[jtchang]

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.

[frickinLasers]

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.

[appleflaxen]

aviation has suffered, for sure, but liberty has suffered more

[macspoofing]

>It's sad how much flying has changed since 9/11.

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?

[hwillis]

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.

[GlennS]

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.

[frickinLasers]

> I miss the old days too, but I wouldn't vote to water-down airport security

Do you mean the "security" theater with a 95% failure rate? http://abcnews.go.com/US/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find...

To which the response is "cavity searches!" which will only continue to fail. http://kxan.com/2017/03/06/tsa-changing-pat-down-policy-afte...

The most effective change to security protocols was reinforcing the cockpit doors and changing how authorized people enter the cockpit. Every high-profile attack since 9/11 has not involved hijacking, has not been stopped by the TSA, but has been handled by better educated passengers and flight attendants. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/shoe-bomber-subdued-fl... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab#Atta...

Terrorists don't kill people on any scale worth worrying about. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/2...

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.

[hwillis]

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.

[phkahler]

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?

[Vivtek]

What better way to put him in his place than to deny him his humanity?

[phkahler]

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.

[lllllll]

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.

[macspoofing]

>He didn't refuse the scanner

He wasn't detained because he refused a scanner. You know that.

>when his choice was going to get complicated he could no longer switch back to the scanner.

Well ... yeah. What you refer to as a complication was him testing positive for explosives or poison.

>Why deny him a glass of water?

Is that the problem? He didn't get a glass of water?

[DanBC]

> 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.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12664938

You shouldn't make assumptions.

[icebraining]

testing positive for explosives or poison.

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.

[phkahler]

No, he wanted to switch back to the scanner when they escalated the pat down to something not decent to do in public.

[icebraining]

Where did the TSA go wrong here?

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.

[parenthephobia]

> Where did the TSA go wrong here?

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.

[macspoofing]

>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?

[parenthephobia]

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.

[macspoofing]

>TSA thugs

Seriously?

[parenthephobia]

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.