The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket
wanderingearl.com
wanderingearl.com
A considerable proportion of Islamist terrorists and terrorist would-bes are western-born Muslims who feel that they are defending Islam. They have been told that the West, America in particular, considers them to be the enemy simply by merit of their religion. Young men and women are tracing modern Islamophobia back to the crusades and perceiving themselves to be fighting for survival. These beliefs have been made quite clear, perhaps most explicitly in the "martyrdom" videos released by the 7/7 London bombers.
Here we have one of many incidents where a uniformed representative of the United States government is giving the clear impression that they perceive Islamic beliefs is inherently suspect. This man was not being interrogated to reveal what he had done or who he had consorted with, he was being asked what he thought and believed. Let that sink in for a minute.
During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the IRA pursued an explicit policy of "the worse, the better", knowing that by provoking the British army and the RUC into heavy-handed reaction, they could rally support for their cause and rouse antipathy towards the British government. The British army and the RUC were often referred to as "the IRA's recruiting sergeant".
"Here we have one of many incidents where a uniformed representative of the United States government is giving the clear impression that they perceive Islamic beliefs is inherently suspect."
Put in comparison, that's the population of the 18 smallest states, and about ten times larger than WalMart.
Now, I'm not sure if this person was acting based on the rules of the State Department or not, but it's easy to see how not every employee of the government might be acting according to policy 100% of the time.
This is not an isolated incident, in fact it's not even infrequent.
A friend of mine served in the IDF, he said about 80% of the worst treatment of Palestinians he saw came at the hands of the border guards, not infantry or special forces. These are people who, given the choice, explicitly chose the security position with the highest ratio of bullying people to being shot at.
What I mean here is that maybe US forces need to learn to be a bit more unpredictable and attack Terrorism in a less frontal manner to succeed. Just like the IRA did in Ireland with the Brits. Imagine what kind of violence could come from Americans if they were greeted by foreign customs officers abroad with angry screams like: "So you believe in Jesus!?!?" for several hours in a room with a mirror.
Sounds quite similar to this viewpoint: "In politics as in religion, my tenets are few and simple....meddling as little as possible in [other nations'] affairs where our own are not involved." — George Washington
That's an odd assertion. So is the "support for Israel" assertion, given that al Qaeda kills plenty of Muslims too, who they feel aren't up to snuff. At least the Israel argument is widely repeated - but al Qaeda as climate change activists?
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/01/29/bin-laden-blames-glo...
They don't like us because of our lack of action on global warming? HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAH.
It sounds like they are catering to the lefties in the US. The group that they can win over and use as a tool to infiltrate the US (The left hates the US military and Christianity..).
It's not a source of terror attacks because it's damn near impossible to get anything into the airports.
We should not condone violence against civilians, but we also should not condone the oppression of any group, and we should recognise that oppression can lead to violence, without saying that oppression is a justification for violence.
I'd be pretty damn suspicious too. I may not like it, but there are folks trying to kill us (all of us). These agents have a job, and that's to try and ferret out as many of these people attempting entry to our country as possible. It may be inconvenient, and it may be pretty nasty...but it's necessary. That's the reality of the situation.
I'll also remind everyone to take any one-sided account like this with a certain grain of salt. It's a pretty emotional thing, and often certain points are quite exaggerated. Sometimes "yelling" is really "stern questioning". Other times "an hour and a half" is really "15 minutes".
Ok.. let the down-voting commence :)
EDIT (sober second thought): The phone tap (if true) does seem a little beyond the pale.
It is not their job to berate American citizens returning from trips abroad.
It is not their job to engage in emotionally charged interrogation regarding a person's religious views.
It is not their job to intimidate, harass, or jump to unsupported conclusions.
Which do you think is more likely? That a terrorist secretly plotting against the United States is willing to risk capture over a package of propaganda candy? Or that an American abroad found the candy notable enough to bring a pack back as a conversation piece?
The terrorists we ought to be afraid of (if we ought to be afraid of any at all) are not the ones bringing Osama bin Laden candy and burqas on planes. They're the ones who blend in perfectly, the ones we would never pick out of a lineup, the ones who would never make amateur mistakes like bringing a Qu'ran onto a plane. Customs agents aren't going to frazzle the dangerous terrorists by yelling at them. No, to catch the dangerous terrorists, we need real intelligence gathering and analysis. Customs agents on power trips will not suffice.
Well, the ones inept enough to do that are only not a threat if we stop them when they do inept stuff like that.
Good thing this policy stopped the Unabomber and Timothy McVeigh.
