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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this is that oppressive. He went through security and set off an explosives detector. The cops showed up and asked some questions. Then he left.

Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the government can't hamfistedly accuse you of a crime. All it says is that they have to charge you or let you go in 24 hours, give you a trial, and punish you in a consistent way. They did that here; they asked some questions and they let him go.

You can argue about the techniques; religious questions, not giving him water, but it's all a well-documented psychological game that they're trying to play. If they make the suspect mad, the suspect is more likely to start yelling hysterically without thinking, saving the taxpayer the cost of a long trial. It's worth a try, right? (I think the correct answer to any question is, "my lawyer will answer that. get me my lawyer.")

Anyway, I look at this like the lottery, but in reverse. Sometimes you lose the reverse lottery and a day of your life gets fucked up. But ultimately, life moves on and you have an interesting story. You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost.

Let me ask you this: say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?

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>>Anyway, I look at this like the lottery, but in reverse. Sometimes you lose the reverse lottery and a day of your life gets fucked up. But ultimately, life moves on and you have an interesting story. You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost.

The view you have expressed here demonstrates that you have literally no idea what you are talking about.

It is not a "lottery" when the TSA and their goons are profiling people based on race, religion, income, and a host of other criteria.

The explosives detection machinery doesn't care what you look like or believe.

I don't know about you, but I want the TSA / FBI / NYPD to look into it so that they're sufficiently convinced the individual is not a threat.

Did you and I even read the same story?! The guy was clearly being profiled on race and religious background, not just the false positive of the explosives machine.

I'm not sure if you understand what "profiled" means. He was pulled into questioning because he repeatedly set off the bomb detector. The questions about race/religion weren't profiling, because they weren't used to select him for additional scrutiny. They are part of a psychological battery designed to evaluate him without a harsh interrogation. These sorts of batteries were pioneered by the Israelis and are very effective.

We should be more precise.

> "... because he repeatedly set off the bomb detector."

No, the initial pat-down set off a chemical detector. He set it off once before being pulled into the private room. From that point on, it doesn't matter how many more times it was set off. It shouldn't increase the level of suspicion each time.

Would they have let him go if one time it suddenly stopped giving a positive signal? I doubt it.

> "These sorts of batteries were pioneered by the Israelis and are very effective."

But this is not how the Israelis run their security procedures, so the comparison isn't fair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Gurion_Airport#Security_pro...

The Israeli procedures are kinda interesting, the second you enter the airport you are put in a line, you'll probably end up waiting in that line for about 15 min before you get to the "questioners" but once you're through everything else is really quick, especially the formal security check, you don't have to take off your shoes, remove your wallet, keys, etc or even take your laptop out of it's bag, just drop your bags on the belt, and walk through metal detector. Easily my favorite airport.

I wish I were wealthy enough to buy you a return ticket to Rome Ciampino airport, or Pisa for that matter and let you experience some of the easiest airports I've ever been to. Not like taking the train, but close… Anywhere else I've been including UK, US, Ukraine Odessa, etc, there's intimidation in the air, ready to hit. And that's really unpleasant.

I .. don't want to offend and all (Amir? Sounds Israeli to me, but I don't claim to be an expert).

But this 'It works so well at Ben Gurion' statements get old, really quick. It doesn't.

Traveling to TLV is fine and no problem. Getting out just sucks. I feel treated like shit every single time, it's just borderline acceptable half the time (the other half it's really, really annoying, causing delays and trouble, stupid, braindead, unnecessary, idiotic, etc. etc.).

This coming from a German that lived for one year in TLV and works for a company that sits in IL, so I've been there before my relocation and afterwards. Currently I'm at 14 or 15 visits only, so .. my data points are obviously too few and I just managed to pick the wrong time? Right?

Previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5866764

Short version: No, the Israeli version doesn't make you feel like a human being either, most of the time.

I wasn't clear enough in my comment. My point was that the entire process is different, so to single out the piece regarding questioning and suggesting that it works in this other context is not a fair comparison (regardless of how good/bad the Ben Gurion approach is overall).

Also, I'm not in the slightest bit offended. I'm not Israeli and although my name is Persian in origin (I think?), I'm British. When I travel to the US, I usually get sent to 'secondary', so I've hsd a little experience with this type of questioning. It's just tedious.

An FBI agent in the article:

"You’ll have to understand, when a person of your… background walks into here, traveling alone, and sets off our alarms, people start to get a bit nervous. I’m sure you’ve been following what’s been going on in the news recently. You’ve got people from five different branches of government all in here - we don’t do this just for fun."

