[tokenadult]

This is gripping reading for me, because "Mr. Mukerjee" is someone I know by first name, indeed nickname, even though I have never met him. (He was my son's roommate for most of the last year, and was the crucial connection for my son getting his job in New York City.)

I appreciate seeing someone else's perspective on the incident that has appalled all my Facebook friends who have seen Mr. Mukerjee's own account

http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/post/59021412512/dont-fly-...

of his experience at the airport (which was a top post on Hacker News for about a full day). We can all learn something about any incident by hearing a second opinion on it.

That said, if Mr. Mukerjee’s behavior that day was "aggressive," my interpretation of that, never having met him, but knowing his roommate very well indeed, is that he was assertive about claiming the civil rights of an American. (I imagine he was also hungry, tired, and eager to travel to see his family.) It's too bad that people who assert their rights are taken to be acting suspiciously, but let's examine the incident and modify the system in a way that makes it easier, not harder, for a tired and hungry traveler to get straight answers and have factual misimpressions resolved, rather than assuming that every loyal American[1] is a terrorist.

After formal study of the law and work as a judicial clerk in a state supreme court, I find that my bottom line is that I still have to remind myself to be very deferential in the presence of law enforcement officers--especially armed law enforcement officers. Asserting my rights is not something the system makes easy to do, EVEN FOR A LAWYER, once the situational triggers of law-enforcement occur. But this is all the more reason to let the great majority of travelers who are neither terrorists nor lawyers, but just people trying to make a living and spend time with their families, enjoy efficient, friendly travel. Something went awry here, and being just one remove away from directly knowing the victim, I'm inclined not to blame the victim.

[1] I am sure that Mr. Mukerjee has a strong sense of being an American because he met my son in Ireland, where both were as part of a summer program. The Irish kids teased all the Americans in the program for their horrific accents in spoken English [smile]. My son and Mr. Mukerjee forged their friendship through their shared Americanness in a foreign land, and I think the United States ought to treat all its own citizens and all the foreigners who visit America better than current TSA procedures treat air travelers.

AFTER EDIT: Another comment in this thread reminded me to check the background of the author of the blog post kindly submitted here. Wired reported in 2009

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/dhs-threatens-blogg...

that the blogger was questioned by TSA agents after releasing a TSA document on his blog. It seems that at least some of the time he has been most interested in posting an interesting read for frequent travelers, and not necessarily trying to curry favor with TSA. I think he succeeded here, too, agree or disagree, in writing an interesting blog post (as did Mr. Mukerjee in his blog post).

[mindslight]

> Asserting my rights is not something the system makes easy to do, EVEN FOR A LAWYER, once the situational triggers of law-enforcement occur

Since it's apparently impossible to prevent the abuse of our rights, it seems the simplest remedy is easy-to-claim compensation after the fact, right out of the department's budget. Unjustly detained for 3 hours? That's a payment of say $500 (professional hourly rate plus extra for emotional distress). Denied your usual food/water/bathroom/medication? Physical distress add-on. Laptop stolen by goons at the border? Replacement value of laptop plus several hundred dollars for setting it up. Court acquittal verdict? Reimbursement of all lawyer fees + payment for your time spent in court and/or jail.

Until these agencies are no longer able to externalize their damages onto the public, they have little reason to lower their false positive rate.

[icelancer]

>Until these agencies stop externalizing their damages to the public, they have no reason to lower their false positive rate.

Completely agree. This seems like a completely reasonable course of action (compensation for lost time) but instead they just aggressively search and detain people and the only punishment they get is if someone gets "uppity" and asserts their rights, at which point some low-level nobody will be suspended with pay. Wonderful.

[nthj]

> Replacement value of laptop plus several hundred dollars for setting it up

+ lost opportunity + swap out all existing passwords + missed deadlines => $5,000 +/- $500

[T-hawk]

That's a perspicacious line of thinking, but beware of perverse incentives. You've now created a market where people can try to get themselves unjustly detained and distressed in order to collect that payout. Money always attracts parasites.