Sure, if you just came back from Afghanistan/Pakistan, are carrying sketchy items in your luggage, etc, I wouldn't be terribly surprised that you had to go chat with a friendly customs agent just to be sure you're not trying to blow anything up.
That's not what happened though - and despite the fact that this is purely a one-sided telling of the story, I've had sufficient dealings with CBP to suspect that it is most likely entirely true.
The author was harassed, verbally abused, and treated in an entirely unprofessional manner. The customs agent was out for blood/witches and gave up all semblance of professionalism and reason. This is extremely typical of my experiences with CBP.
The most hilarious thing is that most customs booths I've come across have had a big "we promise to treat you with professionalism and courtesy" poster from DHS emblazoned on it. I've never seen professionalism out of that organization - it's either complete and utter apathy, or (if they smell blood), complete and utter belligerence.
The fact of the matter is, CBP agents treat every single traveler as guilty before being proven innocent. Every slight deviation from the norm is treated as proof positive that you're a terrorist. Every denial and scrap of evidence you have is merely treated as a smokescreen from your true guilt. I swear, to work as a modern American border guard probably implies complete sociopathy - I'm not sure how it'd work otherwise.
CBP is an embarrassment to America. If all we ever saw of American was, well, the first people you meet at the border, I'd never want to visit. As a non-American I'm certainly not in a position to fix this, but for the Americans out there, please fix this. This is one of the many reasons why America enjoys such a dubious reputation abroad, and needs to be fixed. The author here is an American citizen - the treatment foreign nationals get is considerably more blood-boiling.
Isn't this just part of the weeding out process, they're trying to provoke a reaction to establish whether you're some sort of violent fundamentalist?
Presumably the psychologist looking from the other side of the one-way glass is assessing your body language and sub-conscious expressions to establish what you're doing there, if you're simply a naive tourist or someone who should be watched or retained.
What in the world do you think a psychologist can tell from a person's response to getting yelled at unreasonably?
If you want to interrogate someone, get them to tell their story. Then ask them to tell it again, from a slightly different perspective. Then again. Look for inconsistencies - there should be a few (everyone gets a bit hazy on things), but not too many.
For what it's worth, CBP has always been cock-ups. I returned from Japan in 1988 once and that guy was a cast-iron jerk. I swear they consider every American who travels to be a traitor.
To be honest, though? Since Homeland Security, CBP has actually gotten more professional. I know it's hard to believe, but in my experience, it's true. (Of course, I'm older now and presumably less scary for Customs now that I have kids, so perhaps a single data point is insufficient.)
This is why the FBI is dead against torture (I know, this was not torture by any sense of the word) : it doesn't give them anything of value. On the other hand, they have had huge successes by winning the suspect's trust and letting him talk.
I travel all the time, and our security system does not protect anything but our peace of mind.
By itself? It'd be a stretch. When found with a bullet, Osama Bin Laden merchandise, a journal detailing how you can revoke your US citizenship, and trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan...
From your last sentence, I can see you are no stranger to making snap judgements without all the details. ;)
Of course, if the bullet was really just the bullet without the propellant (that was not clear to me) then yeah, I agree with you.
[1] I think It's the explosive powder that matters here. A bullet with no propellant is just a lump of lead, which I think would be okay.
The article itself says that the customs agent "suggested that I had used the burqa in order to move undetected throughout the tribal regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan". Seeing as he is not a Muslim and wouldn't have one for religious reasons, that does seem like it might be a fair question.
The obvious red flags aren't red flags because they're obvious. If someone isn't smart enough to realise that, they're not smart enough to pose any real threat. We're dealing with focused people who know that huge resources are going into finding them. What we're looking for is people trying to conceal their actions and obfuscate their movements. By jumping on a chair and screaming "Aaaagh, terrorist!" every time we see a piece of Islamica, we're just reinforcing the idea that people are suspicious for 'looking Muslim'.
You're over-generalising; I reckon there are plenty of idiots in Al-Quaeda.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-case...
and there is plenty of reason to be afraid of an idiot if they have access to bombs.
Unfortunately there's no way to conduct surveillance only on guilty people.
Does people carrying bullets constitute everyone?
If he'd come from North America with a balaclava, copy of the hackers handbook, candy box featuring a picture of David Koresh and a bullet do you think he wouldn’t have been searched and added to a watch-list?
Right, you're carrying something. It seems like the Christmas Day bomber wasn't carrying anything (aside from his bomb).
The fact that he didn't have a warm coat is absolutely irrelevant. We had high-quality intelligence against him but failed to act upon it in any way. We need to worry less about whether someone looks shifty at an airport and worry more about keeping tabs on people who we have strong intelligence on.
