For what it's worth, practically every brown guy I know goes through the rituals when interacting with US Gov officials. Shave, look as clean cut as possible, and don't stand out. So no opting out of the scanners, no joking at security or immigration, better have backup ID.
I'm not saying it's right that it's this way but it's safer. The officials are not very smart people but they have power, so you just give them what they want.
I'm not going to wage this war for liberty or whatever it is. I'm just going to go on vacation.
It's sad how much flying has changed since 9/11. Younger individuals will never realize how much easier it was to get through security. I'm sad at how he was treated and it's something that needs to be changed. It's not like treating anyone badly is going to result in more information.
This is what happens when you give people arbitrary power over others with no training on civil rights, and task them with maintaining "security" (at all costs). There is a pervasive, contagious attitude in the security sector: We do whatever we want (in the name of security) and anyone who doesn't get in line and submit to our, eg, invasive body scan, can pound sand. It doesn't matter what their motive is--they deserve to be treated badly for not submitting, or because our machine says they might be a Terrorist.
It's interesting how this thread suddenly disappeared from the front page, btw.
Sad but predictable in a world with a global movement of suicidal religious fanatics willing to murder thousands of people and cause billions in property damage. It is what is. I miss the old days too, but I wouldn't vote to water-down airport security.
>I'm sad at how he was treated and it's something that needs to be changed.
Does it? He refused the millimeter wave scan, got a pat-down, tested positive for an explosive or poison, and then refused further screening - what should happen at that point? Should he be cleared? Where did the TSA go wrong here?
Lightning strikes have killed 1300 people in the US since September 11. September 11 was a freak event. Terrorism is objectively not an existential threat, and guarding planes does not make us safer. If we were in danger of another 9/11 magnitude attack, it would have happened. Planes are not a magical key to terror plots. Terrorists can easily bomb targets in other ways and be incredibly successful, like Timothy McVeigh.
White Americans cause more acts of terror than Muslims. The last plane hijacking before 9/11 was by a white American. "Muslim" is not an indicator of people from the middle East, much less terrorists- the majority of Muslims are not from the middle East, they're African or Asian. Demonizing Muslims is a completely arbitrary choice based solely on one extreme outlier, and not on the danger they present.
You ask what should have happened. Did we read they same article? He asked to go home. They should have let him go. When he asked to leave they locked him up for 6 hours. He didn't want to be there and they had no right or reason to keep a him there. They treated him like shit, probably searched his apartment without a Warrenton, and cancelled his ticket and didn't reschedule him. And this was at JFK! This is likely among the best, least prejudiced experiences you can hope to have in a US airport. It's one of the largest, most liberal airport; the TSA shouldn't be locking people up if they don't even intend to fly.
I'm white and I once tripped the bomb paper with my shoes. You know what happened? The TSA guy just waved me through. If I was a little browner I would have been locked up in a room for six hours. If I had been treated like this man, I would be in jail for socking an agent in the face.
I think the experience you have in a US security queue (admittedly limited experience here, and I'm including the special US border agency bit in Toronto) is that the bigger and busier the airport, the more stressed everyone is. The security people are understaffed, everyone else is crammed together and worrying about missing their flights.
The barely trained high school dropouts in blue uniforms at the TSA only serve to increase our sense of servility to a government that is increasingly afraid of its own citizens.
Plus... the TSA exclusively searches people who are already in America. People support it on the generally prevalent notion that it prevents a flow of terrorists, which is just obviously not true. The TSA does nothing to prevent terrorists from flying planes into America. If anything it would prevent terrorists from hijacking planes to divert to other countries. I genuinely think the only reason people support it is the mental association "of planes bring people here" and "terrorists are other places".
The TSA notionally prevents the use of domestic and outbound international airplanes as weapons. In order to hijack a plane you would need to subdue hundreds of people (because why take over a small plane), find and subdue the air marshall, break into the cockpit, and know how to fly a massive jetliner. It is an insane concept. You could just buy a schoolbus(legal), steal a truck, or even just rent a big uhaul, fill it with explosives(undetectable and not even checked for), and drive it onto a big bridge or next to a stadium(also legal). You wouldn't even have to kill yourself to do it, you could kill many more people, and it would be almost impossible to stop.
If you just wanted to kill people you wouldn't even do that. You'd just set up IEDs like people do in Iraq and Syria. That would be way more terrifying than plane hijacking- the bombs could be everywhere. There would be nearly nothing we could do about it.
The fact that none of that happens says that terrorism is just not a threat in the way we think of it. The TSA is the most useless government organization in the US.
