didn't eat any thing or was going on religious trip or was brown or anything related to muslims or Ramadan? NO
He should have said don't fly when you touch bug spray/ insecticides and want a pat down. The title should be around the context and its not the case here.
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.
I once moved into an apartment with bed bugs. So this is what I learned:
- at least in Germany you cannot buy bed bug spray in a regular store
- if you have bed bugs, it's recommended to contact an exterminator that will cost you hundreds (or even thousands)
- you can still buy spray against bed bugs. The warning sign on the spray is one level below "explosive". As you can imagine, the stuff you get in the store says that you mustn't use it indoors.
Sorry mate, not sure which Spray Brand you used, but using bed bug spray is really dangerous.
You say that the TSA, FBI etc. are ignorant. You are ignorant too by not reading the spray bottles you use.
Whether it's the NSA or the TSA, the American public is finally getting a glimpse at how shockingly little freedom our laws actually afford us. For every protection we think we have, there is a gaping exception that can be invoked by virtually any government employee that feels like it. The US government of 2013 essentially can and will do anything it wants, when it wants, with very little resistance from the courts, the public, or politicians. Sadly, I'm not sure that the political will exists to fix any of it.
At least 2 billion people in the world would instantly know that "Mukerjee" is not remotely a Muslim name. And yet the FBI doesn't.
That's our problem right there, at home and abroad: Total and complete lack of cultural knowledge among the (US-born, mostly white) folks in our security and military forces.
Of course, in this individual case (which does not excuse their behavior) he could have made everyone's life easier by just saying "I am not Muslim, I want a BLT" since that was obviously their suspicion.
I feel so sorry for this guy and I just think that I would rather 'risk' dying in a terrorist attack while flying with him than live in a society that needs do this to some random guy in order to feel safe. I get that they need to be careful when something triggers explosive detector alarm... but this? Pressuring the guy for hours without water which I would not be afraid to call a torture? Is that really necessary?
At what point does reasonable safety turn into cowardly society?
I was reading that whole story waiting for a punchline. He repeatedly set off the explosives sniffer while trying to go through airport security, and speculates that someone searched his place while he was away.
And?
I'd imagine that repeatedly setting off a bomb detector would be probable cause for a warrant to search his place. I'm not sure what the "is" is here, other than it's a major hassle caused by a screening machine throwing a false positive, which machines inevitably do.
Really? Are you serious? Even if he set off those detectors, which are evidently broken, doesn't he have to be treated with minimal courtesy as a human? They could've even just started off with listing some household items that could set it off. Does a broken machine warrant psychological warfare techniques? And if you're even able to justify that, where do these techniques stop? Should he have also been waterboarded and forced to drink crude oil, you know just to see if he'll break? All this despite being 'American'. The pain and mental anguish one goes through when this happens will only be apparent once it happens to you.
And? And they stole a religiously significant item, letting him know he's not safe at home -- without knowing whether it was law enforcement or a robber.
This happened to me - because of incense. Specifically, the Nag Champa in the Red box (not the blue box). It is super good stuff, but the machine does not like it too much.
A tech company I worked for a while back wanted to send me to the States, and also China to do some work. I refused on both requests because of stories like this I've heard.
I just tell them it's because of family commitments, which is always a handy excuse.
Other countries I would never go to are Russia, Saudi Arabia, UAE and pretty much anywhere in Africa. It's pretty sad actually, but I guess I'm way too paranoid.
About 6 months ago, I had the explosives detector at SFO flag me as suspect after a random pat-down. What followed was a second, slightly more thorough, pat-down and a very thorough search of my carry-on. It all took about 15 minutes, and the TSA staff were nothing but friendly throughout the procedure.
Whenever you fly, keep two things in mind: 1) the TSA staff are mostly just doing their job, and 2) not all of them are assholes.
Those two arguments can be applied for practically any profession.
If you are mentioning them as offset to the issue at hand, they are no comfort to people who are subject to racial profiling/harassment (or to people who condemn such actions).
There is already an A/B experiment of sort being run on ability of the "chemical detectors". There are lots of airports outside of US that do not have these capabilities. If there is no statistical difference between the terrorist attack incidence directly from the said chemicals then it would be an interesting data point to add to the study of security theatre.
Although the author had a horrible experience, it has nothing to do it with Ramadan. Beside, there is no mention of Ramadan by TSA agent to him except a silly question/example about Hinduism. So the title is very presumptuous: "this happened to me because I've tried to fly in Ramadan" which is as bad as TSA agent's state of mind.
I linked to Flex Your Rights[0] in the blog post. They have two great videos (both available for free on Youtube) about dealing with police encounters.
Unfortunately, the TSA are not police officers, and so you don't have the same rights as you do when dealing with police officers. (Notice how the police officers refused to be present during the pat-down - I didn't mention this in the article, but the cops stepped out of the room every time the TSA officers patted me down).
If anybody has a good, analogous resource for dealing with TSA and the FBI, I would love to know.
Yes, that's a very helpful link. Will keep an eye out for a TSA-related version of this and speak with some lawyer friends.
Thanks for the excellent writeup of your experience, though I'm sorry you had to go through it in the first place. As someone who is also brown-skinned and from a Hindu family and who has been singled out for many "random" screenings, I've dreaded the chance of this sort of interrogation happening, every time I've flown since 9/11.
Regarding this line: "The shaking motion was entirely involuntary, and I couldn’t force my limbs to be still, no matter how hard I concentrated."
... I think that's adrenaline. Fight or flight instinct. Next time, ask your doctor about beta blockers, or ask your bartender about a double-shot of liquor.
Well this story vaguely reminds me of post communist Romania where all newly freed government agencies were fucking with people however they wanted.
And I can tell you now it wasn't any ordinary governmental agency that searched his apartment it was the CIA or NSA.
As a critical issue: there needs to be a mobile app, which upon opening, immediately begins live recording of video and audio to a remote server/s and posts them on vimeo/YouTube/etc.
It's unfortunate he went through that, but I thought it was common sense that if you opt out of the scanner they are going to put your through the wringer. So I wouldn't call what happened unexpected.
We are only getting one side of the story here.
Would love to hear it from the other side.
I think if one swabbed positive for explosives in a triage
you could expect something like this in or out of Ramadan.
Much of the misunderstanding, I imagine, is that people who have never worked in a lab, such as these TSA employees, think that 'swabbed positive' means 'touched explosives'.
These quick tests just use a reagent that reacts with a part of a molecule. In the case of an explosives test, I imagine it responds to molecules with a -NO2 group. That could be TNT or any of a thousand perfectly innocent, harmless substances. A test that tests for the whole molecule, with a smaller (but still non zero) chance of a false positive, would be too expensive and take too long for a situation like this.
If you're just testing average people, the chance of a false positive is orders of magnitude more likely than a real positive.
I've been through special security checks, inspections, etc. Last year I was carrying something my parents sent me, TSA asked me to take it out, and ran chemical tests on it. I said do whatever you want with it, and was nice to them. They in turn were nice to me, and allowed me to carry it on the plane, while I was ready to throw it away if they didn't want it on the plane. Maybe its just me, but this guy just had the wrong attitude through the initial part of the process. I feel sorry for what happened to him later.
things like these and also those similar to having googled words such as "pressure cooker" and "bomb" at some point on my machine in the US and being thwarted by a SWAT team at some point, really scares some one to even be in the US because he would have all the convincing signs like a beard, being a Muslim and might actually have to fast.
