Comment by czx4f4bd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by czx4f4bd | Hacker News Reader

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It by no means diminishes the magnitude of the list, but it's worth noting that the list is heavily bloated because any person with multiple aliases or whose name can be spelled in multiple ways (e.g. due to differing romanization systems) will have a separate entry for every known alias and spelling.

From the original Daily Dot article:

> The list, according to crimew, appeared to have more than 1.5 million entries in total. The data included names as well as birth dates. It also included multiple aliases, placing the number of unique individuals at far less than 1.5 million.

> On the list were several notable figures, including the recently freed Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, alongside over 16 potential aliases for him.

> The aliases comprised different, common misspellings of his last name and other versions of his first name, as well as different birthdays. Many of the birthdays aligned with the recorded date Bout was born.

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/no-fly-list-us-tsa-unprotecte...

So there aren't 1.5 million people on the no fly list, but there's still a hell of a lot of people to ban secretly and arbitrarily from flying with no clear justification given and no clear way to get off the list.

> Viktor Bout

That guy doesn't belong on the list. He sold weapons to terrorists, including anti-aircraft missiles, but I don't think that's a reasonable cause to believe he might attack an airplane himself. I wouldn't feel uncomfortable flying on the same plane as him.

I'd never heard of him before. But it sounds pretty reasonable to me. I don't really see the bright line between supplying people attack an airplane and attacking an airplane.

If the list is to exist at all, it should only be for people we think might blow up or hijack an airplane.

If you're putting people on the list for other reasons, even selling weapons to terrorists, then the list is being used punitively and therefore it shouldn't be secret.

It doesn't really seem like a different reason to me. I mean, I have no background in this stuff, but someone who sells weapons to terrorists, seems like a reasonable risk to do the actual thing to me.

It's the difference between somebody selling weapons to other people to blow up airplanes, and being willing to blow themselves up in an airplane. The former does not evidence an inclination for the latter.

The standard of evidence for violating the principle of innocent until proven guilty is not satisfied by reasonable risk, it is satisfied by beyond a reasonable doubt. Since they are violating that principle without trial I would argue the standard is actually much higher. This idea of innocent until proven guilty via a trial of your peers is one of the basic building blocks of western society and a pivotal part of what makes the West great so if we aren't going to uphold this idea, wtf are we even doing? Might as well just name someone the king and start trials by ordeal again.

As far as I can tell, he's not a US citizen. And no guilt seems to be under discussion here. Just whether he's allowed to fly. I once saw a guy get kicked off a bus for being too drunk without so much as a call to his lawyer. This isn't about sending him to prison as far as I know. Just keeping flights safe.

Well, if the person isn't on the no fly list due to some form of guilt then the government is violating a myriad of other human rights including, but not limited to, the freedom of movement. There is also a massive difference between someone temporarily being denied the ability to ride the bus due to clearly being too drunk and someone being put on a list that bars them from flying permanently with no recourse and no way to even know they are on the list other than to buy a plane ticket and attempt to board the plane. Keeping flights safe is an appeal to emotion that has no place in this discussion because it presupposes doing a no fly list in a way that doesn't violate the basic principles that define the United States of America would be unsafe, which is clearly untrue.

He is the subject of the Lord of War movie by Andrew Niccol, who made Truman Show (gaslighting), Gattaca (eugenics), In Time (immortality), Good Kill (drone pilots) and Anon (privacy/hacking).

I don't want this guy anywhere near me. Why isn't he in prison?

The American government traded him to Russia in exchange for a basketball player.

He seems like a thoroughly unpleasant man to me and I think he belongs in prison, but I don't think anything in his past suggests that he'd be a direct threat to other passengers if allowed to fly. Banning him from the country makes a lot of sense, maybe even banning him from airplanes as part of his sentence after a trial. But secret punishments are no bueno, even when the guy is a scumbag.

FFS, you felt the need to defend a convicted arms dealer?

Even the worst scumbags deserve due process. Otherwise, denying somebody due process is simply a matter of casting them as a scumbag. I am fine with banning this guy from airplanes IFF it is done openly as part of his sentence. The no-fly list is not that, names are added to the list in secret.

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