It is also worth stating that his attack failed and he was unable to damage anything other than his own groin.
The recent cargo bomb was missed despite multiple tips about that specific item as well!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab#The_a...
Terrorist attacks increase the funding of the intel and security institutions, so they have a vested interest in them occurring (and a state willing to kill tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq to advance its objectives likely has little problem sacrificing the odd planeload of its own citizens to maintain public support for its ambitions).
So, the red flags are noticed at least sometimes.
it does make you wonder to what extent such decoys have been accounted for in the overall security strategy.
Carrying explosives onto a plane most certainly is a red flag...
A 17" MacBook Pro battery contains 95 watt hours = 342 kilojoules. Effectively using the battery as a weapon would require some creativity, but the battery contains almost 30 times as much energy as the bullet. And lithium ion batteries are known to explode in extreme circumstances.
But the point I would like to make is that it is inappropriate to make important decisions on vocabulary. Is an unused bullet any more of an "explosive" than a laptop battery? Is a long piece of broken glass a "blade over 3 inches"? These screening guidelines are simply guidelines, to be used in context. Should you allow someone to take live ammunition on a plan? Of course not. But when we expect customs officers to strongly interrogate someone who has already landed about a travel souvenir, the terrorists have already won.
Even GSR on your hands will get you grilled at Heathrow, I speak from experience there.
No, certainly, that doesn't sound unreasonable at all.
2. If a particular religious belief is dangerous to United States citizens, then it makes sense to use that religious belief as justification for preventing or controlling their entry into the United States.
3. People can make up whatever they want and call it a religion. In fact that is how many (all?) religions have been formed.
4. From 1, 2, and 3 it follows that it can in fact make sense to use a person's religious belief as justification for preventing or controlling their entry into the United States.
5. The Qu'ran can be legitimately interpreted to mean that Muslims should kill United States citizens: http://www.bloggersbase.com/politics-and-opinions/3-islam/
6. From 5, the Muslim religion is dangerous to United States citizens.
7. From 6 and 2 it follows that it makes sense for Muslim beliefs to be used as justification for preventing or controlling entry into the United States.
That being said, I still think the security guard was in the wrong. Clearly, our protagonist was not a problem, and the guard should have been able to discover that without stomping all over his rights. What's so hard about innocent until proven guilty? It ensures justice, even if the person turns out to be guilty.
This is controversial, because there are many Muslims who do not have ill intent toward United States citizens. I have good friends who are Muslim. Unfortunately, they have been raised with a religion that is potentially dangerous. Such is the problem with indoctrinating kids. I dropped the religion I was brought up with (Christianity) when I finally realized that it wasn't true and therefore shouldn't believe it. Perhaps Muslims need to do the same.
Most religions are innocuous enough that you can just let people believe what they want, and no harm done. But when leaving them to practice their religion might lead to them killing you, it's a little different.
Freedom of religion is at the heart of the founding principles of the United States of America — I can't think of anything more central to the identity of this country. If you're going to speak against freedom of religion, then it would be a very short stretch to call that position "anti-American" — and any national defense policy considered with that pretext is already severely undermined.
When you say freedom of religion, you don't mean complete freedom. What if my religion states that I shouldn't pay taxes? Obviously this religion would not be tolerated.
That's why we have laws which define the boundaries and interactions between the freedoms of society's members. It's not useful or practical to define freedom in any other context (i.e., that in nature, outside of society), because there would be no conflicts in that case. Freedom can only really be discussed in terms of social relations.
But these are issues that U.S. courts have had quite a lot to say about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_the_Unit...
And the situation with Islam today certainly has historical precedents:
Anti-Catholicism was widespread in the 1920s; anti-Catholics, including the Ku Klux Klan, believed that Catholicism was incompatible with democracy and that parochial schools encouraged separatism and kept Catholics from becoming loyal Americans. The Catholics responded to such prejudices by repeatedly asserting their rights as American citizens and by arguing that they, not the nativists (anti-Catholics), were true patriots since they believed in the right to freedom of religion.
I agree, it was unreasonable of the security guard to do that. However, if the Muslim religion is violent when taken seriously, it can be valid to question whether someone is a believer in that violence.
What I should have done is left to question whether the Muslim religion is violent when taken seriously, because I'm not sure about that.
Do you agree with the if-then clause in my argument?
Are they acting on it?
Do you have suicide bombers killing people in other countries in the name of Christianity? You pointed to one, single, crazy group that may or may not even be affiliated with religion.