That's profiling.

Edit to add: in other words "The questions about race/religion weren't profiling, because they weren't used to select him for additional scrutiny" is false. They even admitted to subjecting him to additional security because of his "background".

What an investigator says during an investigation isn't testimonial. There isn't even any obligation that it be truthful; it's OK for investigators to lie in the hope that it'll lead the suspect to incriminate themselves.

Simple example: Cop tells Joe Blow that they have a witness to the crime, and Joe Blow may as well confess. Joe Blow makes a full confession. Turns out there was no witness. Perfectly legit; what Joe Blow should have said (if anything) was 'there couldn't be, because I didn't commit that crime.'

Yes, that means that agents of the state (LEOs, prosecutors etc.) have an incentive to misbehave, but in the common law system the adversarial nature of the legal process allows the defense to challenge that. In a civil law system the investigating officer is supposed to be compelled to search for truth above all else, but if the investigating officer is corrupt or inefficient it is much harder to challenge in court, and defense attorneys are much less aggressive on behalf of their clients.

>What an investigator says during an investigation isn't testimonial. There isn't even any obligation that it be truthful; it's OK for investigators to lie in the hope that it'll lead the suspect to incriminate themselves.

Who cares if it's legal testimony? It's still racial profiling, which is still uncool for any reason.

Exactly. TO quote the dude, You're not wrong, you're just an asshole

I don't think I understand how your point applies here. The FBI agent's admission to having profiled the OP seem to be just that; I'm not sure how it could have been a ruse to get him to admit something. If we believe the story, it constitutes strong evidence that he was being profiled, and we should certainly see it that way and be outraged accordingly.

In terms of courts, I'm not sure what context we're talking about, since there are no courts involved. IANAL, but if the OP were to sue, rules about testimonial hearsay don't apply because it would be a civil case, not a criminal one. Even if it were criminal (if the OP had been arrested and was mounting a defense or the FBI agent was, I guess, arrested?), it's not obvious to me that the agent's statement qualifies, since its purpose has to be to assist the investigation. And finally, the rule that police are allowed to lie to get you to confess (as in your example) is actually separate from whether it's testimonial or not, and simply hinges on whether it's coercive. If I understand it, the testimonial hearsay rule as applied to cops lying is for when the cop says, "Oh, it's no problem; I make bombs at home too" in that it doesn't allow the defense to say, "see that cop makes bombs!" So that's all to say I don't understand what all that has to do with whether the OP was being profiled or not. Possibly I misunderstood something or have my legal facts wrong, though; can you clarify?

Edit to add: but regardless, it shouldn't change how much we're outraged at home, assuming we believe the OP's story, which I certainly do.

> It's profiling.

No, it's not. He was picked because he set off explosive detectors. Repeatedly.

The racial opinions of the person asking the questions doesn't change the fact that this is not racial profiling.

The question is not why he was "picked" to be investigated. The question is why he was kept so long even after it was determined that he did not, in fact, have explosives, and why he was questioned at such length and aggressiveness. The opinions of the people interrogating him are precisely what determine that, as explained by the actual person interrogating him. It really couldn't be any more straightforward.

A non-transient false-positive does not typically get you the sort of treatment that the author got. Usually you are out of there in minutes.

The FBI agent's statement rephrased in boolean logic:

  nervous = background && companions && alarm

If the value of alarm is false, nobody gets nervous because the whole expression evaluates to false.

The FBI agent did not say "You are being subjected to additional screening because of your background and because you're traveling alone". That they are nervous because of his background and lack of companions is orthogonal to the fact that the additional screening happened because of the positive match for explosives.

Or are you suggesting that if a white person traveling with companions matched positive for explosives, that they wouldn't be subjected to additional screening?

I think you're missing that there is a sequence of things that happens here:

  1. he sets off the chemical detector
  2. he is pulled aside for questioning
  3. in that questioning, they discover he has a background that makes them nervous
  4. they hold him for a great deal more questioning

1->2 is standard and would happen to anyone. As other people have pointed out in this thread, it generally takes 15 minutes and is no big deal. It certainly doesn't involve the FBI. While it's never happened to me, it's happened to several people I know and while it was a bit of a hassle, it did not come anywhere near this.