[smsm42]

>>> That said, if Mr. Mukerjee’s behavior that day was "aggressive,"

Once I've read about him being "aggressive", my BS detector went off immediately. If he'd indeed be aggressive, he's be tazed, handcuffed and detained. It's not like we haven't read what happens to people that law enforcement considers aggressive. I'm pretty sure "aggressive" here means "didn't kowtow to the TSA workers enough and mumbled something about him having some 'rights'".

[unreal37]

I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism, before the TSA, before the NSA snooped on our phone calls or Hacker News posts, before all of this... I imagine there was a guy who wanted to do something, got stopped by police for a couple of questions, and got agitated by the hassle and it turned into something bigger.

Now 100 years ago, that guy couldn't write a blog post about it and get worldwide attention. But then again, it's just always been true that when dealing with the authorities, if you rub someone the wrong way, if you act belligerent, if you want to run the other way as soon as the police ask you a question, if you test positive multiple times for explosives... well, it's always been true that you're going to have a bad day that day.

Mr Mukerjee had a bad day. But then again, he tested positive for explosives multiple times!

[smsm42]

He tested positive for some chemicals that produce false positive on TSA explosives test, not for explosives. As the original article admits, this is a common occurrence. However, it became very clear very soon that he actually does not have any explosives on him. What were they doing once that was clear?

[T-hawk]

They were trying to catch him for anything they could imagine. Maybe he was the next marathon bomber, coming from a laboratory session. They'd be national heroes, or at the very least they'd make damn damn sure that nobody's ass could be on the line for letting the next marathon bomber slip through TSA.

(What? TSA's job isn't to protect marathons? Silly patriot, do you want to let the terrorists win?)

[moocowduckquack]

I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism,

Please read some history.

[InclinedPlane]

That's an extraordinarily shitty excuse.

[mintplant]

Oh come on.

> These events include Mr. Mukerjee becoming further agitated and aggressive after testing positive for explosives, as well as him repeatedly reaching for his not-yet-manually-searched bag.

> However,multiple statements by TSA personnel reference Mr. Mukerjee repeatedly grabbing for his bag after he was told not to touch it.

> While false positives are not unusual for ETD, it is unusual a person and their items could fail so many times using different testing equipment.

What would you have done in a situation like this, when people's lives are at stake and it's your fault if something goes wrong and someone gets hurt?

[weland]

One of the things you get when you have a horde of untrained, uptight civilians dressed in uniforms is an incredibly unprofessional behaviour from someone who is supposed to do law enforcement.

The agents did several things that escalated the whole deal, things which a cadet would have immediately understood. To quote just a few:

> These events include Mr. Mukerjee becoming further agitated and aggressive after testing positive for explosives, as well as him repeatedly reaching for his not-yet-manually-searched bag.

> However,multiple statements by TSA personnel reference Mr. Mukerjee repeatedly grabbing for his bag after he was told not to touch it.

This is wrong on the following levels:

1. The first fucking thing you do when you detain someone is explain them why they are detained, how long they will be detained and -- if they have not actually broken any law and are there for preventive action, what you are doing in order to prevent it. If you exceed this period by the most infinitely small amount of time, you immediately tell them why it is taking longer (in some civilized countries not doing this is reason enough for the state to start selling politicians' kidneys to pay damages). Basically, what the dudes should have done was say: "Hello Mr. Mukerjee, we have to detain you on the basis of <whatever law they are doing it on> because we have suspicions that you might try to harm the passengers on board. We need to check a few things up, this will take <how much fucking time can it take to check a stupid suitcase and a handbag>. I understand this may sound outrageous to you, but we need to make sure." It's particularly important that you use normal-sounding words and sentences in an active voice. Someone who isn't a regular jail offender will most likely be panicked enough to to understand a word you're saying if you start throwing shit like "we believe you might be a threat to the safety of the crew and the passengers of the vessel".