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 the same situation.
Yes, they talked about Ramadan and his situation, and where the parking lot is around his house, and none of this should be surprising to anyone. They're using conversation to try to determine whether he's lying, gaps in his story, nervousness, and so on. Any single person they talk to will get a conversation that is individualized to the person. Reading too much into it may be misleading.
This isn't intended to defend the TSA (universally reviled), or any of the other agencies, but repeatedly setting off an explosion detector is 95% of this story. The rest is just surrounding decorations.
My bags have set off the explosives detector before, twice. (In both cases, due a heart medication that apparently triggers false positives). I was not taken into a back room or interrogated for hours. They searched me and my bags in more detail, asked some questions, and concluded it must have been a false positive. The experience took about 15 minutes each time.
This was a few years back, but I don't recall if it was post-9/11 or not. It seems like even setting off a detector doesn't, alone, justify the extreme reaction the authorities took in the author's case.
If you set off a gas chromatograph for nitroglycerine and then say you have heart tablets then you'll be fine. He obviously set off a specific trigger AND couldn't account for it (although they clearly tried to get him to).
Back in the 70s or 80s a group of friends in Britain were sentenced for participating in a terrorist act because they set off an explosive test. They spent years in prison before it was determined that it was a false positive caused by the coating of a popular brand of playing card.
> If you set off a gas chromatograph for nitroglycerine and then say you have heart tablets then you'll be fine. He obviously set off a specific trigger AND couldn't account for it (although they clearly tried to get him to).
That isn't what that line of interrogation was for. The TSA goons probably don't know anything about chemistry or how their machine works, they were simply trying to rattle him and get him to say something incriminating.
Specifically: when somebody says, several different ways, "why are you setting off my explosive detector?" what you do not want to say is "I don't know! I don't have any explosives!" Because it will elicit a response indicating that nobody was accusing you have of having explosives, why are you being so defensive, etc. etc.
Too bad they couldn't even tell him what set it off, since he clearly did not remember:
"I can’t think of anything. What does it say is triggering the alarm?" I asked.
"I’m not going to tell you! It’s right here on my sheet, but I don’t have to tell you what it is!" he exclaimed, pointing at his clipboard.
Not letting him drink water or whatever is simply inhumane. Not giving him information is simply a judgment call or policy decision. Perhaps it is against policy to reveal which exact molecules their machines react to.
So what you're saying is all I have to do is carry heart tablets and then I can pass nitroglycerine through security? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's more complicated than that. But I can't help but feel that if someone really wanted explosives to get onto a plane then they wouldn't try walking it through passenger security. Or maybe they'd just say the magic words that indicate a false positive and walk straight through.
One time I brought peanut butter in my luggage. It looks like plastic explosive on the scanner so they have to open it and test it. Our teacher actually advocated that we bring it and those 36 packs of AA batteries because they look like plastic explosives and bullets, respectively. He really liked to mess with the TSA.
This was post 9-11, I don't know how we didn't all get arrested.
> (In both cases, due a heart medication that apparently triggers false positives).
Presuming that this was nitroglycerin, then in some sense it's not a false positive at all. It's a dessert wax and a floor topping! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin
I was searched with one around the year 2000, IIRC, at the San Francisco airport. I think it was pretty experimental.
edit: there might have been a similar setup at Orly in France in 1997, come to think of it. The striking thing there was the soldiers with rifles (just 3 of them, but walking around) and the way they searched one of my grandmother's bags when the x-ray showed something that looked like a grenade. (it was glass in a weird shape) They were friendly and had a sense of humor about it, and it didn't slow us down, which all made a big difference.
It was a huge political budget fight in the 90s. Clinton/Gore published a white paper detailing the threat of terrorism as the biggest threat to national security. They called for the fancy new detectors and what-not at airports.
The Republicans, who controlled Congress, said that the big threat was from nukes from unfriendly states (later dubbed 'the axis of evil') didn't permit the funding and instead increased 'Star Wars' funding (anti-missile tech).
Extended explosion swabbing -- and improved and more discrete equipment -- came about after the failed attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 to Detroit in 2009 (an almost tragedy that many quickly forget).
In earlier iterations of spam filters, it would simply prefix the subject with [SPAM], just as explosion detectors caught lots of things and they quickly dismissed them. As it got better it started moving them to a spam folder. Now it simply moves them directly to deleted. Of course the same thing happens with explosion detectors, where initially it picked up many similar compounds, and eventually started getting much more discrete, and the probability that it actually caught something of significance went from "not really" to "might actually be something real".
Traveling in 2013 is not the same as traveling in 2002. Traveling in New York City is not the same as traveling in Austrlia. All of these are factors that influence the probability that technology is a viable input, and the corresponding risk factors.
> Of course the same thing happens with explosion detectors, where initially it picked up many similar compounds, and eventually started getting much more discrete, and the probability that it actually caught something of significance went from "not really" to "might actually be something real".
Unless you've got some hard data on false positives, I don't believe it for a minute. As far as I can tell the equipment's warning value has gone from "almost certainly not explosives" to "almost certainly not explosives."
That doesn't make the equipment useless (well, it might) but it'd be nifty if the people operating it understood its pretty obvious limitations. Remember why we're even having this conversation.
I don't have hard data (the actual details are often considered confidential), but for the marketing claims of the various makers who all trumpet greater selectivity and the rejection of false positives. Which makes sense, as security is a huge, incredibly competitive industry, and these people are all competing for the world's paranoia dollars.
Because the TSA gained nothing wasting their time on this. There are the normal conspiratorial claims among the comments that someone triggered the "brown guy" button just to harass him (again, only someone who has never been near a large North American city could say such a thing), for what? What did the TSA, NYPD, FBI, and whoever else gain from this giant waste of time?
Something triggered on a molecule or taggant that they couldn't easily exclude, so they tried to help him assist them in excluding it. He couldn't, so they had to exhaust all avenues.
Unless they have countless agents and countless rooms, this isn't something they do with any regularity at all.
> I don't have hard data (the actual details are often considered confidential), but for the marketing claims of the various makers who all trumpet greater selectivity and the rejection of false positives. Which makes sense, as security is a huge, incredibly competitive industry, and these people are all competing for the world's paranoia dollars.
Putting aside the merit of the idea of that the government bidding process ends with purchase of the best product, it's worth noting that just like with the government agents, the manufacturer isn't actually liable to anyone who suffers when its machines produce a false positive. Insofar as the manufacturer has any incentive to improve in this regard, its incentive comes from the same people who are putting on this security theater.
> Because the TSA gained nothing wasting their time on this. [blah blah] What did the TSA, NYPD, FBI, and whoever else gain from this giant waste of time?
Not sure why you threw this in here but it's so wrong that it's kind of hard to know where to begin. First, the superficial and obvious: TSA and NYPD are paid overtime. They had MONEY to gain from this exercise. Their financial incentives are exactly opposed to those of the person they are detaining.
Less superficial, perhaps equally obvious: a bureaucracy does stuff because that's the stuff the bureaucracy does. It's a big, mindless machine whose prime directive is to continue to exist. Everyone understands that they need to be seen to be DOING SOMETHING, and there are plenty of true believers who think doing that something is the most important thing in the world. That's the reason for some much of the crud we deal with now.