The alarms have already gotten us to 2, and they're not even nervous yet, because they don't know his background and, like you said, without the background being true, the whole expression evaluates to false. That's why the 3->4 transition is a problem, and that's where the profiling comes in. The agent's explanation isn't some non-sequitur, like "yeah, this is totally standard and incidentally we're nervous". He's explaining why they're holding him longer and have brought in agents from five different departments instead of just having a TSA guy chat with him and send him on his way. Notice the escalation as they become more concerned; they care about his background because it makes them think he might be a terrorist. Holding people for questioning when they're nervous that the passenger is a terrorist is actually their job. That's why they did so much, even to the point that they felt the need to explain it.

If answers about his background would not change their behavior towards him, why would they ask about it all? The whole point of gathering information is so that you can make decisions with it.

So then we get to the crux of it: his background makes them nervous and their nervousness causes them to subject him to additional scrutiny, above and beyond the screening he would have endured had he set off the alarm and not had a nervousness-causing background. That's profiling.

I understand what you mean now. Your original statement was:

  They even admitted to subjecting him to additional security because
  of his "background".

This is ambiguous and can be interpreted in more than one way. How I interpreted what you said:

  1. He sets off the chemical detector
  2. He is pulled aside for "additional security"

You can see why I disagreed as anybody ought to be pulled aside for additional security if they set off an explosives detector. Upon reading your reply, the interpretation you were going for was:

  1. He sets off the chemical detector
  2. He is pulled aside for "additional security"
  3. They probe into his background to build a profile
  4. This profile yields further rounds of "additional security"
     that people not matching that profile wouldn't be subject to

I lack knowledge on whether or not making security-related decisions based on a profile is useful or irrelevant, so I'll bow out of this aspect of the conversation.

Ah, I see. Yeah, I meant, "additional" as in "above and beyond the standard reaction to setting off the detector". Sorry for the confusion.

I believe the issue with the alarm is that most people don't repeatedly flag the same alarm.

E.g. if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article, especially if the machine correctly doesn't alert on other innocuous articles.

So in the normal situation someone sets of the chemical detector, once, gets pulled aside for questioning. Their gear doesn't set off the detector again and so the agents are able to conclude it's a false alarm.

To be clear, I don't agree with the treatment OP received in this case, but I fail to see how it is sinister that someone repeatedly sets off chemical detector alarms (that no one else sets off repeatedly), has burned all ties to his residence, is religious and is going up to meet family for a religious gathering.

It's not that such behavior is automatically suspicious, it's that the behavior is still almost indistinguishable from those who previously have caused terrorist attacks.

In this case the FBI agent isn't trying to prove OP a terrorist as much as he's trying hard (and failing) to prove that he's not.

> if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article

I don't think that's true. Remember that the test doesn't actually detect bombs. It detects certain chemicals. Now, sometimes it might just randomly report a false positive and then you'd expect it not to trigger the second time. But some of the chemicals it is built to detect can be found in everyday products, such as hair products, soaps, some medications, and--as I learned today--bug spray. And so for those chemicals, it's going trigger repeatedly because the chemical it's looking for really is there. So that second failure mode is actually pretty common, and so even when that happens, it's normal to take the person into a side room, search them more throughly, talk to them for a few minutes, and send them on their way. What we see here is quite different.

Which leads us to the real reason, which you wrote:

> It's not that such behavior is automatically suspicious, it's that the behavior is still almost indistinguishable from those who previously have caused terrorist attacks.

That's precisely profiling: "the bad guys have profile x and you fit profile x, so we think you are suspicious" where x isn't inherently suspicious. It sounds like you're saying, "profiling isn't such a bad idea", which I strongly disagree with, but I suppose that's a different discussion.

> So that second failure mode is actually pretty common, and so even when that happens, it's normal to take the person into a side room, search them more throughly, talk to them for a few minutes, and send them on their way.

From what I am hearing from others, normally people barely even get that much special treatment after a non-transient false positive. Agents suggesting "Maybe it was 'Innocuous Product X'" so the passenger can say "Yup, that is probably it" seems to be common, but not the sort of treatment they are going to give to people that they have a bias against.

> E.g. if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article, especially if the machine correctly doesn't alert on other innocuous articles.

Well yes, I would. Some false positives can be transient, others are not. If I just came from the shooting range I would not be surprised if I got a non-transient false-positive. Now that is an obvious case and I would immediately tell them that I had been to the shooting range, likely resolving the issue, but it is just a simple example of a false positive that is not transient.