He didn't refuse the scanner, he was given a choice and when his choice was going to get complicated he could no longer switch back to the scanner. He did opt for the scanner on his new flight. But none of that is really relevant to how he was treated. Why deny him a glass of water?
On thinking about it, the mild mistreatment over a period of hours could be deliberate so as to induce stress and make him crack. Hence repeatedly asking the same questions looking for him to slip up if any part of the story was fabricated.
I'm no interrogator, but that does sound like Interrogation 101, indeed. Have different people ask the same questions in different ways and when the subject is at different mental states.
> What you refer to as a complication was him testing positive for explosives or poison.
You might want to look at the Birmingham Six.
They were from Northern Ireland (and thus automatically suspected of terrorism) and living in Birmingham; they were travelling to attend the funeral of a childhood friend (and he was a terrorist); they travelled on the day a bomb went off in Birmingham; and they played a game of cards on the train.
Those cards were coated with nitrocellulose.
The fragments of nitrocellulose on their hands tested positive as nitroglycerine, and that bit of "evidence" was used to convict them of a crime they did not commit and imprison them for very many years.
Testing positive for some chemical that might be used in explosives. Otherwise they wouldn't have asked him for what cleaning supplies he might have used.
They detained someone who wasn't a threat. They go wrong every single time that happens. It could be an excusable error if there was good evidence that they prevent what they were created to prevent, but they have yet to produce any.
You've been crossing into incivility in this thread. That breaks the site guidelines, regardless of how wrong someone else is. Why? Because the wrong things going on in the world, wrong though they are, don't justify destroying this site. Treating other users like this leads to a downward spiral of retaliation that leads to destroying the site. If you're commenting here, it's your job to make sure that doesn't happen. So please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
Perhaps it was the bit where they held him for 18 hours without charge, due process, food, or water.
Edit: Misread the article. He was held for 3½ hours. Still, refusing to give him a glass of water was not necessary, unless water-activated throat-bombs are now a thing.
In a more general sense, TSA went wrong the same way they usually go wrong. Kafka-esque "you're not detained but you can't leave" nonsense designed to side-step due process, comically ignorant staff who think Islam is the only religion brown people can have, whilst not even being effective at detecting contraband.
>Still, refusing to give him a glass of water was not necessary,
OK. Sure. I suppose if you're held for 3 hours, you should have a right to water. Is the big problem here? If you're detained for more than 1 hour you should get a bottle of water?
I think that water isn't such a rare commodity in New York that they couldn't just put a jug of water and a glass in the holding room and keep it topped up.
It seems obvious to me that refusing to give water is a calculated act designed to cause discomfort - not unlike unnecessarily giving multiple "obscene" pat downs [their words] - the closest TSA thugs can get to using the "enhanced interrogation" techniques that I think they wish they were allowed to use.
So it isn't specifically the lack of water that's the problem. The problem is the pattern of behaviour that the lack of water and the rest of the unnecessarily combative treatment are examples of. Too many TSA employees are on power trips.
If it helps, you could read it as "thugs that work for the TSA".
No doubt there are many fine upstanding people working for the TSA, who don't abuse their power and are angry at co-workers that do. Those people aren't what's wrong with the TSA.
The people who are a problem within the TSA are those who deny repeated requests for water or refuse to allow a person who is not under any kind of lawful detention to use their mobile phone, for, I claim, no purpose other than to assert their dominance.
The mobile phone is potentially defensible, but I challenge you to present a reasonable national security justification for denying the not-technically-a-detainee water. Until you do, I'm going to call those people thugs.
I'm convinced it was because I'd been to one of those indoor go-kart'ing places the day before as part of a company event, and wore the same jeans.
Extended screening was not a fun experience. I've always opted out so I'm used to the standard pat down. This was a lot more invasive. I was directed to a private area with two security officers (SFO uses a private contractor, not TSA). Besides a more thorough pat down, my bag was unpacked and its items were swabbed and chemical tested. I don't think the chemical tester went off a second time. The whole procedure took about 15 minutes. It's not the easiest situation in which to remain calm.
But, instead of getting annoyed at the security personnel (TSA or otherwise), I remind myself that this is ultimately the doing of congress and my fellow citizens. And then I send the ACLU another donation.
> He set off the explosive detector, and didn't provide a good answer to why he set it off.
What, short of "I was making a bomb" would be an answer that would satisfy you? It's not like it is up to him to know the intricacies of bomb detectors and their ridiculous false positive rates for certain chemicals, including such terribly dangerous goods as soap.