You might have made the mistake of thinking we're dealing with fully rational actors here. Congratulations if you've never worked for a bureaucracy and you don't get any of this.
> Something triggered on a molecule or taggant that they couldn't easily exclude, so they tried to help him assist them in excluding it. He couldn't, so they had to exhaust all avenues.
So you're anti-government and cynical. Welcome to about 99% of the online community.
There are people who actually want to blow up planes. There have been a number of attempts. These machines detect the things that are found in bombs.
There are a lot of examples of "security theater" (moreso in the private industry, it should be noted, like the ridiculously useless badges and disaffected employees at most office buildings), but explosives material detectors most certainly are not. One day we'll walk down a Total Recall type hall and it will know who we are and everything on or about us, but until then we have some inconveniences.
And groan, good old Orwell makes a cliched showing. Yes, we all read 1984 in grade school. Pulling it out as a trope to anything the government does (even where entirely rational and related to an actual threat, and overwhelming painless and transparent) is boorish internet pundit behavior.
No, you don't get to label me that easily. (why do you want to?) I believe there is a differentiation to be made between good government and bad government. Security services CAN be made to work.
> And groan, good old Orwell makes a cliched showing. Yes, we all read 1984 in grade school.
I was responding to a specific statement of yours which was pretty spectacularly stupid. I'm not saying YOU are stupid, and I think maybe you can get a handle on why it's so creepy and classically Orwellian. Let's examine it:
> Something triggered on a molecule or taggant that they couldn't easily exclude, so they tried to help him assist them in excluding it. He couldn't, so they had to exhaust all avenues.
"They tried to help him assist them in excluding it." They tried to help him assist them. Are you getting it yet? They were just trying to help him! Against his will they detained him and tried to compel him to do something, but they were just trying to help. To help HIM! To help him ASSIST them, why wouldn't he want to assist them? It'd be awfully suspicious if he didn't want to assist them. Every good person likes to help and to assist, am I right?
They tried to force him to solve a problem that they created with their own machine and they weren't going to let him go about his business until he did it. For his own good. In what sense is your take on that - the wording, at least - not Orwellian?
> Pulling it out as a trope to anything the government does (even where entirely rational and related to an actual threat, and overwhelming painless and transparent) is boorish internet pundit behavior.
Since there wasn't an actual threat, and the process wasn't painless, and since I certainly wouldn't and haven't "pulled it out as a trope to anything the government does" it's hard to understand what the heck you're talking about.
I don't think explosion swabbing detectors are operating in a free market: they are built off funds from government contracts. There isn't much reason to expect a similar pace of innovation as for email servers.
Why not? Money is money, after all. The contracts don't say how to do it, they say what to do. There's plenty of room for competition in these types of things, from how to meet the Performance Work Statement all the way to how to setup the internal org. structure to most efficiently handle contract compliance overhead.
>and no one here knows what would happen if John Smith Anglosaxon set off the same detector in the same situation.
We don't have to have direct knowledge of the impossibly specific situation you've constructed. The FBI agent flat out said that it was about his race when he said "a person of your… background".
And explosive detectors are not really there to find bombs. They are there to reduce manual searches. If they just wanted to find bombs, they could just search everyone. Since that is impractical on multiple counts, the explosive detector is valuable because it narrows down the space. Once you have taken the person aside, searched them, searched their stuff, and come up with no additional evidence ("brown" isn't evidence), it's time to let them go.
Finally, this isn't just about racism, but is also about the TSA and the cops being dangerously incompetent bullies. Instead of being polite and decent, they were rude and intimidating. Someone being reluctant and apprehensive under those circumstances is not strong evidence of wrongdoing.
And when they questioned him about the chemicals he had handled, they wouldn't even tell him what they had found. That's the kind of "withholding information" tactic you would use if you were playing the role of a detective without actually having any idea how to investigate. What purpose does it serve? If he were a terrorist, he'd know what chemicals were in his explosives. The only situation where that information is actually a secret is the one where the suspect is innocent.
In other words, they repeatedly created situations that either made guilt indistinguishable from innocence, or where they'd distinguish them inversely. This is, to put it mildly, "poor form".
As much problem as I have with the TSA and this event...
Offering hints as to how a person they do not trust would dissuade their suspicions is a way to guarantee that everyone dissuades their suspicions. It is an information-theoretically invalid way of pursuing an investigation of anything.
The line of questioning is almost entirely useless in the first place, and the way that they will interpret the evidence is likely the opposite of the way it should be interpreted.
Ordinary people know basically nothing about explosives, or what everyday compounds might be explosives. At best they might say "Oh, I did some gardening, so I handled some fertilizer", or "I was at a shooting range yesterday". They might remember a chemical they had read off the label of something they used recently, if it's common enough, so if you told them what you found, they could tell you where they saw it.
Terrorists, on the other hand, are likely to know all about common chemicals that can be used in explosives. If you tell them what you found, you aren't giving them any new information, and they can just tell you it came from whatever they got it from (and claim they were using it innocently).
So giving a satisfactory answer should actually be evidence of the person being a terrorist. Of course, if a TSA agent were smart enough to realize that, a smart terrorist might pick up on that, and say "I don't know, I used some bug spray this morning?"
Most terrorists don't actually seem to be smart, but in the case that you were evaluating the evidence correctly, you'd have to downgrade its strength on that basis (even more so once you factor in the non-terrorist chemistry geeks, who are probably orders of magnitude more common than terrorists, and less likely to consider that you might take a plausible answer as evidence against them).
In short "what have you handled recently that might have lead to you having explosive residue on you?" is a pointless question, whether you tell them what you found or not.
As a side note, it's overly simplistic to say that "giving hints" is invalid in general, because the definition of "giving hints" is vague. Should they just ask "Why did our screen flash red?" instead of telling you it was the explosive detector? Should they be even more vague and ask "Why are we interrogating you?" Getting useful information from someone requires that you communicate specifically. So if the line of inquiry were useful at all (and if it is even meaningful to reason about such a hypothetical), it would be more useful to ask about the specific substance.
We don't have to have direct knowledge of the impossibly specific situation you've constructed.
Instead we have people saying "I am white and I set one off in 2003 in Australia and they let me through, therefore that demonstrates that this is racism" (ignore every case where non-whites got a couple of quick questions and went through).
And how utterly provincial are so many people on here? What backwaters do they live in? Go to JFK or Newark and tell me that they pick on non-whites, and I'll tell you that they must have hundreds of thousands of employees working around the clock to manage that.
Further what an FBI agent purportedly said during the conversational stage is utterly irrelevant. We don't know what explosive material the sensor detected, but by the response it seems likely that it was rare.
Finally, this isn't just about racism
Indeed, it isn't, even though the overwhelming majority of comments, and the title itself, portends racism. In another comment someone criticizes me for apparently claiming that their treatment is reasonable. Yet never did I say their treatment was reasonable. Who would?
they wouldn't even tell him what they had found
Because they believe in the flawed concept of security through obscurity. They likely imagine that giving that information away shows their hand.
>Instead we have people saying "I am white and I set one off in 2003 in Australia and they let me through, therefore that demonstrates that this is racism" (ignore every case where non-whites got a couple of quick questions and went through).
You are correct that anecdotal reports of white people not being harassed after setting off the detectors is not particularly strong evidence.
> Go to JFK or Newark and tell me that they pick on non-whites, and I'll tell you that they must have hundreds of thousands of employees working around the clock to manage that.