How common is a non-transient false-positive where the victim doesn't immediately have a good idea what the cause is? Well, there are several reports from HN users in this thread that describe situations in which it could allegedly occur. One cites hand lotion as a potential cause of non-transient false-positives; luckily for his wife the agents volunteered that hypothesis so she wasn't left guessing. The author of the article supposes that an over-the-counter chemical was the cause of his non-transient false positive; it's not like he was a lab tech working with synthesized stuff that nobody else ever comes into contact with.

Unless the machines are shit (a distinct possibility), I would expect transient false-positives to be relatively infrequent while non-transient false-positives would be reliably and regularly caused by a wide range of substances that share chemical properties with known explosives.

Most of these non-transient false positives are likely quickly resolved without much ado. His was not.

Edit:

Perhaps the real problem here is with the terminology. These machines are not really bomb detectors, or even explosive detectors. They are chemical detectors. Calling them bomb or explosive detectors is like calling a metal detector a "gun detector". Sure, finding those things may be why it is there, but that is not actually what it does.

> Well, there are several reports from HN users in this thread that describe situations in which it could allegedly occur

Which makes the detectors useless as an interrogation tool.

If the alarm sounds, then check the person for explosives. That makes perfect sense, it's a useful tool for finding explosives on people.

But if you cannot find explosives on the person, what do you do then?

Any even slightly training terrorist is going to know what other products would produce the same detection result as the bomb they just built. So they'll pretend to think for a while, and then say "I work in a supermarket, and a customer dropped hand lotion on the floor this morning, and I had to wipe it up... can that set off your machine?"

It seems like there's a magic answer you can give that will let you go free, you just need to know the right thing to say. If the investigator likes you (i.e. thinks you're probably not a terrorist) they'll give you hints about what you should say. If they don't then you're on your own.

Someone who can give the right answer is either:

* Good at analysis, so they can make a good guess of what might be setting of the machine.

* Someone who's been through this before

* Someone who got a friendly hint from the investigator

* A not-so-dumb terrorist

Someone who can't give the answer is either:

* A normal person

* A dumb terrorist

Given the low prevalence of terrorists, that would be the least likely explanation in either scenario, so the whole line of questioning is pretty much useless, except as a way of applying pressure to someone who you've decided is worth applying pressure to. When that decision is based on some genuine piece of evidence, then it might be a legitimate law enforcement technique. When it's based on the gut-feel of the officers in question, it becomes a front for racial profiling.

> if a given test were to generate a false positive, you would expect that it wouldn't generate a false positive the next time if run on the same article

The last time I was travelling, I set of the metal detector in an airport in Germany. They took me aside and used the hand metal detector. It also went off. So they patted me down and scanned me again - the alarm still went off. So they patted me down a second time and scanned me again and the alarm still went off.

They then sent me on my way and I had no further hassle for the rest of the trip.

If the explosives machinery did indeed detect permethrin, then they still have a lot to account for. Excuse me if I doubt that a white Christian would have faced the same ordeal and found their home burglarized over insect repellant.

Once they've determined he isn't carrying actual explosives he shouldn't be considered a threat anymore. The detection machine might single you out for additional searching, but once the search is complete you should be free to go.

This. The craziness of "he set of the detection machine but it's clearly a false-positive, but now that he's on our radar let's grill him in case he just happens to be a terrorist" should be obvious to anyone.

Yes, IMHO it comes from this: What would be on the news if he was a terrorist and they find out that he actually set off the explosives detector before doing his deed? So basically their response is more about fear of embarrassment (to an extreme) than actual effectiveness.

It is also about a lack of accountability. There is no penalty for going to town on the guy - for them its just a more exciting day on the job - for him it's a humiliating loss of personal autonomy.

> for them its just a more exciting day on the job

Yes. Get into their mentality. The lower ranks are underpaid would be burger flippers and In-and-Out. The go through their boring day pushing prodding people. If they get to "interrogate" someone or humiliate him or show off their power just like a bully would in the cafeteria you betcha they'll take advantage of that.

"What would be on the news if he was a terrorist and they find out that he actually set off the explosives detector before doing his deed?"

Yeah, Schneier calls it Cover Your Ass Security. It's not super effective ..

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/cya_security_...

>Once they've determined he isn't carrying actual explosives he shouldn't be considered a threat anymore. //

Because people who handle explosives and cover it up when questioned, and aren't involved in handling explosives in their day job, are completely to be trusted?

