Contrarian perspective:
He fits a certain profile. Triggered a bunch of attributes (address move, chemicals on him, etc.).
The 9/11 attackers walked through the scanners with knifes.
The Boston bombers were flagged, but still traveled freely.
After both attacks people were laughing at the stupidity of the enforcement agencies, uselessness of the TSA, etc.
Here, the process worked.
His account is subjective, everyone else is an idiot, he's way smarter than them, gets offended by simple questions about religion, etc. OK, good for him. The more you push back, the more self righteous and arrogant you are during security checks, the deeper you're digging yourself in. Those people are doing their jobs. Same with how you should be treating waiters, etc.
JetBlue has the right to deny you a flight. ElAl does this all the time, incl. racial profiling. Good security track record.
Relevent bit is under the Trail section:
"On 12 May 1975 the six men were charged with murder and conspiracy to cause explosions."
"Forensic scientist Dr Frank Skuse used positive Griess test results to claim that Hill and Power had handled explosives"
No. There are far more efficient ways to flag people that fit a certain profile. They should have checked all of his belongings and let him go, and not focused at all on his "attitude". That allows for more checks of other suspicious people with the available time they wasted questioning this one person.
The Boston bombers should also have been allowed to fly freely. Their actions had nothing to do with air travel.
Either way the situation described is unacceptable, either as "racist", or "Xenophobic", or, to your point, as an incredibly inefficient way to carry out profiling.
>There are far more efficient ways to flag people that fit a certain profile. They should have checked all of his belongings and let him go, and not focused at all on his "attitude".
Did you miss the part where the machines gave him a positive for explosives?
What the correlation between testing positive on one of those machines and bomb possession? How many common household chemicals test positive on one of those machines? Are we both fully informed enough on bomb detection to even have this conversation?
I'm going to assume that if they let him go eventually they could have let him go immediately (or soon) after checking all of his belongings.
Thoroughly re x-ray and hand inspect the contents of his bags. Thorough pat-down of his person. Interviewing him as they went. Upon finding nothing, send him on his way. 30 minutes tops.
>Since there's no proof of this "positive", this claim sits in doubt.
...and since there's no proof of his story, his story sits in doubt. Right?
Is that the modus operandi?
I was commenting under the assumption that his experiences were conveyed truthfully and that the explosive alert actually happened and wasn't bogus.
Is there reason for me to automatically doubt the sincerity of those who tested him?
Is there reason to believe that they didn't want to tell him what exactly the machine told them because they were lying to him? Or is it a more reasonable explanation that they're not allowed to?
Racial profiling is bad. They acted differently towards him than they'd do to other people, but that doesn't mean we have to ignore everything and assume that every single person there was out to get him and put an innocent person through hell.
> since there's no proof of his story, his story sits in doubt. Right?
Not for me. The author has more credibility in my eyes than any employee of the TSA.
> Is there reason for me to automatically doubt the sincerity of those who tested him?
Since they lied to him through the entire ordeal ("We’ll just be a few minutes, and then you’ll be able to go."), the rest of their declarations are equally suspect.
I'd rather live in a country where the process occasionally fails and we don't have to put up with / subject others to this shit. And yes, I am American and I experienced all the pain and horror of 9/11.
I don't think it was necessary to be in NYC at the time to have been deeply affected by 9/11, but no matter: I, the guy who wrote this article, and 310m other non-NYC Americans still have to live under the draconian post-9/11 regime, regardless of where we were on that day.
Yes, really. Shit happens around the world all the time. Just because your media and government tried to make all Americans feel like they were under attack, these were isolated incidents that affected few Americans. (In fact, the people most affected are the countless innocent civilians murdered by reactionary war in the middle east.)
I don't think going through more stringent checks when you fly qualify for "pain and horror". I mainly ask because you're using "the pain and horror" experienced by actual 9/11 victims and their families as leverage to add validity to your statement, and I don't really agree with it.
Truthfully, I don't see why you'd be significantly more traumatized by this event than any other act of terrorism that happens across the globe unless you lost loved ones. To that end, I don't see why anyone else on this globe should have been any less affected, thus making the point that you happened to be an American at the same time that 9/11 occurred more or less moot.
If the pain is simply an empathy to the innocents who were harmed, I don't see why it should be unique to you as an American and worthy of pointing out and using as leverage. I'm not in a position to tell you or anyone else how they should feel...I just don't really understand the rationale.
I am not going to sit here and explain to you the concept of (emotional, geographic) proximity. If I am correct in surmising that you are trying to pick a fight about Americans feeling "special" compared to the rest of the world (which I sure don't), you'll need to find some other sparring partner. Cheers.
I was born, raised, and have lived in the NYC area my entire life and continue to do so to this day. I assure you I'm familiar with the proximity to the event. This is not me trying to pick a fight about my fellow Americans feeling "special". It's me calling you out on your attempt to leverage a very real and significant pain felt by victims and their families for your talking points. When you say "_the_ pain and horror", you are (whether intentional or not) referencing the primary pain felt - that of those directly and most significantly affected by 9/11. In doing so, you dilute the gravity that referencing that pain carries for true victims. It's like a veteran who spent all his time behind a desk claiming that, as a vet, he had gone through horrors during the war, when there were in fact men and women who were on the verge of death on the front lines experiencing actual horror.
In reality, there was no need to use that statement. If your point is valid, it should stand on its own merits without the need for you to attempt to convince through emotion by answering a question that nobody was asking.
Cynically? That sounds like a standard interrogation technique. Keep them off balance, upset them, try and force them to stop lying so as to get the drink they need (not that the OP was lying).
Now for the next question: Is this a suitable way to interrogate someone who is not under arrest and is presumed innocent? Is the false negative rate of TSA checks low enough to start assuming that someone is guilty?
On the other hand, the true positive rate of the TSA is zero. Not one single person detained by the TSA has been charged, much less convicted, on terrorism charges.
If I were only slightly more paranoid than I am, I might suppose that it was intended to be a chastisement for practicing what the officer/agent perceived as a weird, scary, terrorist religion.
> gets offended by simple questions about religion, etc. OK, good for him. The more you push back, the more self righteous and arrogant you are during security checks
I agree with the other parts of your post. Here though I think he wasn't assertive enough. No need to get snarky but a request for a cup of water is not something you just let the cop/whoever shake off with a wink.
>> "You also said a lot of things, kid," he said with a wink.
You say "yes, like that I want something to drink, repeatedly." Another thing is to always ask people for their official identification, a badge, a name, a number... They're not supposed to be anonymous.
The 9/11 attackers walked through the scanners with knifes.
The Boston bombers were flagged, but still traveled freely.
After both attacks people were laughing at the stupidity of the enforcement agencies, uselessness of the TSA, etc.
Here, the process worked.
His account is subjective, everyone else is an idiot, he's way smarter than them, gets offended by simple questions about religion, etc. OK, good for him. The more you push back, the more self righteous and arrogant you are during security checks, the deeper you're digging yourself in. Those people are doing their jobs. Same with how you should be treating waiters, etc.
JetBlue has the right to deny you a flight. ElAl does this all the time, incl. racial profiling. Good security track record.