
UC Berkeley student questioned, refused service after speaking Arabic on flight - raju
http://www.dailycal.org/2016/04/14/uc-berkeley-student-questioned-refused-service-speaking-arabic-flight/
======
awinter-py
Man am I lucky to be a twerpy white guy (some days).

When I travel I opt out of the scanner every time, ask the pat-down guy what
happens if he finds drugs on me, and sometimes refuse the search by asking
them if I'm under arrest ('if not, am I free to go?').

If the TSA agent won't let me leave without a search, I demand they call the
cops, who are obligated to let me leave (not enter the airport, though)
because I haven't committed a crime.

One time in SFO they called the bomb squad because I tested positive for
fertilizer (or something) and I still went through all this. I refused
something called a 'private room crotch rub', which I regret a little.

When I talk to friends who are any shade of brown they tell me 'you should
have had your ass handed to you'.

~~~
ctvo
You're THAT guy.

You go out of your way to be a dick to people doing their jobs because you
feel the need to prove some point in the most obtuse way.

~~~
awinter-py
You may have a point, but I don't know how else to act. I live in a community
where 30% of respondents oppose flag burning, 20% support the right to do it,
and the other half will agree with either side depending on how the question
is framed. So 'patriotism' is a mixed up concept with two sides.

In my case, I oppose the forces of chaos by making a fuss about search without
probable cause. I recognize the social cost of acting this way, but it's not
in my personality to blindly consent.

~~~
ctvo
I don't disagree with you on the policy, but the way you're protesting it is
pretty ineffective. Writing a letter will do more good than wasting the time
of the lowest paid employees at the airport.

I can't justify making someone else's day more shitty (the employee who has to
deal with this and the people behind you in line) and changing nothing just to
make myself feel better.

~~~
harshreality
awinter-py is providing them on-the-job training.

It's their job to politely deal with a traveller who declines a suspicion-free
search. If that "makes their day shitty", they're in the wrong line of work.

------
drallison
Outrageous and disturbing behavior on the part of Southwest Airlines and the
security people. As is too often the case, the details of what transpired are
lost, but this sort of incident shows how irrational fears are now driving
institutional behavior.

~~~
bkovacev
This definitely was outrageous - but fear was not the driving force of the
institutional behavior - it was the reasonable doubt.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I read the article and I didn't see any "reasonable" doubt there.

~~~
bkovacev
So as a security officer when someone says there might be a bomb - you would
not react? That's reasonable?

~~~
bunderbunder
The security officer should ask for reason to believe there's a bomb that's a
little bit more substantive than, "Dude was speaking a language I don't
understand." Otherwise we're at great risk of crossing the line from
authority-as-protector-of-the-public to authority-as-weapon-the-public-can-
use-against-each-other.

See also: swatting.

------
SherlockeHolmes
The fact that some of us here mentioned "reasonable doubt" explains the
shortcomings we currently have in depth of analysis beyond anything
superficial. Our justifications sound like this - "while we murdered them in
millions earlier, and now we murder them in thousands - we reserve the right
to interrogate, disservice, and harass any of them on our soil should they
speak the wrong way". If we are true Americans, we'd say this instead - "I
believe in their right to liberty as much as ours. I will not be afraid
because someone is speaking Arabic, or because someone's skin in brown, or
because someone's face is bearded. I share the dangerous climate on our planet
with my Muslim brothers, and I will take on the risks without stooping to
bigotry. I will walk the straight path, and I will uphold the fundamentals of
the very constitution our nation is built upon. We will fight terrorism
together, for I understand it is a disease that has roots in no religion but
in apathy."

Edit: omit "sickening". changed "you" to "we". Changed "three people" to "some
of us"

~~~
nxzero
Chart Shows How Irrational Fear of Terrorism Is:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11516085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11516085)

~~~
cb18
It's not good to be disablingly fearful of Islamic terrorism, but we do need
to be prudent, and proactive in preventing it.

What those silly charts get wrong, is that the other 'fearful' things they
compare terrorism to are well understood phenomena with linear input, outputs.
More vehicles on the road, more traffic casualties, more smoking, more lung
cancer, more overeating, more diseases of obesity, etc. etc.

In taking precaution against terrorism we must be aware that there is
potential for nonlinear type events. A single event can drastically alter any
metrics of average terrorism damage over a given time frame.

A little inconvenience for somebody now or then if it means heading off a
potential explosive black swan type event, is just a fact of the modern world
as long as there is Islam in the west.