Surely once they've determined he isn't carrying explosives they need to be sure as possible, if he claims not to have been around any explosives, that he's telling the truth; in order to reduce the risk that he's going to use explosives in an illegal way and/or manner dangerous to life. Don't people who're manufacturing explosives in secret deserve at least a passing glance to see what they're doing with them.

It looks here like they checked his apartment to corroborate his statements.

Now if they've established there are no traces of explosive present - for example they confirm the cause of a false-positive - that's different.

Er.. No.

The problem with your line of thought is that you trust that machine to be somewhat reliable. We don't _really_ learn what set off the machine, but the author's guess is an over the counter spray..

If that's the high tech "You need to endure this process for the greater good, since the machine claims you're a threat" world you like to live in, I .. opt out. That thing is obviously next to useless and probably as effective as a look in the eyes of the stranger, with your gut deciding if he's going to stay put for the rest of the day or if he's allowed to move on.

IFF we had a reliable, working test with little to no false positive due to f*ing everyday stuff (or .. bad luck, being a 'random' match), THEN you might have a point. Right now, you don't.

>your line of thought is that you trust that machine to be somewhat reliable //

And your problem is you assume the machine isn't reliable. So then if it's set off, you just say "ah well, it's probably a false reading". At that point you just obviated the purpose of the machine.

Yes we don't learn whether it was the permethrin (? can't certainly recall the name) but the people who did the sweep of his apartment confirmed that there were no other indications of explosives manufacture [or you can plump for the slightly less cynical - 'the questioning confirmed he was not a threat'].

There's likely always going to be some false-positives: the needs of the many, yadda, yadda.

>IFF we had a reliable, working test with little to no false positive due to fing everyday stuff* //

Can you post your source and the pertinent stats for the number of false-positives for explosives detection at airports in the USA please.

Our friend Bayes and his theorem can help us here. Suppose you have an HIV test which is 95% accurate in detecting if you are HIV positive or not. The HIV rate in the US is about 0.3%.

If you subject a random American to this HIV test and the test result is positive, what is the probability that that person has HIV? I wont do the math, but the right answer is about 2%. Since the prevalence of HIV is so low it doesn't matter how accurate the test it, it will still generate many times more false positives than true ones.

Same thing with bombs. The number of American air passengers/year is about 800 million/year and of them, at most 5 are carrying explosives. Even if the bomb detector is 99.9% accurate it will generate thousands of false positives for each real bomb it catches.

It turns out when you actually get tested for HIV, they do two tests. One has a high false positive rate but a low false negative rate. If that comes positive, they do a second test that's the other way around.

It also turns out that we don't test everyone for HIV. In what I am sure is some form of irony, we probably test more folks for carrying bombs than we do for having HIV. When the numbers show there are more folks with HIV in America than there are those carrying bombs.

What that means is that people who trip these explosives detectors should be politely treated while it is determined whether or not they actually have explosives, since they are likely not really carrying explosives.

But this doesn't mean that scanning for explosives is a bad idea, or that people should just be merrily flagged to go on their way, otherwise what is the point of doing any screening?

After all, the vast, vast majority of passengers are just trying to go from point A to point B so each and every single scanning method will generate thousands of false positives every year.

That's weird. You're turning the argument on its head.

YOU started supporting the process and said something like Don't people who're manufacturing explosives in secret..

Well, based on what evidence? The machine that detects chemicals here? It seems that this supports my claim, you think that machine is 'working' and somewhat reliable. Without having provided any kind of proof or source, by the way.

The article, the author, proceeds to talk about potential chemicals to set off the detector (and we had more posts like this over the years, for example from people working with plants, farmers etc). Chemicals you're able to get everywhere.

If that is a known issue and this machine can beep if

a) you've built a bomb

b) you've moved your plants from inside the house to your garden

then you should reevaluate the idea of this particular test in the first place. The author writes that one participant in that theater claimed to know the exact substance that triggered the detector. Really? In that case it should be possible to

- dismiss the idea, it's stupid. That stuff? Everyone can buy it

- ask disguised/hidden questions to reveal if he used one of the gazillion things that might trigger this warning and leave the man alone

The option

- keep him, make him feel like a criminal, treat him in an inhuman (no water..? Really?) way for as long as it takes to break into his appartment

is really not on the list of things you can rationally describe as necessary. That's insane.

Ah, well. I come up empty handed at the end and cannot provide a source for the reliability of the detectors used in the US of A. I guess that makes my whole post moot. Obviously you don't need to provide the same thing, since "It's used at the airports, certainly it works!"?