2. If you don't want people to get agitated, you don't offer them external triggers. If you want to conduct a search, you immediately remove all the bags after conducting a thorough inventory of it in the presence of the guy you're searching. "Mr. Murkjee, we need to search your bag <on the basis of whatever law allows us to do that without a warrant>. Can you please tell me what's inside? We will have to remove all items in another room, we need to make a list of the items inside to make sure you get them all back". Of course people are going to get nervous if they are in danger of losing their work. They kind of depend on it to eat. If you don't remove these belongings, people will naturally keep peeking at them and grabbing them and insisting on touching them because they're afraid. It's a natural reaction.

3. If you detain someone for longer than half an hour, you provide for their needs period. You ask if they need water or a snack. If they're guilty, they'll have a long time to be thirsty and hungry in prison, but there's a long way before that. You do this for two reasons that you hear about in the first six hours of training (if your instructor is slow, it can probably take as little as four...). First, basic sensations of thirst and hunger amplify the sensation of fear. Second, dehydration and low blood sugar levels heighten the symptoms of fear and panic, like anxiety and shaking.

4. When someone tested positive for something, you either don't tell him and get on with it on your own, or you tell him and ask for an explanation. Maybe the dude visited a friend whose kid got a chemistry kit as a present and splashed it all over the table in the living room. Either tell him "Mr. Murkjee, you tested positive for di-hidrogen oxide, a substance we believe may be explosive. We need to conduct a further search through your items -- we have people working on that right away so that you can be back on your trip as soon as possible, but in the meantime, do you know of any way in which you could have come into contact with this substance?". Either do that, or just tell him that their preliminary tests showed traces of an explosive substance, we need to search your items to know for sure if it can be dangerous. In both cases, tell the dude how long it takes. People can have a panic attack just because of missing a flight, can you imagine how awesome it has to be to have someone who carries a gun drag things along when you have a plane to catch?

Bonus things the TSA folks fucked up:

5. If someone wishes to go but you haven't finished your procedure, you fucking tell them why and explicitly mention what you need to do before clearing them. People who fly have no way of knowing, and particularly no reason of knowing the whole procedure. Telling him he can go, but the bag stays was a major fuck-up that is usually reason enough for disciplinary action in a normal police force. You don't just tell people they can go without their items. The correct thing to do is say something along the lines of "Before clearing you for leaving, we need to check your bag, in case it may contain items that could be harmful for the passengers in the terminal. This will take <X minutes>, once we're done you're free to leave if you wish".

6. There is no such thing as a "limbo", not in any sane security procedure. Someone is always in one of three possible states, and if he goes from one to another you immediately mention it: he's either detained (for a definite or indefinite period of time), free to go after a procedure is finished (all suspicions are off, but there's some compulsory stuff that needs to be done -- e.g. you're sent home from the station, but you still need to get the receipt that confirms you received all your items from storage before they clear you to leave) or you're free to go. "There is nothing wrong with you but you can't leave" is a form of abuse period. It does not matter if things aren't that way: what the man sees is what you're telling him. There's no way a boarding passenger knows the whole procedure, so that he can go like "Oh, there's no need for me to worry... I'm ok but they can't let me leave while my bag hasn't been searched. I can't just go and mingle with the people who have been cleared to fly while I haven't, since I might stealthily hand them a knife or a pack of explosives after they've gone through the security check."

7. If the reason you are detaining someone is a subjective one (i.e. the dubious-guy-spotter said he looks dubious), you still need to provide a reason for detaining him. If you don't, the dude will naturally think you just picked him at random, which he will -- again -- perceive as a form of abuse.

tl;dr There are some basic things you need to in order to tell if the person you're talking to is being aggressive or giving inconsistent answers because he's preparing to carry out a criminal offense. If you don't do them, you fuck up your screening process.

Being under pressure is not an excuse for not doing a job you're supposed to do under pressure.

Full disclosure/source: I wanted to spend an year in a computer security-related position for a state institution in my country of origin, and had to take a course on this. My memory of the details is fairly dim, I hope I haven't trashed anything significant.