~~~
DanBC
>A little inconvenience for somebody now or then if it means heading of a
potential explosive black swan type event, is just a fact of the modern world
as long as there is Islam in the west.

But the salami slicing of convenience means hundreds of millions of people
have been inconvenienced (by having to remove their shoes) because one guy one
time tried to set fire to his plastique explosive footwear. How many human
hours have been spent in queues at airports for this?

~~~
cb18
That's a good point, the way that the collateral inconvenience is dispensed is
obviously far from perfect and definitely needs calibration.

What's ironic about the point you raise, is that it stems from one of the main
topics of this thread.

Our collective refusal to admit that perpetrators of Islamic terrorism are
heavily concentrated under a narrow band of characteristics means we all have
to endure abject silliness like grannies and children being groped, and having
to take off our shoes.

------
bunderbunder
How about if airlines instead offer a refund or voucher to scared white people
who are afraid to share a flight with a brown person and decide to get off the
plane?

~~~
mc32
How do you know this passenger was "brown". ME people come in many shades.
Muslims come in pretty much all shades. What if he were Albanian and kicked
off, would that have been okay?

It's not always white vs other. You can find this kind if fear in India (where
you have violent clashes pretty frequently). Are you saying somehow Americans
are better than other people and somehow therefore should be other than human?
I know we should all strive to be better people. Looking at things along stark
racial lines is not always helpful. Treating a subgroup of people as the Other
is not particularly a "white" thing. It happens to all people --travel a bit.
We should expect more from all people.

~~~
bunderbunder
I know he's brown because it says so right there in the article. 'Brown' is a
catch-all term that folks of many ethnicities, including Middle Eastern ones,
use to describe themselves.

And the existence of racism on the other side of the planet does not somehow
diminish or excuse or modulate how racism occurs in the USA.

~~~
mc32
There are people in India who are essentially the same "race" who do violence
and injustice to each other, so it's not entirely clear to me "racism" is what
causes people to act biased. That is my point. People are quick to attribute
many ills to race but we see the same thing intra-racially, so there would
appear to be other causes. That's not saying racism does not exist. It does,
but I don't know this is attributable to it.

------
T2_t2
They could solve this issue in three minutes: if you make an accusation the
you have to miss the flight as well. If accusation also have a cost, people
won;t make them for rather flimsy reasons.

------
ctvo
What would the expectation be for the airline in this case? Ignore the report?
Delay the flight for everyone else as they gather more information?

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spriggan3
Outrage bait. I'd be careful with these kind of articles where the truth is
always more or less obfuscated in order to generate clicks.

~~~
minimaximus
Nice latent bigotry you've got there. You're implying that the bigoted
passenger's suspicions 'might have been justified' and we're only hearing one
side of the story. If there was any merit to the other side (which clearly
there isn't) then this guy wouldn't have been allowed to leave freely after
being publicly humiliated to appease the beast of the security apparatus.

I'm amazed how bigotry against Muslims and Arabs has become so 'accepted' in
today's America. My 6 year old kids get called terrorists at school and nobody
bats an eye. Imagine if Black or Jewish or Asian kids were called bigoted
adjectives at schools, there would be a public outcry, but it's ok, they're
just A-rabs, and people, including the potential next president, are playing
that dirty game.

It's sickening and it's simply emotional terrorism.

~~~
spriggan3
> Nice latent bigotry you've got there.