He doesn't know how to talk to security. The primary purpose of security questioning is to establish that you are a safe, non-violent, legal traveler. Of course, security agents can't ask you this directly, so they ask this through proxy questions. Varnull did not understand this, and when asked the proxy questions, he gave vague answers and did not address the primary purpose. When the questions became personal, Varnull became defensive and talked back (the exact opposite of what he should do).
All that really matters here is the discussion with the explosives agent. This was the guy who had the power to 1) waive him on or 2) send him through tertiary screening. The interaction for the whole day was decided in this conversation. I honestly believe Varnull gave very bad answers here. Answering "I don't know" is a very bad answer. Even if he didn't answer the proxy questions, if he established that he was a safe and secure traveler, the security agent would have waived him on and he would have avoided the whole ordeal.
One of the answers he gave was so bad it made me cringe.
>“Well, I haven’t touched any explosives, but if I don’t even know what chemical we’re talking about, I don’t know how to figure out why the tests are picking it up.”
After he said this, I'm completely unsurprised he got held up in tertiary screening.
So it's the duty of the interrogated person to know how to give good answers to security questions and not the security personnel's duty to ask good questions?
> The primary purpose of security questioning is to establish that you are a safe, non-violent, legal traveler.
It failed, miserably, see linked article.
> Of course, security agents can't ask you this directly, so they ask this through proxy questions. Varnull did not understand this, and when asked the proxy questions, he gave vague answers and did not address the primary purpose.
That is your interpretation. Mine is that he was exactly who he said he was: someone going about their legitimate private business and who - reluctantly - had to interface with the authorities.
> When the questions became personal, Varnull became defensive and talked back (the exact opposite of what he should do).
What should he do then? Grovel and stick his head up their asses? They're off base, they make all kinds of assumptions without verification and on top of that spend so much time on this one utterly benign traveler that a whole bunch of baddies could have slipped through elsewhere.
Here's a thought for you:
Take 10 guys like the OP, use them to tie up the resources of the authorities, then take 1 guy that is white, middle aged with a plan and some basic gear making it through the resulting melee. After all, if they are so easily distracted that's actually a security hole.
> All that really matters here is the discussion with the explosives agent.
Yes, who was using equipment that produces false positives regularly and who is well aware of all the ways in which it can create false positives.
> 1) waive him on or 2) send him through tertiary screening. The interaction for the whole day was decided in this conversation.
Nice they let him know. Instead he got several hours of 'you'll be out of here in a few minutes'.
> I honestly believe Varnull gave very bad answers here. Answering "I don't know" is a very bad answer.
Are you suggesting that he make stuff up? Do you realize that lying is a federal offense in this situation?
> if he established that he was a safe and secure traveler, the security agent would have waived him on and he would have avoided the whole ordeal.
Guess what, he was. So the process failed.
> One of the answers he gave was so bad it made me cringe.
>“Well, I haven’t touched any explosives, but if I don’t even know what chemical we’re talking about, I don’t know how to figure out why the tests are picking it up.”
It's an honest answer, as honest as he could have possibly been. Or is it illegal for a citizen to have some basic knowledge of chemistry? Any highschool student here would be able to understand the basics of what is happening at this screening. Or would you prefer we all pretend to be dumb sheep instead?
> After he said this, I'm completely unsurprised he got held up in tertiary screening.
Good for you. Me, I'd rather the authorities spend their time more productive than on harassing perfectly safe travelers on their petty little power trips.
> 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.
That last discussion was a shit show of people one-upping each other in the oppression olympics. It seems like as soon as you compare one persons experience to being not as bad or worse than another persons the entire thread devolves into terrible accusations and comparisons.
That said I am at loss what is it to do with Ramadan? I have not seen a single statement that his ordeal has anything to do with Ramadan but it just happened during Ramadan. Otherwise this is happening to all walks of life including white dudes (though much much less frequently). Just a catchy title?
edit: my objection is to the title not the content.
Do you believe the government entered his apartment? It seems at least somewhat likely. They see the sparse apartment and picture of some religious thing on the wall, and it freaks them out. They take the picture back to their office to figure out what the hell it is.
I'm not knowledgeable about this stuff, but it seems like they could have used a "sneak and peek" warrant, as authorized in the patriot act.
I kind of think this guy should look into a civil lawsuit against those agencies. Did they violate any of his constitutional rights? Not letting him get food / drink, threatening to hold his bag if he walked away? Was a search warrant attained and he was never given notice, even after the fact?
> Do you believe the government entered his apartment?