> If that is a known issue and this machine can beep if a) you've built a bomb, b) you've moved your plants from inside the house to your garden, then you should reevaluate the idea of this particular test in the first place.

It's more complicated than that. Anecdotal evidence suggests the trace analysis machine has a very low false positive rate. The fact that agents are trained to re-run the test repeatedly also suggests the machine has a very low false negative rate.

Given a sufficiently low false positive and false negative rate, the right answer may be, if it repeatedly triggers on a passenger, to question that passenger further.

Of course, with increasing reliability of the test comes increasingly severe questioning when the test repeatedly fails. In theory you want the level of the response to be commensurate with the reliability of the test. A perfect test convicts you as soon as you fail it. An imperfect test such as this requires humans to actually follow-up and investigate the failure.

The tactics, ethics, and legality of the how that investigation proceeds... I think that's another matter entirely, from whether we should be employing trace analysis in airports in the first place.

You can't tell between the moving plants and making bombs because materials in one can be used for the other.

> It looks here like they checked his apartment to corroborate his statements.

Checked? That's being charitable. You mean it's okay to break into someone's apartment without a warrant and steal shit? What happened to the rule of law? Having said that, we don't know who broke in or what happened.

Not that the whole story isn't appalling, but why would you assume the break-in was without a warrant?

"This guy set off explosive detectors at the airport. He claimed it was because of chemicals he used while moving. We'd like to check his story out by searching his place." Looks to me like that could convince a judge.

I didn't say anything about trust. What I meant was he wasn't a threat to that particular flight. If the aim of the TSA is to keep a plane from blowing up, they've already accomplished it. Anything beyond that is just a fishing expedition. Given that they know their tests will detect compounds that aren't explosives this seems over the top.

the problem is that as a Caucasian male even if i were to test positive for the same chemical and didn't realize the source I highly doubt I would have been detained for more than an hour or two

Chemical detection doesn't even get used except under "random" search.

There are so many chemicals to test for, and so many of them have other common uses that using chemical tests as a proxy for malicious intent has poor accuracy. Even assuming tests are extremely accurate, false positive rates would still massively exceed the incidence of threats.

What you look like will greatly increase your odds of being "randomly" searched and thereby odds of false positive chemical detection, at which point what you believe may become a liability during your interrogation.

Having an objective mechanism in the mix doesn't really put a dent how culturally and racially biased the present solution is.

Whether you feel a need for there to be such a system in place only changes whether such a bias is a matter of xenophobic overreach or a technical weakness against threats that resemble the majority.

It wasn't a "random" search. Any time you opt out of the millimeter wave scanner, you get a hand pat-down and your baggage is swabbed for explosives.

Even the "random" searches (the ones that start with "you have been selected for a random search") are rarely random.

Though I agree with the notion that racism is wrong, the issue of racial profiling is not as simple as we would want it to be. If we accept that the TSA is an organization of limited resources, and that any failure to capture a terrorist would have unspeakably terrible consequences, then it would be reasonable to try to optimize our efforts at thwarting terrorism.

It is the case that there exist certain profiles that would make a person more predisposed to terrorism (but I'm not claiming that I know what they are, nor do I feel that deciding what those profiles are is a decision to be taken lightly in the least). An equivalent statement would be to say that there are profiles -- such as being very old -- that would make a person less predisposed to acts of terrorism of this sort. So does it not follow that we should attempt to optimize given these conditions?

Note that I wholly agree with the objections to constitutional rights being violated in the account presented in the article, and I can understand the stance against any kind of profile. But it cannot be claimed that racial profiling has no good arguments going for it.

I personally am not entirely decided on what the appropriate course of action is in this matter; profiling is a more complicated issue than we may like it to be.

> It is not a "lottery" when the TSA and their goons are profiling people based on race

In this story, they were profiling based on the fact that the person set off explosive detectors. Repeatedly.

The fact that he was later questioned by tactless people making veiled racial hints doesn't change the fact that he wasn't racially profiled. A Caucasian would have been detained just the same.

> "set off explosive detectors. Repeatedly."

If I walk back and forth through a metal detector with a belt buckle multiple times, do I become increasingly suspicious each time it beeps?

At the very least it confirms suspicions that you do in fact have metal on you. By removing doubt, you do increase suspicion.