Nice social justice warfare you've got here, accusing me of bigotry for not
believing the usual journalistic gospel blindly. I'm certainly implying that
reporters often don't tell their audience all the facts to push a specific
narrative. Were you in the plane ? me neither so I'm skeptical and just choose
not to blindly follow the "muslim thrown out of a plane because muh
islamophobia" narrative. The article is one sided, that's not news that
activism.

If i'm a bigot then you're the most gullible person on this planet.

------
Will_Do
Pretty interesting story.

Not sure if anyone did anything wrong other than mishearing. A passenger
thinks she hears someone sign off of a conversation with "martyr" and reports
it. Given that information he's thrown off the plane which is also reasonable.

The guy who got kicked off also did nothing wrong. He was just talking to his
uncle.

I suspect the same thing would happen to anyone regardless of race or
nationality should the words Allah and martyr be uttered in close succession
on a plane.

~~~
yifanlu
No. Let's see what happens if this same story is told without the racism. Bob
is on the phone with his mother and said he will have a "salad" tonight. Sally
across the aisle heard it as "suicide" and reports him. The attendant promptly
calls security, has him evicted, and the FBI is called. Does that sound
reasonable to you?

So no. Many people did lots of things wrong that day. The passenger who
obviously doesn't know arabic mishears a word and reports him out of
prejudice. The staff who took the complaint seriously because of his race. The
security and FBI who harassed him for a long time as a result.

Do you really think a white man uttering Allah (where that's the only word
heard by another passenger) would be subjected to the same treatment? And
also, even if the man WAS a terrorist, do you really think he would go on the
phone and talk about his terrorist plots in the open? Even if this guy said
"martyr", that still does not warrant the treatment he received. Just like if
Bob actually said "suicide," literally it's just a word that's sometimes used
in a bad context. He wasn't misheard as saying "I will blow up this plane." So
it took many layers of prejudice for this to happen.

~~~
mindslight
Discerning motivations and monday morning quarterbacking whether they were
justified or not is a quagmire of futility. Really, the victim just needs to
be made whole - force these organizations to stop creating externalities out
of their self-created costs. To me, it sounds like the victim in this case is
owed an automatic payment of at least several thousand dollars for the lost
day, emotional distress, etc. The civil damages in a general
kidnapping/wrongful imprisonment case are also a good reference point. He
really should sue - free apologies don't reform bad incentives.

Southwest should have also removed the _reporting woman_ from the plane so the
victim could face his accuser, and also to reduce frivolous complaints. If she
really thinks he was a t'rist, she should be wanting to get off that plane
regardless.

~~~
im3w1l
You are responding as if the reporting woman could have, _should_ have,
expected this outcome. For all she knew, the report could have just resulted
in an extra-thorough search.

~~~
mindslight
They had already boarded the plane. The only possible outcomes were nothing,
or his removal from that flight.

It seems reasonable, and incentive-aligning, for both of them to be removed
from the plane.

~~~
im3w1l
So take him off the plane, search, and let back on? Delay the departure 15
min. Maybe the policies don't work like that though.

~~~
mindslight
Yeah - policies, logistics, police, pilots, and economics don't work like
that.

------
rainhacker
I always wear my university branded apparel when travelling by air, hopefully,
to avoid being stereotyped in wrong way based on the color of my skin.

------
bkovacev
While I agree that this was really harsh and inhumane - you have to understand
that this is a normal behavior of the security officers.

What if the guy was actually a terrorist? Would you praise that woman because
she was the one alarming the police?

Instead of judging the woman, put yourself in her position - she panicked and
reacted, if you had a child near you - would you have done the same?