Yes, I do believe that, because it's plausible, and because they asked him, when facing his apartment building, which side the parking lot is on. Which suggests that someone was there who could verify the answer.
I have to fly today, from Canada to Europe. I probably shouldn't be reading stories like these before a flight, but I did, top to bottom, transfixed by the details. I hope I manage to make it through airport "security" without any problem. I'll smile, I'll cooperate. Hell, maybe I'll even step into the radiation machine for the first time in my life if I have to (I also always have opted out).
I hate how scary this whole thing is. I fear it's going to keep getting worse.
> uncertainty about the harmful effects of that radiation
Personally I don't think there is much there to be concerned about. We know these waves penetrate less than 1mm into your skin, and that the only way they can cause damage is by thermal effects. We know it's not ionizing radiation, not by a long shot. I believe getting a sunburn at the beach is far worse.
I think the privacy concerns, and the frequently low efficiacy/high-false-positive rate of these machines are far more cause for concern.
Maybe it's not a good comparison, IDK. The trouble with getting a sunburn is because UV radiation is ionizing, and we know that causes cancer. Even if you don't get sunburnt, frequent unprotected exposure to strong sun increases cancer risk.
Maybe going to the sauna is a better comparison? We don't really have a consistent way of comparing effects of different types of non-ionizing radiation.
I'm pretty sure that even if they couldn't get the actual images out of the machine, they can easily take a picture of the image with their mobile cameras.
Couldn't the TSA agent viewing these images take a picture with their smartphone? That's just off the top of my head.
I'm more curious about any research into health effects of millimeter wave scans? My business partner always opts out claiming this but could never provide evidence.
I haven't heard of any conclusive evidence that it doesn't harm either (and how could there be one, since they haven't been used for that long), but why take the risk in the first place
Definitely, for sure both jews and muslims. The "following instructions from female flight attendants" thing I would guess also isn't out of the blue... maybe the airline has had experience with people not following female flight attendant rules.
> The "following instructions from female flight attendants"
There have been a few instances of people refusing to allow a woman to sit next to them. They don't always move themselves, they sometimes insist the woman is moved.
It would have given them an excuse not to let him on the plane. Not that they needed the excuse, obviously, but they would have liked it better if they had a reason. "There's no room on this plane that wasn't designed for such a thing."
I recently was selected for a more thorough screening at the DFW airport, which included walking through the metal detector twice, having a body scan, the new "universal pat-down" [0], and individual swabbing and x-ray of every item in my bag (everything required to be powered up as well).
I am often selected for pat-downs, despite using the scanner, and I must say the newly implemented pat-down procedure was much more intimate than I was comfortable with. There's got to be a better way.
The chemical swab (at least the one they use in Canada) seems to get set off by something in my wife's cosmetics pantheon. An agent made life hard for us on our last trip, almost made us miss our flight, very stressful.
I have heard, can't confirm, that glycerin soap will detect as a "bomb ingredient". Considering how ubiquitous glycerin soap, that's a rather terrible test.
I'm an average looking, run of the mill white software developer in my late 30's. I still get massive anxiety about taking air trips because of the hassle and harassment I've received in the past from TSA agents.
I have a hope that the backlash against the recent two failed Trump bans will continue to escalate and we'll see the end of this nonsense in our lifetimes. I think even the people who voted for this administration are starting to think it's absurd.
I'm the same, more or less -- middle-aged, boring-looking white dude -- and I also dread encounters with TSA and Border Patrol. Stealing my toothpaste is the least of it. As far as I can tell, the people they hire have the petty-authoritarian mindset of mall security, but with fewer legal constrains on their power.
I am Muslim and I've been "randomly" selected at airports before. My advice: smile and be nice as you should be with anyone. Granted you have every right to not comply, when you are being hostile it does not help you get out faster.
I've opted out every time I traveled prior to the introduction of (opt-in, non-frequent flyer based) Precheck, so 8-10 times per year from 2010-2014(?) and never had a notable issue.
As the other child comment says, rights atrophy if you don't exercise them.
If you're traveling with someone you know, one trick to ending the pat down early is to try to embarrass the agent while in a sensitive area. My favorite is "you know, he's only doing this because his girlfriend dumped him and is lonely". ~50% of the time they stop immediately and say "you're good".
Embarrassing the TSA agents might work sometimes, but some of them are also known to be vindictive and petty towards anybody who even seems like they might be challenging their authority. Given the possibility, however remote, of accidentally angering a vindictive and petty person who has power over my liberty and/or belongings... I think I'd just shut up and endure the pat-down.