It's funny how all the intelligent people here seem to play dumb when it comes to understanding why US customs agents may want question someone that could be a potential threat to the US.
If it were middle-age white guys that were killing people, I would hope custom agents would profile them as well. It's the intelligent thing to do.
"Freedom of religion is at the heart of the founding principles of the United States of America "
I find it hilarious that the lefties in the US are so against religion..unless it's Islam. I think it's probably because they are both on the side against the Unites States.
Would you like some more?
http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/hate.htm
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map (Click on any state)
Look at any of these groups and you'd be very, very hard-pressed to find one without an ideological claim to a Christian identity. These groups pose a very real threat, which is why the FBI tracks and monitors them. However, the existence of right-wing Christian hate groups does not indict all practitioners of Christianity world-wide.
As for the rest of your post, you've simply attempted to rebut a series of arguments that nobody actually made — I believe they call these "straw man" fallacies. E.g.: I never mentioned "profiling" — the issues are religious persecution and outright harassment by government officials, in a blatantly unconstitutional fashion.
>"Lefties are against religion." "Lefties are against the United States."
Really? Seriously? Why don't you read my posts again — this time carefully, and try once more.
2. Okay, but this is not relevant to the story in question (see point 4).
3. Okay, but this is not relevant to the story in question. (see point 4)
4. I'm willing to cede this and the previous 3 with regard to the parent. The question then becomes, do you believe in religious freedom enough to take the risk, or would you rather remove this threat and lose the religious freedom? The hypocrisy of subverting the constitution in order to protect the constitution is untenable. If you are truly concerned about this, it seems you should be explicitly campaigning for an amendment to the constitution to more strictly define the "acceptable" religions. If you're too ashamed to explicitly get behind that, it shouldn't be hidden by unwritten policies of arbitrary harassment of certain religions.
5. I'm embarrassed someone on Hacker News would except that video as "legitimate interpretation". The fundamental factual errors about the Qur'an and Islam would be comical if it wasn't juxtaposed by the sadness of meeting someone that actually believed that without independent research. (Nearly?) every factual statement made to support the opinions presented is factually incorrect:
(a) "The Qur'an is not full of symbolism or vague analogies-- implicitly stating that the New/Old Testament are "full" of symbolism and vague analogies and not meant to be taken literally- a self-serving, unsupportable implication.
(b) It is mostly direct commands-- false, by far, by any interpretation of "mostly"
(c) The Qur'an contains contradictory statements-- he seems to be confused about abrogated verses- actually, any statements of early Islam that were abrogated later were removed from the Qur'aan before its final compilation as a book.
(d) The Qur'an ITSELF provides a way to know what to with the "contradictions"-- ??? this simply does not exist
(e) "It's explained in the Qur'aan.... "-- Again, this does not exist. It's simply a bald-faced fabrication.
(f) The peaceful tolerant passages were "written" earlier in Muhammad's career-- again, false. The earlier passages did not deal with either peace or war, they dealt mostly with self-rectification. The later verses, after the establishment of a monolithic Islamic community with communal dealings with the outside world, added to that verses with guidance regarding both peace and war.
(g) "those passages have been abrogated..."-- see point c- if that were so, they would have been removed entirely during compilation
(h) "There is no picking and choosing" -- finally an accurate statement
That brings me to 2:54, and I'm too bored to continue answering nonsense that any 10 year old Muslim sunday schooler could have responded to.
6. See 5.
7. See 6 and 4.
Yeah, I just pulled a http://xkcd.com/386/ But you know what, it was cathartic after reading some of the embarrassing comments on this piece. I just picked the most ridiculous one and went to town.
I think that the way the Qu'ran words it, you could legitimately interpret it the way that that blog post did, and I think that you can legitimately interpret it to be peaceful. (Not that that makes the Qu'ran legitimate. I hate that religious books aren't perfectly unambiguous.)
Based on this I think that we should judge the individual, not the religion.
However, based on statistics, it has been members of this religion that perform terrorist attacks, so profiling makes sense. I just don't think it needs to be done in the manner described in this story, especially for U.S. citizens.
In my ideal society, we wouldn't even have airline security for U.S. citizens, regardless of religion. This means that every once in a while, a terrorist would slip through the cracks. But such is the price of freedom. Perhaps even the good guys on the plane would be armed and take out the bad guy before he could cause harm.
(b) Now addressing interpretation, you cannot legitimately interpret the Qur'aan either the way that video words it, nor "to be peaceful". Rather, as appropriate to its claim of being a complete life-guide, it will necessarily contain the laws, morals, and motivations of both war and peace.