It doesn't confirm that the machine results were not a false positive, it only provides you with some assurance that the results were not transient: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6260688

So....in other words you are provided with more assurance of your suspicions. Thus increased suspicion.

It's nothing at all like going through a metal detector with your belt on. Metal detectors check your present state, trace analysis checks your PAST state.

False positives are possible, I've had it happen to me. When "the machine beeped", I got a thorough pat-down and re-swabbed, and the next time "the machine did not beep" and I was on my way.

It's my understanding that TSA agents will not allow someone to pass who is consistently setting off the explosives alarm. What would be the purpose of checking for trace explosives residue if the agents simply disregard it when it triggers?

Of all the 'sigint' they collect on each passenger, I would bet a "repeated trace analysis fail" ranks up there with carrying box cutters as one of the more alarming indicators an agent has to deal with.

It sounds like the agents did everything they could to try to get a green light from trace analysis. Failing that, the passenger is obviously red flagged and it's "all systems go" to determine if they are really a threat. I can't imagine how else they would handle it.

Passing a belt buckle through a metal detector repeatedly and passing a sample through an explosives detector repeatedly demonstrates nothing except that the alarm was not transient.

Just because it isn't transient doesn't mean it isn't a false positive as this story demonstrates.

With such an overwhelmingly massive chance that the alert was a false positive, the response the author received is indefensible.

They were specifically highlighting the pointless use of the word "repeatedly" for emphasis, I believe. Well of course it happened "repeatedly"; they just repeated the same test with the same articles.

Though you may call them explosive detectors, they aren't. They're chemical detectors, specifically mass spectrometers. All they can do is detect chemicals, and they obviously can't tell the difference between some common chemicals and a true explosive device.

I don't think this is that oppressive. He went through security and set off an explosives detector. The cops showed up and asked some questions. Then he left.

This is a vast mischaracterization of what happened.

He was detained without arrest, based on minimal suspicions. Yes, he should have shut the hell up and not answered questions.

You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost.

Except these dice are heavily weighted against you if you are brown and/or non-christian.

say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?

That's not happening here. He was not detained because he had an explosive or firearm, he was detained because he was subject to a different level of scrutiny than the other passengers who went through the scanner.

> He was detained without arrest, based on minimal suspicions. Yes, he should have shut the hell up and not answered questions.

Minimal suspicions? A young male flying alone who refuses the scanner and sets of the explosives detector?

Yes, he absolutely should have been cooperative and answered their questions after that. I always refuse the scanner, but I don't complain afterward that I have to answer questions and get a "firm" pat down (there is nothing "firm" about them, btw, they are overly careful and respectful if anything).

And if I ever set off the explosive detector, my first reaction wouldn't be how unfair it was that "harried" employees were "rudely" explaining that my options were leaving or a private pat down. That would seem utterly reasonable to me.

> And if I ever set off the explosive detector, my first reaction wouldn't be how unfair it was that "harried" employees were "rudely" explaining that my options were leaving or a private pat down. That would seem utterly reasonable to me.

He was told that leaving was not one of his choices. Even after pointing out the illegality of that to the security official, he was told that if he left, he would forfeit his luggage, including any electronics. So essentially, leaving was not one of his choices. Also, having his house broken into and possibly bugged does not seem utterly reasonable to me.

> Also, having his house broken into and possibly bugged does not seem utterly reasonable to me.

Now c'mon. By treating this like fact given the evidence from the story, you are engaging in the same unjust leaps and "profiling" that people are accusing the TSA of. No one, including the author, knows what happened to his picture or if any law enforcment agency was involved in its disappearance.

I'm not treating the bugged part as fact. I do believe that there's at least a 99% chance that there was a break-in and that it was related to his interrogation.

> I always refuse the scanner

Would you mind to share your reasoning as to why you elect to forgo this option ? It would appear to me having a machine scan you is less intrusive than a full body search by a human agent.

Personally, I decline the scans because it's my one way of protesting the security theater and its enormous waste. It's the one thing I'm allowed to decline, so I decline it.

Here's a really good way to protest security theater (albeit very much at your expense): write SSSS [1] on your boarding pass, and see how you're treated! (Security officers can write SSSS on your boarding pass, so it doesn't need to be printed on the pass, so this will work...)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_Se...

I do it for a few reasons.

1) It requires agents turn away from their normal tasks and clogs up the works to some degree. I disagree with the program and opting for the pat-down is a legal action I can take that will, ever so briefly, disrupt it.