I opt out every time, or did before I got precheck (I know, irony). I never had anything remotely like this experience, and my shaving soap has set off the gas chromatograph machine twice. I still bring it with me when I travel (it doesn't always trigger the machine, but that's a different discussion about the pointlessness of a machine with a lousy false positive rate being used to test for something with a vanishingly small prior).
My secret? I'm an average looking White Male in the US. Nobody ever thinks _even for a second_ that I could be a threat. Last time my soap got me taken to secondary screening, TSA left me alone in the room with their walkie talkie charging station. With all my stuff. Unsupervised.
I'm in the same position. And use the same day bag for train travel as my carry-on, meaning I've brought packs of razor blades on planes by accident more than once. (And a hunting knife once after a camping trip). The theater around keeping us safe is really about protecting us from non-whites
> timestamp on the paper: 10:40. ..... It was 2:20PM
So this guy sets off the alarm (swab probably found traces of explosives ), has no paperwork in order (proof of work), and has to wait for 3 hours before it gets resolved.
Last time the HN crowd was enraged over someone who was questioned for 15 minutes...
I was detained overnight, and some of my friends were denied entry to US for bullshit reasons... It is like a different planet.
My reading is just fine, read the article. He was 'fasting' before security check. And he should say it is a medical emergency, if he felt like passing out.
Please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts; we ban those. HN is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.
I think you're the only consistent identity that I recognize, because you post this a lot :)
I always have some concerns when I see it:
- Obviously controversial (but not clearly trolling) posts like thr3290's can't be made without potentially endangering the poster (we've seen people fired for public or semi-public remarks e.g. "donglegate"). I feel that this would have a chilling effect on voices that go against the common sentiment on HN.
I for one would not be comfortable using my account to make a comment like that one, which means that with your rules, my opinion would be suppressed (hypothetically speaking - I don't agree wth thr3290).
- "We ban those" isn't corroborated by any clear HN code of conduct. I (perhaps incorrectly) recall reading one at some point, but I'm currently hard-pressed to find it.
- It's not obvious to people who don't know you that you're a moderator. Your account doesn't have any clear demarcation, and you don't mention it in your profile.
Oh of course, throwaways are legit when the topic is personally sensitive. Some of the best HN discussions happen that way; for example there was one the other day where a couple of throwaway accounts discussed what it's like to be non-criminal psychopaths. Obviously we'd never get that without throwaways. But that is easily distinguished from the users who routinely create throwaways in order to completely depersonalize their comments. The latter is actually an attack on the foundation of HN. Legit throwaways are actually highly personal—often more personal than the main account.
On HN, commenters have a personal identity (which of course can be a pseudonym if you want). If some users want a site where there are no such identities, only free-floating comments with comment IDs, they should find or create such a site and participate there instead. There's room for lots of different kinds of internet forums. HN is just one kind, but it is that kind, and the reason we have moderation, including account bannage, is to preserve it as the kind of site it's meant to be.
> On HN, commenters have a personal identity (which of course can be a pseudonym if you want). If some users want a site where there are no such identities, only free-floating comments with comment IDs, they should find or create such a site and participate there instead. There's room for lots of different kinds of internet forums. HN is just one kind, but it is that kind, and the reason we have moderation, including account bannage, is to preserve it as the kind of site it's meant to be.
I don't digest HN this way, at least - I prefer to separate the message from the person writing it. I'm also pleased to note that there are far fewer comment-reviewing/ad-hominem rebuttals on HN than on Reddit, and far fewer 'celebrities'.
On the flip side, I'm aware of some of the downsides of anonymous posting, so I can't disagree with you there.
I'm just afraid that a lot of times that you warn against throwaways, it's towards a controversial post (that's usually downvoted for being unpopular, but not otherwise against the rules of the site). I believe those posts have a lot of value, at least in reminding people that there are other perspectives and that nothing is 'obvious' (and maybe getting them a bit more passionate :) ). I'm afraid of these disappearing, as I've seen happen on sub-reddits that become debate-free echo-chambers.
The "dangerous chemicals" you're referring to is bed-bug spray from months ago, that happened to get on his clothes while he was changing his bed sheets. I've seen victim-blaming before, but this takes it to a whole other level. It's genuinely scary that people like you exist.
I highly doubt it was the insecticide. It is far more likely that it was some combination of the cleaning supplies used. Many household cleaners can be used in bomb making.
I'm not saying it's right that it's this way but it's safer. The officials are not very smart people but they have power, so you just give them what they want.
I'm not going to wage this war for liberty or whatever it is. I'm just going to go on vacation.