[InclinedPlane]

It's sad. No, scratch that, it's fucking outrageous that this explanation is even necessary. Somehow we've internalized the notion that kafkaesque nightmares are to be expected and necessarily endured by good little citizens in order for our country to continue to exist or something. In many ways this is more frightening than living in a 1984 style dystopia. Living in a dystopia of our own making that receives more popular support than condemnation is almost too distressing to contemplate.

[ryan-c]

I believe that current TSA policy is to allow the traveler to be able to see their belongings at all times, and if they search it search it in front of the traveler.

From what I can tell this has even been emphasized lately, now when I opt out at SFO they have me bin my stuff and wait until they are ready to pat me down before running it through the x-ray. Once it has been x-rayed they put my belongings where I can see them (but are quite clear that I shouldn't reach for them) while they do the pat down.

[weland]

That sounds like a risky procedure in public places (but, as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm not too familiar with the details of the TSA procedures).

When I took the course I mentioned in my post above, the explanation was along these lines: when you want to check someone who carries a bag, you need to remember that he has certain expectations about the safety of his belongings. If you're in a public place, it's reasonable that you never remove the belongings without assuring the owner that they are safe and well-guarded. So when you stop a gang of half-drunk teenagers on the street, you don't ask them to drop their backpacks on the sidewalk and then go ten yards further to search them. You ask them to leave the backpacks in a single place, right near them, and while your colleague searches the backpacks, you keep an eye on the dudes.

That's the common-sense thing to do: no one would let their bags two meters away from them in an airport, even if they kept a constant eye on them. You can't just expect someone to be okay with leaving them god knows where.

If you ask people to put their belongings away in a designated area, the correct thing to do is to have that area placed well away from any passers by and a guard near it. That way, you can tell the owner something along the lines of "Please put your bag in that bin over there; don't worry about it, it won't be stolen -- that man staying guard there isn't leaving, he's there to make sure you get it back just as you left it. We need to ask you a few questions, and then we may have to search your bag. we'll search it in front of you to make sure no one steals or breaks anything, and if all checks out okay, you're free to go. Any questions before we start?"

As our instructor mentioned it, it's really important -- especially in places like airports, concert arenas and whatever -- where you might expect one terrorist every two years and ten thousand disoriented folks with a scare of flight who triggered the bomb detector with their cheap after-shave every day -- to treat people without hostility, with an attitude of collaboration, not suspicion. Very few travelers are at fault for the US' foreign policy (and those that are probably don't go through the whole TSA hell), so it's not their fault that some guys from the Middle East want to blow up their planes. In places like these, you want to treat people so that they can say "yeah, I know this is inconvenient, but the guy is only doing his job", and because they are already under a lot of stress, you want to make sure you don't heighten their fear.

[glenra]

> We will have to remove all items in another room,

Searching the bag in another room has too much abuse potential. If travelers let bags out of their sight even for a few minutes the TSA could easily steal or break anything of value in there with no accountability. So the existing procedures mostly don't allow that - searching has to take place in the presence of the passenger.

[weland]

I'm not familiar with the details of the TSA procedure (thankfully, I'm not an US citizen and haven't been there since the whole post-9/11 mess started) -- but I would agree that searching the bag should be done in front of the owner.

That's actually the recommended policy in most cases (not only TSA), for several reasons. One of them is the one you stated; another one is that suspicions related to a particular item can be cleared more quickly by just asking the owner, and if you do it right, you can also get various hints about anything illegal (e.g. the guy is ok until you find the hidden pocket).

There's only one case I know of where searching without the owner's presence would be legitimate -- if the exact testing equipment and procedure must not be divulged, for fear it might reveal vulnerability. This is a form of security by obscurity though, and a sane system shouldn't need that. I'm sure this isn't the TSA's case, but there are cases where it can be an option -- for instance, in an underfunded law-enforcement system that can't afford sufficiently broad testing equipment. In their case, introducing further delay in the obsolescence of their equipment probably ought to be understood. This comes in various other incarnations -- e.g. if you suspect the bag may contain dangerous substances, you typically want to search it in a special, sealed room.