(c) "Religious books aren't perfectly unambiguous"-- have you done an exhaustive survey of all "religious books" to be able to make such a bold, broad statement? It seems likely you're relying on very limited information regarding a few religious books and abstracting, without any possible justification, to all religious books. This seems likely to be more based on personal dogma than rational thought.
>> "...but there are folks trying to kill us (all of us)..."
Either this is not true, or it is true and our enemy is inept. If we had a competent enemy who was trying to kill us, then there would be a lot more of us dead.
Just this last Saturday presented and excellent opportunity to strike terror into the populace in our nation's capital. John Stewart's "Restoring Sanity and/or Fear" rally saw thousands of people densely packed in what had to have been--judging from the amount of alcohol consumption going on--a very loosely secured area. I've been to other events of similar scale that have been open season on comings and goings. There are opportunities for our enemies to hurt us, hurt us very badly, every day, and they do not take them.
I think this is an important issue to point out because fear of a bogeyman is still fear. Richard Nixon said, "People react to fear, not love--they don't teach that in Sunday School, but it's true." Rahm Emmanuel said, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." Bill Clinton identified the soccer-moms as the most important demographic in America, and he was right: they way to vast policy change is to connect it to a threat to a soccer-mom's babies.
There has been a resurgence in fascist and totalitarian ideology within Western government, all based around a hyped-up version of a nebulous, nefarious "them". We continue to play this security theater because it serves a purpose. The classic answer is that security theater instills confidence in the system. But I think it goes deeper. I think it gives the people a target, something to hate, something we can all agree sucks, and then see the futility of trying to change it. It's an indoctrination system to make "us" accept that the "right" way is a militaristic way.
I don't think we all need to live in fear, but I don't think we should live oblivious to threats just because things don't blow up more often.
But how do you have so much certainty there are threats? To me, I just can't reconcile this assertion that there are terrorists out there intent on killing us with the fact that they never do, despite it being comically simple to do so.
One might counter with the argument that the cargo plane bombs are an example of the ongoing threat. Perhaps, I will admit this is a possibility. But again, why are essentially all terrorist attacks never successful, when they would be so obviously easy on some of these large, soft targets? Perhaps these interceptions are something else? Impossible of course,
I've never had my house robbed, but I still lock the doors and have an alarm system. No one on my street has been robbed, but I can't just assume this street won't ever get burgled because I know that it does happen. So, I'm careful to lock up, but I'm not so scared I have inch bars on the windows, a guard dog, a watchman on guard, etc. There is just enough of a deterrent that it is a hassle for someone looking for a quick and easy break-in.
The question is, is our response to the supposed threat of terrorism proper? Your response to your threat is essentially cost free (except for the alarm I guess). The cost of the west's response to one terrorist attack is anything but free, it is measured in the Billions or Trillions, depending on how you look at it, not to mention the decrease in quality of life, lost productivity, etc.
And you are correct in where I am leaning....the timing of "attacks" often seems a bit too convenient, ie: the recent debate in Europe over the level and manner of US airport security measures.
To me, the theory that there are non-insignificant amounts of terrorists intent on attacking us, but these attacks have all (since we have had no successful attacks in the last ~ 10 years) been prevented by the security measures and organizations, is comical. So where does Occam's Razor lead you? :)
I don't think it reflects the reality of the situation there. Your comment is basically an admission of giving up personal rights and liberties because of a blind fear.
There's no excuse for this kind of treatment in a free country. Absolutely none. This kind of attitude destroys freedom, not terrorists.
You and I are in a fringe minority there, my friend.
That's what we're told to believe, but given the propensities of those pushing this idea (who, by their own records, killed 60,000+ civilians in Iraq) I'd take the threat with a grain of salt. If terrorists want to target civilians rather than the military, my guess is they'd be going after the low hanging fruit (starting forest fires and the like).
"No matter what the reason, don’t ever write..."
This says it all. If we must fear our government when engaging in innocent activity, then we have given our government too much power.
Schneier addressed this in one of his many posts on privacy:
"How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? Probably it was a phone conversation, although maybe it was an e-mail or instant-message exchange or a conversation in a public place. Maybe the topic was terrorism, or politics, or Islam. We stop suddenly, momentarily afraid that our words might be taken out of context, then we laugh at our paranoia and go on. But our demeanor has changed, and our words are subtly altered." - http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/05/the_value_of_p...
Your attitude will be the downfall of this nation. I'm not kidding. It is killing us. Please stop. Read something. Learn about the world. Get outside and realize the sun is still shining and we still have Ferris wheels and there are no freaking terrorists trying to kill you in your bed. Really. I am up to here with this crap.