Racism is not a matter of "white or non-white". The "blows up planes" stereotype is specific to people who look "Arab". And of course they're not harassing everyone who fits their stereotype; the explosive detector surely did play a role (and people suggesting that it was intentionally triggered are being silly). It's just that your estimate of that being "95% of this story" is grotesquely optimistic.
>Further what an FBI agent purportedly said during the conversational stage is utterly irrelevant.
Perhaps the FBI agent didn't have a sense of the situation before he arrived. I would guess, given his position and the fact that he seemed to be the most competent and perceptive person the author dealt with, that his assessment is as reliable as we can expect to get. It certainly isn't irrelevant. That it was said in conversation is not very relevant. Are you suggesting that he made that comment inaccurately to reassure the author? "You have to understand, we're just very racist"?
As for various things that other commenters have said, I'm not sure what response you want from me. I didn't say them. I'm sorry people can't read?
>> they wouldn't even tell him what they had found
> Because they believe in the flawed concept of security through obscurity
No, it's rather common sense actually.
If a suspect wanted to blow something up, he would never admit he has the chemicals he has with him (because he wouldn't be sure that the cops have actually detected that chemical, and not made some other mistake that will let him go through).
But if the cops tell him what they've found, then he'll know he's screwed, and will try to make up an excuse.
On the other hand, if he admits what the chemical is himself (probably with a proper excuse), chances are that he's probably innocent, and they'd let him go.
So, telling him what he's being accused of having actually makes it harder for him to get himself out of the mess plausibly.
I find your reasoning that the terrorist "would never admit" anything about the real chemicals. If he used ammonium nitrate, he can easily say "I was using some fertilizer in my garden". If he used gunpowder, he can say "I was at the shooting range earlier", or "I was setting off fireworks with friends last night". If neither of those are what they found, they're still normal-sounding excuses that a person might give. He can give a long list of innocuous chemicals with those thrown in, and you won't have any way of distinguishing his story from that of an innocent person.
But if the terrorist hasn't thought this far ahead, then his excuse is probably not going to be very good. Tell a person exactly what you found, and you might catch the terrorist off guard and be able to tell that they're lying from the weird excuse, while a normal person will either say "I don't know where that would have come from", or would actually have a plausible excuse.
It's still not a very useful question even in that latter case, but it's marginally more useful if you actually name the chemical.
You are missing the point. yes he set off the explosion detector for which he should have been questioned and he was. The issue is how they did it. No water for hours ? You seriously think that it is ok ? The rest 5% decorations that you were talking about is lot more than just decorations.
The bit that got me as incontrovertibly hilariously-stupid was... they got all upset that he hadn't identified to them that he'd checked some baggage.
If the guy is an adversary, you can't rely on him to bring that fact to your attention. If the guy isn't an adversary, his failure to identify it is (by definition) innocent in nature. In neither sense does harassing the guy about it make sense.
My favourite was a CBP asking me "what do you do for work" (lovely unspecific question, that) then pretending to get upset with me for not telling him I was unemployed at the moment. I resisted telling him I personally don't consider unemployment a career...
They were hoping to use his failure to identify it as proof that he was an adversary.
When it turned out that he had identified it, the person who had hoped that now had egg on his face. (I wouldn't be surprised if in another room they had figured this out as proof so that they could get him.)
I often go until late afternoon or longer without realizing I haven't had any water to drink. This really doesn't seem that bad. The OP's claim that his mouth was like sandpaper because he hadn't had water for a few hours reads like hyperbole to me.
We all go a long time without water or realization but on a regular usual day when we are not under pressure by the TSA or police or what not. This situation is not a hyperbole.
And Rumsfeld said "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?" and asked for detainees to be forced to stand up in "stress positions" for more than the previously specified (and already inhuman and torturous) 4 hours...
N.B.: I'm not pulling out a strawman, or claiming you agree in any way with what Rumsfeld did. I'm just pointing out that your logic could, and actually does, lead to such inhumane practices. So don't be too hasty to dismiss stuff like this just based on your personal experience and preferences. I'd personally die without drinking ample amount of water (not an illness; just habit, and it would make me really, really nervous and angry if you denied me water).
To be clear, they absolutely should have given him water. I just don't find some of the comparisons and adjectives that people are using to describe their failure to do so warranted. The only part of what happened to him that seems truly unjust and worthy of outrage is the purely speculative accusation that they broke into his apartment.
There is very little consideration in this thread for the shittiness and stressfulness of the TSA jobs, especially when faced with passengers who refuse the scan and set off the bomb detectors. If you want to argue that TSA should employ highly skilled workers and pay them better, I'm all for that. But given that's not the case, workers being incompetent and rude to people who set off bomb detectors, and holding them too long, doesn't seem like human rights violation to me. It's just a crappy and annoying and stressful situation.
> How do you know they don't have a button to push to make it give a false positive so they can hold people?
That exact thought crossed my mind afterwards.
In the end, they never showed me any evidence that the machine had actually detected any explosive. Nor did they figure out what could have caused the "false positive".
Maybe they did detect something, but then what's equally surprising is the thought that they would then just let someone go after they have walked into JFK with explosives on their body.
The dogs aren't purposefully trained to give false positives, that's just a side effect of how social dogs are. They want to please their handler and the handler gives them rewards.
It could be the dog trying to naturally please the cop, or the cop could have inadvertently trained the behavior (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans), or the training may very well have been deliberate.
It would be damn hard to prove the last, but what is relatively easy to demonstrate is that dogs do give false signals that correspond to certain biases of the owners. Regardless of whether the last is true or not, the way we view detector dogs needs to be revisited in light of these clear biases. As it is, detector dogs seem to be barely better than dosing rods.
There is no button labeled "Fuck the 4th Amendment" but a clever technician might know how to manipulate the results, if needed. But why would they need to? They could just lie.
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.
Uh... The person has already exhibited enough suspicious behavior and circumstantial evidence to get frisked & questioned in a back room and their ticket cancelled. Indications are this is the kind of person being looked for, and if is, at this point is trying very hard to not reveal any further evidence of ill intent. Time to crack the egg and see if it's rotten.
> How do you know they don't have a button to push to make it give a false positive so they can hold people?
I've never been in the US, but when I travel (Europe, MENA), I am always chosen by airport security, even in my own country when leaving, for an additional search (less annoying than a TSA patdown I read of, but still), and when I asked recently why is it always me, a guy answered I was randomly selected by the gate. Got to start buying lottery tickets.
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.
>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.
I up-voted your comment, that comic strip is spot on, but I was trying to express my feelings more than stating some general statement about human nature.
I remember that when I was reading Zimbardo's book I was most touched when he was describing how he himself was under the influence of the experiment and his empathy to "subjects" deteriorated. Only after his girlfriend expressed her concerns he realized that something went horribly wrong. We are influenced by the context, behaviour of others, interpretation of the situation etc. way more than we would like to believe and I can easily imagine that if I were one of those TSA agents I could behave in a way that I now find despicable. That's why I think we really need to be aware of those things despite the fact that they might not be conclusively proven as a 'part of human nature'.
EDIT: also let me mention another IMO super-interesting book about this subject: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm. One of the best books I've ever red.
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.