Don't generalize too early - this is an isolated case.

~~~
threwbacca
If we're going to speculate, let's go ahead and flip the hypothetical. So
you're on the plane with your kid, and a passenger freaks out because they
overheard a scrap of a conversation in a language they don't speak.

Security takes that very seriously, so of course they get everyone off the
plane. You, along with every other passenger, are separately questioned about
your activities, politics, and religious beliefs. Your carry on and checked
luggage are both searched carefully. Your kid is interrogated to make sure
that you're not lying about being their guardian, and that your stories add
up.

Of course, they find nothing. There are no terrorists on the plane (although a
couple of teenagers are arrested for failing a breathalyzer test). But out of
an abundance of caution, the airline elects to cancel the flight, and bar you
all from further travel with them for 24 hours. You're refunded your original
ticket price, of course, with no hard feelings!

Does that still seem like a reasonable response to you? Or is it only when
_you 're_ not subject to it that draconian security measures are an
appropriate way to deal with a ludicrous imagined threat?

~~~
bkovacev
To be fair - it does. Nowadays, you never know when someone will blow up. Take
for instance the Turkey bombing. Guy causally walked on the street and
suddenly detonated himself killing a dozen of people.

I'm Serbian and I do not have a green card. I speak "buga, buga" language as
my team mates call it. I look bulky since I do sports and weight lifting plus
I have a shaved head and I have a beard. Typical criminal type looking. For
the past six years I have been on an F-1 visa. Numerous times was my passport
taken longer to "process", my I-20 and my emails taken longer to read. I was
10 finger printed every time, you know, just in case. I had to retake photos
all the time. I am still looked down upon because my passport is not from the
EU, but I'm European. People do not hear my accent.

Once my I-20 was not signed by my school - I was taken to a separate room -
interrogated for 45 minutes and then they finally called the school and the
school verified.

Once I took my shaker bottle and my protein with me in a carry on. I was moved
aside to a separate room, interrogated for 20 minutes as they were running
some kind of tests to the powder.

In London I was denied a visa for a 24 hour stay, when British Airways was on
strike so I have spent the Christmas Eve with a security officer at the
airport.

Have I ever called that racism/nationalism or whatever? No, not really. Police
are there to protect you and are there to protect your interest.

9/10 times the police is wrong, but what about that 1/10 times when they're
right? People just assume that cops will figure it out - they still have to do
their jobs.

EDIT: For the people that forgot -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia)

PS Oh man the downvotes, gotta love HN.

~~~
threwbacca
Where does it end? When the only people allowed to venture outdoors are those
who pass a full military background check and submit to general anesthesia and
a comprehensive cavity search, will that be excessive? After all-- anyone
could explode at any moment, yes? No price can be too high.

That's clearly absurd. But it became absurd well before then. If we are
willing to grit our teeth and do the math, almost _any_ cost is too high to
prevent the statistical non-event of a fatal terrorist attack.

In my country, good, innocent people, people with families and careers and
dreams for the future, die _every single day_ in senseless traffic accidents
that could have been avoided if our incredibly safe public transportation were
a little bit cheaper, or just a little less stressful. Every day, someone's
son or daughter or mother or fiancee doesn't come home, ever again, because...
"Anyone could be a terrorist."

Sorry, I'm not buying any of this "that one time out of ten" bullshit. If the
security forces are indeed tasked with helping us to feel safe, they are doing
an admirably shit job of it.

------
nsajko
Did the SA employees even have authority to remove him from the plane without
the police?

~~~
maxerickson
They assert a lot of control over their aircraft. Page 15:

[https://www.southwest.com/assets/pdfs/corporate-
commitments/...](https://www.southwest.com/assets/pdfs/corporate-
commitments/contract-of-carriage.pdf)

Which of course doesn't mean those assertions are legally valid, but that's
the contract.

------
daodedickinson
So he's on a UC Berkeley debate team? From my experience, that's not as
hateful an anti-American group as the San Francisco State debate team, or the
Towson debate team, or the Binghampton or Bard debate team, but pretty close.
I can see why the UC paper would think that makes the airlines look worse, but
pro-genocide arguments like the following are quite normal and accepted at
these kind of debate programs: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC-
Cqkq6zWc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC-Cqkq6zWc)