Do you really understand the meaning of freedom so poorly? Sometimes you have to man up and accept a truly vanishing amount of danger in order to have a world you can live in like a real human being. Read up on road statistics, or infant mortality, or malaria, or actual wars in other places, then come back to me and tell me we have to toss out the entire freaking point of America in order to combat something none of us is ever actually going to see, but whose political fallout certainly does benefit a few powerful people.
Benjamin Franklin would probably have been mildly surprised that America lasted so long - but he saw clear as day how it was going to end. I just wish it hadn't been in my lifetime.
Should the mothers of white Christians renting trucks have their phones tapped by the FBI?
You could already have constructed this analogy. Instead you choose to be disingenuous about it. Don't you think America should be capable of doing better than this?
Of course being from a free country we laughed at this ....
I mean, you're an experienced globetrotter returning from the world's hottest war zone with live ammunition in your pants, but are just astonished at the idea that such a thing should be considered suspicious? I call bullshit. This is just filler for marketing purposes.
I'm with you 100%. A lot of this just doesn't make sense.
When he mentions that he was 'invited' into the interrogation room he makes no reference to any aggression or hostility from his interrogator until this guy finds a book referencing the prophet mohammed amongst other religious icons and suddenly we have a complete psycho on our hands:
...holding up the book of quotes from the Prophet, proceeded to repeatedly scream 'Do you believe in the words of the Prophet Mohammed?' over and over again while standing one foot away from my face.
Whilst I appreciate there are probably a few unintelligent brutes defending the US as immigration officers, this particular guys approach appears to be lifted from a poor straight to TV movie.
I personally believe airport security and political correctness has gone completely over the top and I'm disgusted by the general level of ignorance towards the Muslim religion but this whole article reeks. I simply don't buy it.
This is an interesting article but the fact that the author is in any way surprised by what happened to him is astonishing. Whilst it would be nice to live in a world where this wasn't necessary we don't and I'm reassured that the security response was what it was.
The raw emotion controlling the interrogating 'official' is not reassuring to me at all.
Also, "live round"? Really?
The emotion is unfortunately part of the process. An interrogation is designed to unsettle someone, it's not a process of uncovering evidence, an audit; it requires shaking the fruit down from the tree.
Had he been interrogated in such a manner for simply being muslim or Afghani I would have been saddened but in the context these questions were apparently merited.
Either you bring paraphernalia associated with terrorism and accept the consequences or you leave them behind. Expecting to bring those things back from Afghanistan and just walk through is ridiculous.
My reading of the story has the CBP agent pulling him aside solely on the fact that he visited Afghanistan and Pakistan. They did not uncover the other items until they thoroughly searched his pack while already in the interrogation room.
Edited to add (from the story): "Once inside the room, the Officer began to inspect the contents of my backpack."
The questions were not merited at all, from my reading of it. Candy, bullet without a gun, a musing about US citizenship. Nope, no merit.
What you don't hear about after a terrorist attack is how the attacker's innocent mother/brother/sister/friend/cousin was interrogated in exactly this way by a customs agent, and that's what started that terrorist down the path of violence. No one ever has a chance to be appalled at the aftereffects of interrogations such as these.
The first time this happened, I would stand there passively and take questions. This seems to be most people's default reaction.
Now, however, I take a bit more initiative - I help a customs officer unpack my things, and I intentionally point out things they'd want to question me about and explain their usage. For instance, I was stopped flying into London from Barcelona, and I had some Spanish anti-inflammatories, anti-biotics, and a freezable gell-pack for my knee for after working out.
I said, "Sir, I'm going to unpack this part of my bag. I've got medicine in here - the Spanish equivalent of tylenol and antibiotics that I bought at a pharmacy, and a gel pack. I have these because I have a knee injury, and I also work out, but I need to take care of my knee after workouts."
Then - no problem. I used to travel with some audio/visual equipment that would get searched like crazy, until I started saying, "I've got some A/V equipment with me, I make short little snippets when I travel. I'm not a formal journalist, it's just a hobby. I can explain what any of it does, if you need me to."
This kind of preemptively explaining medicine, electronics, etc. would've probably helped this guy. "Excuse me, officer, I collected some weird artifacts while traveling. This here was a gift I received from a child in XYZ city, I bought these books while traveling since I was trying to learn about the influencers of the culture and they came sold in a pack together, etc, etc..."
Take the initiative, be polite and friendly and explain well. It'll help, especially if you have things they'd typically question you about.