Sure it's plausible. It's just incredibly unlikely (not least because this notion that the TSA is some white power apparatus seems to be at odds with the reality that the TSA is a very diverse workforce. Add that the passenger list in most urban centers is incredibly diverse, and this idea that it's just xenophobia seems quite nonsensical. Another post talks about how this demonstrates how the US views "foreigners" -- have these people never been to New York City, where this happened? It is about the most inclusive, vibrant, multicultural place on the planet).
Indeed, the narrative of this very story seemed to be overwhelmingly focused on figuring out why he was setting off the explosives detectors. They repeatedly went through his belongings and tried to figure out if he was indeed in the business of making explosions. They almost certainly used a secret warrant to go into his apartment to, again, see if there was an explosives lab there. They really thought they had something when the explosives detector found something it didn't like, and there is no rational reason they would do this just because someone was Muslim (again, Muslims make hundreds of millions of flights in the US -- do people seriously think this is what they go through?)
Also, if you have a "secret button" used by hundrets of TSA officials, with at least some borderline irresponsible, how long do you think it takes for those news to leak out? Two weeks?
The only way to keep a secret for long periods is that few know about it.
Well, we had thousands of people violating the 4th Amendment willy-nilly looking at our email and phone data and it's taken years for that to credibly leak out. Bucking authority like that is not only unusual, it's downright rare. Don't count on it.
However, keep in mind that the NSA doesn't employ that many people. Furthermore, these people mostly work in the same area, have been vetted repeatedly, and are watched. The TSA, on the other hand, works everywhere, has many more people, and do not have the same scrutiny applied to their employees.
Interestingly enough, most classified information doesn't get leaked the same way that Snowden leaked his documents. It's mostly due to carelessness. The best example of this is deployment schedules. One of my coworkers was scheduled to go on a Marine Expeditionary Unit (ship that goes around the Pacific just in case something happens). The date of departure was classified. Someone told his wife, who told all of her friends on Facebook. Oops.
If you include contractors whose primary income is from providing services to the NSA, the number of people who had some knowledge of their surveillance is probably approaching half of a million.
But even those contractors are professionals if they get access to anything of value.
Trying to keep a "detain"-button secret, having it manned by thousands of people that only have a high school diploma OR a year of work experience in security/aviation/screening, doesn't sound easy (those are by the way the education requirements for a TSO according to usajobs.gov). Since a leak could stem from a minor overstep of their contract (ohh, I told a buddy about it, big deal right?), and there are frequent policy violations by agents, it does look grim for the existence of such a button.
I heard of them kicking the machines to make them go off though, so there's a "button", and it's public knowledge that they will use it if they want a pat down.
I've set off the explosive detector a couple times. I don't take anything but lisinopril and OTC allergy meds. Each incident took 3-5 minutes to resolve, and did not involve any questions not directly related to the screening process. I have no idea what set it off, and as far as I know, neither did the TSA.
Apart from those two times, I've been the focus of TSA attention for more than a few seconds on exactly two other occasions. One was when the x-ray tech was confused by the small flatbed scanner in my carryon, and the other was the day I had to fly with expired ID.
Again, neither occasion took more than about five minutes, and again, they asked me no questions not directly related to the screening process itself.
Also, about half the time I travel on one-way tickets, often between points that my ID does not reflect an address for. I've travelled while tired, I've travelled while stressed/nervous, I've travelled with my hair and beard at every conceivable length/combination, including long beard, short hair, and a completely shaved head.
If events like Oklahoma City, Boston, and Sandy Hook have taught us anything, it's that terrorism doesn't have an ethnic profile. It's not only insulting, but also extremely unsafe to assume otherwise.
I'm surprised and embarrassed by how representatives of my country treated him. I'm embarrassed by their cultural ignorance. There should at least be some better training.
However, this should be a technology discussion and I completely agree with your comment. The question is about the machine, how often it provides a false positive, and how likely it is for someone to come in contact with a legal and common chemical that can set it off. In short: what have we sacrificed for this measure of safety, and does it really provide the advertised benefits?
If we have decently calibrated explosion detectors, then in the unlikely event that they do go off, I for one want that individual questioned very thoroughly, ethnicity and religion aside.
The title of the article should be: "Don't fly after handling Permethrin."
First, Sandy Hook/Newtown wasn't terrorism. By definition it was not 'the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.'[1]. It was more of a random spree killing. As for Boston, that's a terrible example because it was committed by Chechen Muslims.
Second, we don't know if there was a false positive. Maybe some cleaner or the bed bug spray do have legitimate bomb-making uses. There's a lot of conjecture in the story and even more in this comment thread.
> Maybe some cleaner or the bed bug spray do have legitimate bomb-making uses.
With bed bug spray you can set up a decent fire, maybe even blast an apartment, cf. my other comment. This is why it's not easy to buy it and that's why you should read the manual. Lovely to hear how many people use highly flammable chemicals without reading the manual.
Add sunscreen to that list as well. I was briefly detained for that when I was coming back from Hawaii. I'd gone to the beach the day before, and used the same jeans, leaving trace amounts of residue.
Really, there are a ton of false-positive substances that we use every day. We need to realize that a false positive can happen to anyone, regardless of their background or morals, and we should treat suspects (for lack of a better word) with respect.
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. They asked me a few simple questions, but it felt more like they were making conversation to keep the atmosphere relaxed, rather than interrogating me.
I don't recall if further tests of my bags or clothes indicated explosives, but I was let out of the screening room after ~20 minutes.
I strongly suspect that the respectful treatment I repeatedly receive during my TSA interactions are due to (mostly racial) profiling, and luck.
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.
The explosive detectors give false positives all the time. Any kind of lotion or hand soap contains glycerin - beep! Any kind of preserved meat product contains nitrates - beep! Fertilizer? Beep! Fireworks? Beep! Heart medication? Beep!
The tests they use are intentionally cheap and fast. Accuracy is not the primary criteria.
For white people you get an extra 30 second pat down. For brown people you get detained and interrogated all day.
Like drug dogs, false positives may be considered a bonus by the security apparatus because it allows the apparatus to work against the discriminated-against class and blame it on something else, as you have just done.
I agree with you entirely - that's the correct kind of test to employ. My point is that getting a positive on such a test doesn't give you grounds to believe someone has handled explosives. Out of every 1000 positives provided by such a test, approximately 1000 are false positives, give or take 1.
he set off an explosion detector (and clearly it doesn't get false positives often given the response they showed)
False positives are fairly common, but usually easily explained -- e.g., "I was target shooting yesterday, there must be some gunpowder on my clothes". A false positive which the individual involved is unable -- or unwilling -- to explain is far less common.
It's hard to explain a false positive when you're given no context about what it could be.
As explained in other comments, nitroglycerin is found in things as bizarre as desserts.
Unless someone happens to be incredibly knowledgeable about how to make explosives out of common household supplies, it's hard to expect them to say, eg. "Oh, that's because I happened to eat dessert last night and forgot to wash my hands."
(In fact, if somebody does know that, that may be cause for all the more suspicion!)
My dad flew on the 5th of July a couple years ago. While going through security, he commented that they must get a lot of false positives around that time of year. Their response: "We don't test for black powder."
I flew out of SFO last week and set off the explosive detector after opting out. My experience was rather different. The TSA agents took my backpack and made a cursory hand-search, doing explosive swab tests on my electronics. After failing to find a source, they took me to the booth to do a more through check. They didn't ask me any questions at all about myself or why I might have set the system off other than the normal 'any sensitive areas' questions. I did volunteer that I'd spilled a small amount of gasoline on myself when fueling my car the previous day and that I was wearing new clothes that had not been washed since purchase. They seemed entirely disinterested. The whole thing took maybe 15 minutes longer than a regular opt-out pat down.
