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Comment by CamelCaseName | Hacker News Reader

Oh. Oh no.

> Women on 10 flights, including five Australians who were on a Sydney-bound Qatar Airways flight, were removed from planes at gunpoint and taken into ambulances on the tarmac.

> Some were instructed to remove their underwear and some were forced to submit to invasive gynaecological examinations for evidence they had recently given birth.

///

My original comment is above, as many replies indicate, I did not include the context, which is:

> women on planes on the ground at Doha, including 13 Australians, were subjected to the examinations as authorities searched for the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a plastic bag in the departures lounge at Hamad international airport.

I apologize for not providing the full context.

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If you're going to quote the juicy bits of the article, it might be helpful to provide the full context as well.

While I personally don't think this justifies their actions, I do think it matters that this was not a completely random "let's inspect some vaginas".

I think it's also important to give the context, for those like me who just saw your comment and were wondering why exactly they would even think of doing that:

> On 2 October 2020, women on planes on the ground at Doha, including 13 Australians, were subjected to the examinations as authorities searched for the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in a plastic bag in the departures lounge at Hamad international airport.

If only there were any less invasive way to determine biological relationship between a mother and a newborn. (It's not even obvious that I do or should support DNA testing for this, but if there were only two options, I'd sure as hell support that over forced gynecological examination of all women of potential child-bearing age.)

> If only there were any less invasive way to determine biological relationship between a mother and a newborn.

There isn't if you're looking for a fast answer.

I wonder if a urine sample would idenify elevated hormones normally found postpartum.

Is dna testing instant?

Does it need to be in this case?

Does the (real or perceived) need for immediacy justify the incredible level of invasiveness of this mass surveillance?

With multiple grounded aircraft at one of the busiest international airports in the world?

Immediacy is definitely warrented. I'm unsure if the invasiveness is, but obviously a 24 hour+ process isn't viable.

> Does the (real or perceived) need for immediacy justify the incredible level of invasiveness of this mass surveillance?

"mass surveillance" this is not; invasive - absolutely.

What you're proposing, if I was a woman (I am not) to be searched is instead i have to give up my DNA to have them store on record in case I was the person who abandoned the newborn.

That's much closer to "mass surveillance" than a body search.

If given the choice, I would give the body search 100%.

> "mass surveillance" this is not

How so? I'm imagining they're intending to detain and investigate indiscriminately every woman of child-bearing age in the airport and on flights that recently boarded. That seems to meet the definition to me.

Because it has a clear target and a very defined line.

They can't keep doing it, that's the biggest part it stops.

Mass surveillance has a definition[0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance#:~:text=Ma....

If it turns out one of the women is the mother, it would not be trivial to arrest and bring her to trial across international borders. This is also assuming the mother doesn't further vanish into thin air, so to speak.

So while I find the methods questionable, I also accept there is merit in pursuing methods that can give reasonable evidence towards an arrest now before the mother can high tail it.

If I had to hazard a guess on the time requirements for DNA testing, I'd probably put it somewhere between "instantly" and "before the statute of limitations for 'DIY airport abortion' expires"

And what do you do in the meantime? All those people have a flight to catch. Do you detain them? That seems like it'd spark the same amount of flak. Do you let them go? To people who think that abortions should be legal that's probably acceptable, but what about to people who think abortions are murder? If there was a murderer loose would you let the suspects fly out?

> Do you let them go?

Yes!

> If there was a murderer loose would you let the suspects fly out?

Absent any probable cause (or even articulable specific suspicion) against a particular individual? Yes!

If someone is murdered by a woman in my city, we don’t detain all women.

I get that Qatar doesn’t have the US Fourth Amendment (and perhaps no enumeration of rights of the people), but this behavior would be considered absurd (ly unconstitutional) here.

They didn't detain all women, they detained a dozen or two?

And they found the mother so seems like it worked.

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