
Ivy League economist ethnically profiled, interrogated for doing math on AA flt - dankohn1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/ivy-league-economist-interrogated-for-doing-math-on-american-airlines-flight/
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huac
Also covered here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11648758](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11648758)

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return0
Off topic but the title in that link was so ambiguous:

"Economist Removed from Plane for Algebra"

could be 1) An economist was removed from "Plane for Algebra" (a book, maybe?)

2) The magazine "Economist" was removed from "Plane" (maybe a group or an app
or sth. and replaced with "Algebra"

3) The economist was removed from an airplane going to "Algebra" (but that
can't be a city; even if it is, i know enough cities already)

4) "Economist Removed" (a poem maybe) from "Plane for Algebra" (a book,
maybe). It's the capitalization

I didn't click.

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danielvf
It's clear from the story that neither the stewardess, the pilot, nor the law
enforcement agent thought he was an actual threat.

I'm guessing that there is a rule that if a passenger reports a suspicious
person, then the plane must be held and law enforcement must be notified.
Fortunately, at that point common sense was allowed to take over, rather than
spiraling into multiple agencies mindlessly following bad procedures.

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whateveridunno
My question is why did the entire affair take over two hours.

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danielvf
Apparently the woman only said that she was sick until the airplane had
returned to the gate and she exited the airplane.

At that point, probably thirty or fourty minutes had already gone by.

Then five minutes to get in touch with an the right law enforcement agent.
Fifteen minutes to get to the plane. Five minutes talking to the woman. Five
minutes for the pilot to get the man off the plane. Five minutes of
conversation. Five minutes to reboard. Twenty minutes of checklists. Fourty
minutes of taxing/waiting.

Since that adds up to more than two hours, it means that the actual process
must have been faster.

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tptacek
We are long past a point where there needs to be some regulatory intervention
regarding the authority of pilots to deplane people at the whims of bigoted
passengers.

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hnamazon123
Why do you assume this woman was bigoted and not just ignorant but acting in
good faith?

She got weird vibes from him but at least tried to make conversation with the
guy to get a better read on him.

The men who did 9/11 were Arab Muslims. Arab Muslims commit terrorist attacks
somewhere in the world every day (though most of their victims are other
Muslims). This is actually real, even though it's uncomfortable to
acknowledge.

The woman was ignorant and that's on her but also a failure of public
education to some extent. See something say something is an extremely valuable
tool in preventing terrorist attacks so we should be more careful in
considering the motivations of people who see something and say something.

~~~
tptacek
The men who bombed Hiroshima were white dudes. Ergo: I shouldn't get on the
plane with any white dudes, because they could be plotting to blow up a whole
city with nuclear weapons.

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hnamazon123
The probability of you getting on a nuclear weapons equipped bomber on a
mission to drop a nuclear bomb is infinitesimal though I suppose it's
something you may want to watch out for and report if it ever seems likely
that you have stepped aboard such a plane.

~~~
tptacek
Ok, you're almost there. Just keep thinking along those lines. You'll get
there!

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jcomis
Not surprised by this at all. I'm American, but my family background is
southern Italian and I get crap like this ALL the time in the past few years
and it's been getting worse. Of course I've never had a flight stopped, or
anything close to that severe, it's just a general questioning of what my
background is or being "randomly" selected for getting
swabbed/questioned/whatever nearly every flight.

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ErikAugust
"He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or another foreign
language, or even some special secret terrorist code. They were math."

~~~
jsprogrammer
Is there a more dominant numerical system than Arabic?

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BlackJack
"Perhaps she couldn’t differentiate between differential equations and
Arabic."

A math class could've avoided all this, though obviously wouldn't fix the root
cause.

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kome
...if it was Arabic script, and not math, would have it been a legitimate
complaint? Scary.

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JorgeGT
Solving a differential equation on his notepad? I expect Stephen Wolfram to
spin this into a sales pitch: "Use Mathematica, avoid being profiled as a
terrorist!".

~~~
nkassis
using a computer could make it worse. I can imagine what would go through some
people head seeing someone use an electronic device full of weird symbols.

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mceoin
"in America today, the only thing more terrifying than foreigners is…math."

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c3534l
Kind of a disppointing story. The tl;dr:

The woman had indeed initially told the crew she was sick, but when she
deplaned she disclosed that the reason she was feeling ill was her concern
about the behavior of her seatmate. At that time, she requested to be rebooked
on another flight. The crew then called for security personnel, who
interviewed Menzio and determined him not to be a “credible threat.”

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brianmcconnell
On a somewhat related note, a few years ago I was flying to a mobile phone
conference in Barcelona. I thought it would be fun to bring my Port-O-Rotary
cell phone along (available from Sparkfun Electronics).

I enjoyed hours of fun and merriment going through security with it. Frankfurt
in particular was a real bitch, as they called in the bomb squad to dismantle
and inspect the phone. After they finally cleared me, one of the guards asked
me "What is the purpose of this?" I responded "Because it's fun".

At least security in Newark had a sense of humor about it. They took photos of
it for a book of all the weird shit that's gone through security there (I
really hope they publish that someday).

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return0
He even looks italian.

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carlob
And is called Guido!

In this day and age, I feel lucky to be a blondish Italian.

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cm3
Except in most places of Italy you don't, do you?

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Camillo
Consider:

1) Both Arabs and Italians are considered "white" on the US census. Therefore,
there is no distinction between "ethnic" or "racial" profiling in this case.
Since "racial profiling" is what the paper would use for Arabs, the same term
should be used in this case.

2) One of the following is true:

A) Profiling was involved in this case, and Italians are no longer considered
"white". Should be pretty useful for any Italians applying for positions in
the US.

B) Profiling was not involved in this case. In fact, it would have nipped the
issue in the bud: check the passenger's info, see he's not an Arab, move on.
This took two hours because the authorities did _not_ use profiling, but
instead had to interrogate the guy.

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santaclaus
Why is Penn always referred to as generically 'Ivy League' in articles like
this? You don't really see that with Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia...

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cavisne
"She decided to try out some small talk.

Is Syracuse home? She asked.

No, he replied curtly."

Hoax