So, apparently that's how it goes when a white male sets the thing off.
I mentioned this in another comment, but I've set off the explosives detector before and had a very similar experience as the original link (taken to a side room, questioned, etc). This is as a white male, although it was in Australia.
They searched him very thouroughly. They didn't find any explosive. So it was clearly a false positive. The way they treated him was absolutely disgusting.
My mother recently came to the US and set off an explosive detector. It took her just a few minutes to get cleared and she was not at all harassed like the author of the post was. Although she comes from Brazil, she is white, blonde and blue-eyed (a descendent of German immigrants). So I guess there is a difference in treatment according to race.
What set off the explosives detector? She had no idea, as that had never happened before to her. The only different thing she had touched hours before was the wipes they gave her during the flight to clean her hands before a meal.
If it was just the false positive, that would be one thing but the utterly humiliating, quite frankly stupid, way they treated him was completely unjustified. There's nothing that warranted denying him water and not treating him with dignity.
Yes, but this is how law enforcement behaves across the board. (And when they do give you a drink then they can grab the cup and fingerprint it and run DNA tests, right?)
> and clearly it doesn't get false positives often given the response they showed
How is this a reasonable assumption? When the probability of it legitimately going off is so low, most times it actually goes off are probably just false positives.
> being Hindi
"Hindi" is a language, and "Hindu" is the religion.
why do people insist on using the phrase "repeatedly set off the explosive detector"? if there is a substance on his person or bags that made the detector register a false positive, it is naturally going to register that same false positive every time it is run over said substance. the repetition means nothing.
Because if he hadn't, you'd conclude that the detector registered falsely. The fact that repeated tests had the same result confirms that the detector is working (or, at least, that it's consistent).
It's an emotional argument to soothe their conscience by asserting that there was a legitimate reason for this to happen.
If you want to see a major part of why the TSA is still molesting, you don't have to go searching for mythical sheeple in far away states - just look at a third of the comments in this thread.
As much as I agree with your first sentence, I find your second offensive with the use of "sheeple." It's a tired perjorative that makes you look like you belong on some tinfoil covered forum.
Eh, that's why I prefixed it with 'mythical'. There isn't one large group of clueless people that need to receive a message - it's that propaganda is so incessant that for every topic, it overloads a significant fraction of critical thinkers and tricks them into supporting that broken system because they crave simplicity.
Also, I had a tinfoil covered basement once. It was pretty sweet.
Most airports have layers of ETDs: Quick and "convenient", but slightly more prone to false-positives at screening, and then expensive, slower machines for secondary screening. In a similar way that a breathalyzer positive might yield a blood test.
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.
Here we have a situation where someone is being detained and effectively punished (denied food and drink, for example, forced to miss their flight) without any benefit of the legal system. Preventing such things is the entire reason we have a criminal justice system. Within the legal system we have all of these procedures and rights and so forth that have been carefully honed over centuries to ensure that the system is fair and not abusive. Except here we have this bizarre little bubble that is effectively outside the criminal justice system for most intents and purposes which has about the effect one would imagine in such situations.
The detained here has no benefit of counsel, no ability to see the evidence put against them, no presumption of innocence, and so forth. And we can see within this one little example a microcosm of why all of those things are necessary and what happens when they are absent.
No matter how you cut it this individual was effectively punished, the fact that there are almost no safeguards to prevent such abuses of power today should be chilling to everyone.
"Setting off an explosion detector" is not the most important part of this. Imagine the detector as a human being instead (explosives detectors are just as fallible) making an accusation against someone. An accusation is not a conviction. Just because someone cries murder, or rape, or terrorist, even if it's a piece of equipment doing that, we shouldn't jump to conclusions and rip away every right and protection that people have in this country. Except it seems that we are doing just that and to some degree a lot of people are OK with it.
I opted out of the Millimeter waves in Manchester NH airport (BTW, coolest TSA agents I ever met. One of them even said he wouldn't ever go through a backscatter machine himself.). They detected some nitrates or nitrites, I forget which (or what those exactly mean). But that's a potential sign of explosives apparently. It's probably because I had been by a camp fire that morning. If you go camping, or shooting, you should consider cleaning your clothes before going through airport security.
This was a flight to return home, so I didn't ask to leave the airport, but they did give me the option of going through the porno-scanner or staying grounded. I understand that the TSA at least claims that the scanner doesn't actually involve showing anybody an image beyond a diagram (not that I'm shy anyway), and it's nowhere near as risky as the backscatter, so I went for it this one time and I was on my way.
Those tests get false positives all the time. I failed an explosives test once in Denver. The TSA agent guessed correctly that I had been rock climbing. Apparently this happens a lot, no idea why. They let me go after 5 seconds of chatting.
I've set off a detector before but because I looked like a young white male at the time all they did was screen my bags and have my hands tested again for explosives and send me on my way.
Let me tell you what would happen and what DID happen to one of my friends who set off the alarm.
A supervisor was called in, he double checked his ID, found out my friend was using some chemicals the day before (working on his apartment). Waved him through right after.
The explanation may be the thing that got him through but it could also be the fact that they told him what chemical he set off and the fact that he's white as hell.
I've set off the machine in question before. I am a american male mid thirties swedish/english/german (and look it). The person assumed the machine was wrong and spent a bit of extra time with me and sent me on my way. This was in 2010.
If you do the math, it becomes obvious they cannot treat everyone that sets of the explosives detectors in this way, given how many ways there are to trigger false positives. They just don't have, and could not possibly have, the manpower.
I've set off the explosion detector before. I didn't receive anything like what OP did. And honestly, I chalk up a decent amount of that up to having the good luck of being white.
I did get pulled into a separate area, and treated like criminal. Two agents stood by me the entire time while another one gave me another pat down. They opened up my backpack and rifled through everything (which was, I think, the most offensive part of everything), and meticulously swabbed and tested each area of my backpack.
I did receive similar questions "Where are you going," "Why are you here," "Why would your bag be setting off our alarm?" etc..
After a few more searches, a few more scans, and a lot more questions they finally let me go through security. Whole process probably took about 20 minutes -- twenty terrifying minutes -- but in the end, it was relatively painless compared to OPs.
I don't think his treatment was in any way justified by setting off an explosive materials detector.
"I don't think his treatment was in any way justified by setting off an explosive materials detector."
He set it off multiple times. It is likely you didn't.
He could not provide current id, anything that showed his current address, anything to prove any part of his story, etc.
Any attempt to prove any part of his story was met with no available info. His answers were plausible, but again, there was simply nothing concrete he could provide to explain anything.
I can understand the amount of questioning and length of time he was put through. I cannot understand the denial of water/etc.
"id" means identification. Your identity doesn't change just because you move. He had "id" just fine. It just didn't have his two-day-old address on it.
I understand what ID means.
You are suppose to report address changes, and in most states, you usually only get 10 days or less to do so.
Ignoring that for a second, what you have attempted to refute is not the sum total of the issue here.
The thing is, at every turn there was just a coincidental reason something happened to turn out that way. If you don't think this looks highly suspicious on someone whose hands and bag seems to keep setting off explosive detectors, i don't know what to tell you.