On the other hand, I didn't have a bullet in my pants. TSA says: "You must securely pack any ammunition in fiber (such as cardboard), wood or metal boxes or other packaging that is specifically designed to carry small amounts of ammunition." (http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/assistant/editorial_1...)
I can't recall a travel experience where I went through Customs before going through security first. As Customs occurs at port of entry, I assume he would have passed through security in Delhi. I suppose security could have been lax or complacent there, but it still seems an odd thing to have made it through a scanner first.
EDIT: I was mistaken, he did say it was an unused bullet, so it was more than a shell casing.
Edit: found answer to my first question below. The bullet is the inert mass. The cartridge is a bullet plus casing plus gunpowder / other energetic material.
Or at least, that's what I got out of the link. That one is (still) legitimately confusing to me. It didn't directly help (I didn't notice what was strange / funny about the image until I followed through to the "Gun Zone" link).
So the bullet was probably carried on, and thus went through security, but small items like this are missed all the time in the x-ray scanner.
I work in mining and in the bad-old-days we used to have to keep multiple passports, to keep SAfrican, Isreali, Chilean etc entry stamps separate.
Now I tend to keep one passports just for the USA - it's easier than explaining to the TSA that visiting a country that doesn't speak English (like Jesus did) doesn't make one a terrorist.
Ironically the only problem I have had is that after being forced to get a brand new passport because the USA demanded RFID - I was questioned for 30mins on my lack of travel history!
I'm not american but have multiple copies of my own country's passport. I keep one 'clean' by not using it when I visit terrorist countries - ie cuba and anywhere that uses squiggly writing - and enter america on that one.
In the 70s and 80s it was trickier. If you had an Isreali entry stamp you couldn't go to any arabic country. I was even refused entry to Egypt once because some Egyptian immigration moron (they aren't all American) thought my Nepali trekking permit was Hebrew.
Similalry if you had a S African stamp you couldn't visit most african countries or anywhere describing itself as the 'democratic republic of'
South america was in theory tricky since every little tin pot dictator was always against every other little tin pot dictator but in practice their immigration was never organised enough to stop you
For a country that has been deeply scarred by a terrorist act all the officials know of is to look for some tell-tale sign of association. Those tell-tale signs as in your case may be completely bogus but they don't draw the distinction.
I agree the experience is bad and system doesn't see the difference.Let me point out that I don't support this behavior any more than you do but with the current situation I cannot blame them too.
Of course, the Customs Officer ignored the other four books and while holding up the book of quotes from the Prophet, proceeded to repeatedly scream “Do you believe in the words of the Prophet Mohammed?” over and over again while standing one foot away from my face.
Every time I tried to mention the other books, and the one time I tried to ask why that question was even relevant, I was immediately cut off and told to be quiet. So in the end, the only reply I gave to his question was, “What?”
They love yelling, and it isn't because they want you answer or comply. Apparently yelling serves some purpose in itself. Whenever someone shows me a police video, I take careful note of when they stop yelling variations on "Get down on the ground!" I saw one recently where the police fatally shot a guy (completely justified; he actually attacked a cop who was holding a gun on him, and another cop shot him) and one cop yelled "Get down!" or "Get down on the ground" at him three times after he had already fallen on the pavement.... I saw nothing inappropriate in the shooting, but I got a morbid chuckle out of the cop screaming at the dude to comply when the dude was already flat on the ground motionless and bleeding. It's also pretty shocking to watch the video of the guy being shot in the BART station in Oakland and try to figure out in what way he was resisting the two cops who were holding him face down on the ground while he was handcuffed. The cop who shot him kept yelling at him to stop resisting and then just popped him. He was -- what, shifting his weight? Trying to raise his head to answer their questions? Who knows. No level of compliance would have saved him, just like the guy who wrote this article didn't actually have to answer the questions. They just wanted to yell at him; they didn't want answers.
> Nice to know that if they don't have any legal way
> of stopping you or coercing information out of you,
> they'll only resort to harassment and intimidation
> for a little while before letting you go.
> They love yelling, and it isn't because they want you
> answer or comply. Apparently yelling serves some purpose
> in itself.
This will definitely work against anyone who is expecting to die in the process of carrying terrorist activities.
Don't ban guns from schools, just tell them to play nice or they'll get detention.
Ah, I see, so we should break them by sweating them over a water bottle that's slightly too big. Really, if the terrorists are too smart and too hardened to be scared by real consequences, can we shake them with groundless harassment? If not, then what's the point of being a jerk to people who merely have "suspicious" cultural allegiances (e.g., having a book about Islam and having some funny souvenirs) and who break minor rules in ways that clearly don't pose a threat?