Nonetheless, if searching is done in another room, that's always done according to a procedure that ensures accountability: you ask the owner to tell you what's inside, make a list of everything there, and ask him about the working condition of every gizmo inside. The proper way to do it is with a constructive attitude -- if the bag is stuffed with various items, you assist the owner by taking the items one by one. You don't let him touch them, in case he might sneak up that bag of TNT when you aren't looking, but you help the guy -- if he's got thirty gizmos inside, it's only natural he won't remember them all. But in this case, the search is then conducted by someone else (in order to avoid subjectivity issues -- e.g. the dude has a vintage handheld radio from his grandfather, it's filled with explosive but when you do the search, you test it superficially because it's a vintage radio, what the hell...)

[moocowduckquack]

This is brilliant. Can we clone you to restaff the TSA?

[weland]

Thanks :-). Restaffing the TSA may not be necessary though -- not radically; there seems to be a problem with the culture there and with how performance is measured. That's systemic and comes from higher in the hierarchy.

Specifically, I think good directions would be:

1. Driving away the "law enforcement" culture. Are members of the TSA staff registered as policemen, assigned to a station, going through police academy and under the rules and discipline of police training? If not, they aren't law enforcement and shouldn't be treated as such, and should either a) be disallowed from conducting any kind of search without the supervision of a policeman or b) covered by the same regulation as a regular policeman. You can't have people do police stuff with non-police discipline, eschewing the checks and balances law enforcement has in order to make sure it enforces, you know, the law.

2. Providing immediate legal counseling as soon as you step into a private room. Large crowds tend to be a good protection against abuse. Once you step into a room, anything more than searching through personal items should be covered by a lawyer, and people should particularly only be questioned only in the presence of a lawyer. This is because a) the lawyer would be able to assert the rights of the person being questioned and b) the lawyer would be able to explain what's happening in layman's terms. When a particularly uptight ex-postal employee who just discovered authority exceeds gets nasty, a third-party reminding him he's stepping outside the law works much better than the person on the receiving end of his newly-discovered authority asserting his rights -- risking to be regarded as "aggressive" and "overly-assertive" by someone whose most important previous responsibility had been making sure stamps are correctly positioned on the envelope.

3. Explicitly encouraging and rewarding correct behaviour from TSA personnel, while at the same time applying serious disciplinary action. Let's be honest here, there's a large enough supply of unemployed people who can search a bag that you can afford discharging abusers, and sufficient public frustration that you can afford offering the occasional bonus to people who go out of their way to clear up misunderstandings.

[glenra]

> it is unusual a person and their items could fail so many times using different testing equipment.

So maybe it's finding something true. BFD. You look in the bag, verify there's no explosive there, and let him through.

Maybe the bag had fireworks in or near it at some point. Or magician's supplies. Or a chemistry set. Or any number of other things. There are a dozens reasons why a bag might actually have been near explosives or chemicals that are similar enough to explosives or explosive precursors that the test would correctly show positive.

Nobody cares whether the test result was an error or a "correct" reading based on something that IS NO LONGER IN THE BAG - either way, you let him through. Why the hell not?

[mintplant]

Or it could be somewhere hidden in the bag, in a lining somewhere, etc. Or it could be somewhere else on his person, having left traces on the bag after coming in contact with it.

[glenra]

Right, that's why they do a search. Amd if it's hidden so well you won't find it in a search, it'll be hidden that well tomorrow too - where is the sense in pestering this guy for hours and sending him home to get on a plane tomorrow rather than letting him get on a plane today?

The sad truth is that the terrorists here are us. The primary reason nobody has blown up a plane recently in the US is that nobody is TRYING to blow up a plane in the US. If somebody were seriously trying, they'd have done it already.

[maxerickson]

You should be careful and say that lives may be at stake. Even if we had a much improved system, the vast majority of closer examinations would be of innocent people. Actually, I guess the false positive rate goes up with the effectiveness for quite a while.