If they aren't supposed to target the people with odd stories who set off explosive detectors, who exactly are they supposed to be targeting?
Could you at least answer who you believe they are supposed to be targeting if not people who set off explosive detectors and can't provide concrete evidence of anything they say?
Thousands of people in the U.S. fly without business cards or ID listing their current addresses. University students are just one obvious example. This simply isn't uncommon. If you want to target that, you might as well target retirees or snowbirds. Of course, you wouldn't, since you profile based on demographics, ethnicity, etc, in addition to merely not having a current piece of ID or a work phone number.
Explosive detector results, sure. So determine it was a false positive and let them go. It doesn't take 3.5 hours to verify a person and their bag don't have any actual explosives on them. The amount of questioning was not warranted.
Thanks for sharing that experience. Any idea why you might have set the machine off? Trying to get a feel for how they've balanced how sensitive to make them.
I think there's been too errors: His ethnicity made him endure more interrogation and your ethnicity allowed you to endure less.
I think the next threat to airport security is as likely to be perpetrated by someone who doesn't fit the ethnic profile. Everyone in law enforcement really wants there to be a profile, but looking for one will only lead to the wrong conclusion and costly mistakes.
My bag set off the explosion detector and I had to have an "enhanced" pat down in private. They agent later admitted to me that the machine I was tested on gives false positives about 50% of the time.
you don't deal with false positives by doing the exact same test multiple times. that's insane.
given the fact that he did not have any explosives or was planning anything nefarious, this whole story shouldn't have happened (in any free and/or sane country) because other tests and checks should have quickly revealed his innocence.
and from what I get, they did so, but chose to detain and harass him, and break into his house (ffs!) regardless, possibly because religion/race/background/non-WASP-ness
JetBlue were total idiots about it, but at that point they were "victims" of this situation as well, and it seemed that the representative simply wanted to exclude him as quickly as they could to wipe their hands of the consequences of it.
If the TSA officer was being truthful when they said the flight would be held, then JetBlue may have just been ensuring that they could take of on time.
A friend of mine set one off when we were traveling in Australia. We talked with the guard (who very 100% ralaxed) and he said that setting off the detector is incredibly easy. While he was searching my friend's purse, we were told that some of the chemicals used in make up can set it off. After finding nothing, we were free to continue. Took all of 3 minutes, no additional security, no prolonged questioning, just a simple check and go.
Contrarian perspective:
He fits a certain profile. Triggered a bunch of attributes (address move, chemicals on him, etc.).
The 9/11 attackers walked through the scanners with knifes.
The Boston bombers were flagged, but still traveled freely.
After both attacks people were laughing at the stupidity of the enforcement agencies, uselessness of the TSA, etc.
Here, the process worked.
His account is subjective, everyone else is an idiot, he's way smarter than them, gets offended by simple questions about religion, etc. OK, good for him. The more you push back, the more self righteous and arrogant you are during security checks, the deeper you're digging yourself in. Those people are doing their jobs. Same with how you should be treating waiters, etc.
JetBlue has the right to deny you a flight. ElAl does this all the time, incl. racial profiling. Good security track record.
Relevent bit is under the Trail section:
"On 12 May 1975 the six men were charged with murder and conspiracy to cause explosions."
"Forensic scientist Dr Frank Skuse used positive Griess test results to claim that Hill and Power had handled explosives"
No. There are far more efficient ways to flag people that fit a certain profile. They should have checked all of his belongings and let him go, and not focused at all on his "attitude". That allows for more checks of other suspicious people with the available time they wasted questioning this one person.
The Boston bombers should also have been allowed to fly freely. Their actions had nothing to do with air travel.
Either way the situation described is unacceptable, either as "racist", or "Xenophobic", or, to your point, as an incredibly inefficient way to carry out profiling.
>There are far more efficient ways to flag people that fit a certain profile. They should have checked all of his belongings and let him go, and not focused at all on his "attitude".
Did you miss the part where the machines gave him a positive for explosives?
What the correlation between testing positive on one of those machines and bomb possession? How many common household chemicals test positive on one of those machines? Are we both fully informed enough on bomb detection to even have this conversation?
I'm going to assume that if they let him go eventually they could have let him go immediately (or soon) after checking all of his belongings.
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.
>Since there's no proof of this "positive", this claim sits in doubt.
...and since there's no proof of his story, his story sits in doubt. Right?
Is that the modus operandi?
I was commenting under the assumption that his experiences were conveyed truthfully and that the explosive alert actually happened and wasn't bogus.
Is there reason for me to automatically doubt the sincerity of those who tested him?
Is there reason to believe that they didn't want to tell him what exactly the machine told them because they were lying to him? Or is it a more reasonable explanation that they're not allowed to?
Racial profiling is bad. They acted differently towards him than they'd do to other people, but that doesn't mean we have to ignore everything and assume that every single person there was out to get him and put an innocent person through hell.
> since there's no proof of his story, his story sits in doubt. Right?
Not for me. The author has more credibility in my eyes than any employee of the TSA.
> Is there reason for me to automatically doubt the sincerity of those who tested him?
Since they lied to him through the entire ordeal ("We’ll just be a few minutes, and then you’ll be able to go."), the rest of their declarations are equally suspect.
I'd rather live in a country where the process occasionally fails and we don't have to put up with / subject others to this shit. And yes, I am American and I experienced all the pain and horror of 9/11.
I don't think it was necessary to be in NYC at the time to have been deeply affected by 9/11, but no matter: I, the guy who wrote this article, and 310m other non-NYC Americans still have to live under the draconian post-9/11 regime, regardless of where we were on that day.
Yes, really. Shit happens around the world all the time. Just because your media and government tried to make all Americans feel like they were under attack, these were isolated incidents that affected few Americans. (In fact, the people most affected are the countless innocent civilians murdered by reactionary war in the middle east.)
I don't think going through more stringent checks when you fly qualify for "pain and horror". I mainly ask because you're using "the pain and horror" experienced by actual 9/11 victims and their families as leverage to add validity to your statement, and I don't really agree with it.
Truthfully, I don't see why you'd be significantly more traumatized by this event than any other act of terrorism that happens across the globe unless you lost loved ones. To that end, I don't see why anyone else on this globe should have been any less affected, thus making the point that you happened to be an American at the same time that 9/11 occurred more or less moot.
If the pain is simply an empathy to the innocents who were harmed, I don't see why it should be unique to you as an American and worthy of pointing out and using as leverage. I'm not in a position to tell you or anyone else how they should feel...I just don't really understand the rationale.
I am not going to sit here and explain to you the concept of (emotional, geographic) proximity. If I am correct in surmising that you are trying to pick a fight about Americans feeling "special" compared to the rest of the world (which I sure don't), you'll need to find some other sparring partner. Cheers.
I was born, raised, and have lived in the NYC area my entire life and continue to do so to this day. I assure you I'm familiar with the proximity to the event. This is not me trying to pick a fight about my fellow Americans feeling "special". It's me calling you out on your attempt to leverage a very real and significant pain felt by victims and their families for your talking points. When you say "_the_ pain and horror", you are (whether intentional or not) referencing the primary pain felt - that of those directly and most significantly affected by 9/11. In doing so, you dilute the gravity that referencing that pain carries for true victims. It's like a veteran who spent all his time behind a desk claiming that, as a vet, he had gone through horrors during the war, when there were in fact men and women who were on the verge of death on the front lines experiencing actual horror.