It isn't some clever attempt to smoke out terrorists. They're policing our respect for their paranoia and profiling-based hot buttons. Showing a flagrant interest in Islam (even one that doesn't show any seriousness, as in this case) is, to them, the same as singing "Ba ba ba, ba Barbara Ann" in the security line -- it's a really rude abuse of their poor nerves! -- except that for some weird reason it isn't against the law. The main thing is for travelers to go out of their way to avoid making them nervous, and to be apologetic if you actually do make them nervous. Then they know your heart is in the right place. This guy could have put his "Muslim paraphernalia" in his checked baggage, or just left it at home. The fact that he didn't showed disrespect for their prejudices and their blood pressure. That's why they yelled at him; to restore his respect for their authority.
The bottom line is that the bullet is the only thing he was carrying that was actually an infringement of the rules, but they mostly yelled at him for his interest in Islam and a few Islamic countries. And they actually asked him if he found Pakistanis friendly.
Rudeness and prejudice -- our greatest tools in the fight against terrorism!
To this day I have no idea what it was about. Still kind of PO'ed about the cookies.
So what should we do?
And please don't tell me that real security does not involve what was described in the article, because the reality is that until we invent mind reading machines, that's pretty much the only way to do it.
I've done stuff which almost exactly matches this profile (flown from India after visiting Afghanistan, with Afghan clothing in my bag, with no US government connected paperwork beyond a passport, with lots of random electronics in my bag, etc.) -- I was there to help set up medical clinic equipment.
In IAD, SFO, and JFK, the Customs people were nothing but polite, speedy, and friendly.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SECcYsQ...
Before I knew it I was surrounded by these security types asking me all kinds of questions, and I said.. "what's the matter... it's not like you can KILL someone with an empty bullet!" - That didn't help, but they eventually let me go, bullet included.
This was in 2002.
I'm assuming here that the author is refering to what is more accurately known as a cartridge. A bullet is the projectile, a hunk of lead, possibly with a jacket of copper or steel covering it. A cartridge is a bullet, a case, a primer and propellent. It's very easy to leave a catridge in a pocket and not notice it.
Is there an english word for the practice of commonly refering to an entity by a subset of that entity?
A metonymy.
[edit: swolchok is right, it's a synecdoche]
Must be contagious.
Maybe it has something to do with typing, like I've memorized the patterns of keypresses associated with certain words and attaching a suffix requires intervention at some level.
> While nobody usually uses "cartridge"
The must be hyperbole. I have heard people use the word cartridge and I have used it before. Do you have any basis for that statement?
Most of the population's knowledge comes from 24 and TV news reporters.
[1][http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1857943]
[2][http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SECcYsQ...]
Why is the aggressive tone necessary? Would the conclusion have been any different if the questioners had been more civil?
EDIT:
Personally, I think the process of reviewing whether a person is a security threat, should be a much more sombre affair. Level headed pragmatism is necessary to make informed, sensible judgements. It sounds very much like the security staff were living up to the clichéd machismo of their TV or film-based counterparts .. and it leads me to think that intelligence is being supplanted by each staff member's personal desire to project authority.
I can only hope that this brief education opened the minds of his interrogators somewhat (and the thought that it might have gives me a warm and fuzzy, yet reservedly so, feeling inside).
"Through a friend of the family who used to work for the FBI, I later learned that as soon as I had left the Customs interrogation room, the local FBI office in Savannah, Georgia (where I was headed to visit my mom) had been notified of my arrival. As a result, the FBI then tapped the home phone at my mom’s house."
So it sounds as though it was through this same "friend" he learned of the phone tap as well.
I don't remember the details, but he was travelling through another country (not the US or Israel) when the bullet was found - and he was imprisoned for several months for it.
* "I Am Detained By The Feds For Not Answering Questions" - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681721
* "Writer Peter Watts Guilty Verdict in Border Incident" - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1204737
Also, you can't lose your citizenship by committing a crime. You certainly can't lose it without a trial.
My understanding is that as a US citizen he committed no crime and could have asked if he was bring detained, under what law, or if he was free to go...
However, through coercion, and lack of knowledge on his rights he consented to this interrogation.
Anyone know for sure what his legal position was?
But of course, the real world is a touch more complicated than the We’re All Just People-land I’m imagining.
While you can't do much with a bare bullet itself (may be you can try to throw it hard), the cartridge can very easily be put to use - you don't need 900m/s muzzle velocity at close range really.