In reality, there was no need to use that statement. If your point is valid, it should stand on its own merits without the need for you to attempt to convince through emotion by answering a question that nobody was asking.
Cynically? That sounds like a standard interrogation technique. Keep them off balance, upset them, try and force them to stop lying so as to get the drink they need (not that the OP was lying).
Now for the next question: Is this a suitable way to interrogate someone who is not under arrest and is presumed innocent? Is the false negative rate of TSA checks low enough to start assuming that someone is guilty?
On the other hand, the true positive rate of the TSA is zero. Not one single person detained by the TSA has been charged, much less convicted, on terrorism charges.
If I were only slightly more paranoid than I am, I might suppose that it was intended to be a chastisement for practicing what the officer/agent perceived as a weird, scary, terrorist religion.
> gets offended by simple questions about religion, etc. OK, good for him. The more you push back, the more self righteous and arrogant you are during security checks
I agree with the other parts of your post. Here though I think he wasn't assertive enough. No need to get snarky but a request for a cup of water is not something you just let the cop/whoever shake off with a wink.
>> "You also said a lot of things, kid," he said with a wink.
You say "yes, like that I want something to drink, repeatedly." Another thing is to always ask people for their official identification, a badge, a name, a number... They're not supposed to be anonymous.
Thank you for posting this. I was about to book a ticket on Jetblue for next week but I am now decided not to fly with them or recommend them to anyone.
While we can fix private airlines and businesses for their stupid attitude there is, of course, no way for people to fix NSA/TSA and all those inverted bullshitters living on taxpayer's money.
Most airlines reserve the right to remove passengers from a flight if they feel it is safer to do so. This happens all the time, and I'm sure from the perspective of the expelled passenger it's always "unfair." I trust you will follow your own principle and boycott every airline.
For that matter every restaurant, home owner, bus driver, taxi, parkway, condominium, hospital, school, university or business has the right to remove a person from their premises. That doesn't mean people do or have to do it illustriously and then come back and say: we'll fly with you tomorrow - we'll let you travel on our airline only tomorrow because you're not "safe" today.
When the TSA circus cleared the person in question there is absolutely no reason for him to be prevented from travel.
> I trust you will follow your own principle and boycott every airline.
I hope you'll find someone who buys your ad hominem/bait elsewhere. On hacker news you might want to read up the guidelines [1] on quality of discussions and disagreements.
People like to blame the US government for this, though I think the real culprit is that often the dumber, more xenophobic members of society are usually hired for these kinds of positions. As in the case of police brutality, cameras need to be recording all encounters between travelers and airport security, and extensive quality control performed. This is an issue that is tarnishing the United States's reputation everywhere. Travelers are often the elite from their respective countries and the US is digging itself into a hole with this.
There's a big opportunity for startups to provide the backend for this quality control. A hosted webapp that allows teams of inspectors to seamlessly collaborate on monitoring the quality of TSA agents from anywhere.
But who hires and tolerates the dumber, more xenophobic members of society for these positions?
The biggest impediment to fixing or eliminating the TSA is that the decision makers don't eat their own dogfood. If every Congressperson had to endure the inhumane treatment that passes for airport security these days instead of being whisked through VIP lines the TSA would be fixed within months.
The thing is, senior people don't eat their dogfood in anything. The CEO of Ford probably drives a Benz. What has worked in all industries is quality control. Government has always had a problem in doing this (the DMV) but that's where startups should step into to educate the politician that it's good for both public and for the politician's future elections (using said startup's product).
This article has very little to do with Ramadan...Muslims don't fly more often during Ramadan than the rest of the year, do they? 9/11 didn't happen during Ramadan.
Take a look at this objectively.
A brown guy, traveling alone, tested positive for explosive residue while going through a TSA checkpoint. After some brief questioning, they determined that there was a 99% chance that he wasn't a terrorist.
How stupid would we as Americans have felt had we allowed someone to fly on the same day as having a 1% chance that he was a terrorist?
"Traveling alone" = half the business travelers at the airport. "Brown" = most of the world. "Explosive residue" = hand lotion or bug spray. "Brief questioning" = 4 hours, ticket canceled, $700 new ticket cost and apartment search.
This is racial profiling, straight up, and ineffective security. How about you go through this and tell me it's all good.
I (of brown skin) was once taken aside INSIDE a jetway, after clearing all security, and quizzed: how much cash was I carrying? Where did I go to school? And this bizarre national origin totem: who won the World Series last year? I'd have had a better chance of telling them what RSA stood for or who Stallman was than baseball.
We probably travel less during Ramadan than usual, since it's kind of inconvenient to do so. Though maybe some people want to spend it with their families like this guy wanted to spend his holy week with his family, but most people would probably travel before Ramadan rather than during IMO.
Don't be fooled by this post, the dude comes from a country where rape is a regular no-comment thing.
Where a minister cost the exchequer $50 billion by giving away spectrum.
Where the state army regularly massacres its own citizens in the name of progress (forced land seizures), citizens who have no political options and have turned to Naxalism out of desperation.
Look, brown man travels for 10 years in the US and gets hassled once -- with some justification it seems (the chemical tests came back positive). I can guarantee that and average American travelling to India would face a much harsher ordeal at the hands of the locals. Just ask any white woman tourist.
Yo...Aggrieved Bong! Karma is a bitch and somehow all the hassling of Whitey when he is in Calcutta had to come around. In this case it landed on your ass. Move along and stop pretending to be a hipster with your "virtual corporations" and shit. Or would you prefer going back to the motherland and working for Didi?
I for one would be happy to be subjected to such a process IF it also had the effect of catching the REAL terrorists. The fact that it does not is the real tragedy here.
First of all don't speak besides identifying yourself by name. Then the only thing to say is "Am I free to go?". If the answer is no, then ask "Am I being detained?". If no, then ask "Then I'm free to go, yes?".
Back and forth. Personally, upon hearing I'm not being detained, then I'd leave.
Second, you can't be refused medical attention. "I feel nauseous, perhaps because I've been refused water and now I feel faint. I need medical attention".
The more you say, the worse you make it for yourself.
I honestly used to think America was the best country in the world... but lately I've been seeing more and more shocking things. Very sad indeed. I would have been terrified if that happened to me.
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.
As I read more and more of those stories I can't help but wonder at how things changed. I am from a formerly-eastern-europe-soviet-bloc country (Poland) and these kinds of oppressive techniques sound very familiar. The haziness of procedures, lack of basic rights, intimidation, no accountability of state officials -- we've seen all that until 1989. At the time, while the communist regime was imposed on us, the USA seemed like heaven: transparency, procedures, basic rights, free speech, accountable officials.
Look at where we are today. I can't even imagine being held captive without arrest for hours, being questioned about the purpose of my trip, about my religion and habits, all while travelling within my country. When entering the country, the passport clerk has exactly two options: let me in, or call the police and get me arrested on the spot. I feel free and I am happy to live in a free country, together with people who because of the past oppressive Soviet regime are quite sensitive to abuses of power.
At the same time, the U.S. is rapidly degenerating into something that isn't quite the sinister oppressive regime, but getting close to the point where it could become one, if a wrong leader gets elected. It's scary.
And the worst thing is -- American people got so used to the idea of living in a free country, that they do not even admit the thought that things are going the wrong way. Most people don't see the signs.