2) I do it in the hope that the agents doing the pat-down will be uncomfortable while doing so. Any legal action I can take that makes their job ever-so-slightly more unpleasant is something that I will do. If it were done en-masse and people in their personal lives ostracized them for their job, then maybe (just maaaybe) the TSA would experience higher turnover.

3) To add one more data-point to the agents' awareness that a portion of the population does not approve of them or their job.

4) So that other people waiting in the line can see me skip the full body scan and learn that they can as well.

5) So that I get to tell other people what I just told you.

I do it also, because I don't trust them to not save the images, and I suspect the images will either get hacked by or flat-out sold to a third party later. The pat-down doesn't make me feel like I'm being raped, although I guess I can see why others would be uncomfortable.

I don't think this is that oppressive.

Yeah, well, it didn't happen to you, did it?

He went through security and set off an explosives detector. The cops showed up and asked some questions. Then he left.

"We gave him free room and board for 17 years, then laid him on a comfortable bed and gave him some medicine to make him fall asleep for a while".

vs.

"We kept him caged in a tiny, windowless cell and gave him just enough stale bread and dirty water to keep him alive for 17 years, then we executed him."

Details matter, dude.

In this case, the pertinent detail is the fact the man set of explosive detectors.

The other details, far from suggesting oppressive state apparatus, suggested an assortment of rent-a-cops and airline staff that really weren't particularly well-prepared for the guy that couldn't account for the explosives and flagged other profiling alarms without actually giving any indication of being an actual threat. If you want to oppress someone you do a lot more than keep them waiting whilst you try and figure out who's best positioned to ask less silly questions.

The most objectionable behaviour was arguably JetBlue's decision to refuse to honour the return ticket, and you'd struggle to argue that was part of the crushing state apparatus.

In this case, the pertinent detail is the fact the man set of explosive detectors.

I'd argue that the pertinent detail is that he wasn't actually carrying any explosives.

A State doesn't have to be a finely-tuned, well-oiled, smoothly functioning machine to be oppressive. It just has to institutionalize (or just tolerate) the kind of treatment we saw here. If some of the individuals involved are simply bungling incompetents who more or less mean well, does that make the overall process less oppressive? I argue that it doesn't.

And because he turned out not to be carrying any explosives, he was let go. As above, what would you do if someone set off an explosives detector? Investigations should certainly be conducted politely and respectfully, but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.

Do you think the authorities behaved in a polite and respectful manner? I don't actually care if they do, I don't think that's a requirement; what I do care about is that they follow the law first, then use common sense. Detaining him for more than 30 minutes is very close to actionable in a sane legal world. Just because the TSA, FBI, and the local PD are full of bungling, ignorant idiots doesn't make what happened to the author less of a crappy thing.

I will argue that politeness and respect are actually essential, because otherwise that's where racism, etc., creep in. Impoliteness and disrespect set up a hostile atmosphere in which matters escalate and the cops/TSA/gov people feel threatened and thus justified in using more authority, while the "suspect" feels threatened and thus justified in pushing back or trying to get out by more dramatic means. This is where bad stuff starts happening despite everyone's "best intentions" and this is the place that white people who set off chemical detectors simply don't get to. (It's the same dynamic that can lead to bad police-minority relations -- the difference between leading with "I'm sorry sir, but we'll have to frisk you" or "You causing trouble? What are you doing here?")

As above, what would you do if someone set off an explosives detector?

I pat them down, and search their luggage. If I don't find a bomb, I let them go. It should take 3-5 minutes, tops. What I don't do is detain them for hours, grille them over and over again, and deny them food and water during the detainment.

but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.

It doesn't even matter what they say, they either are or aren't carrying a bomb. That can be determined through physical inspection. Persistence doesn't enter into it.

> I pat them down, and search their luggage. If I don't find > a bomb, I let them go. It should take 3-5 minutes, tops.

He had checked luggage.

Which is already scanned for explosives by default, no?

Don't checked luggage go through bomb detection and the like? Actually I'd be inclined to believe they go through even more rigorous checks than people and their carry-on luggage. iirc, they're stored in bomb-resistant containers inside of aircraft, too, ever since a bombing with a bomb in checked luggage some time ago (80's, I think)

How accurate is the explosives detector? What is the rate of false positives?

> Investigations should certainly be conducted politely and respectfully, but at the same time they need to be persistent enough to deal with the attempts of guilty parties to conceal the truth.

Do they really? How often do planes blow up because of a bomb a passenger brought on? Once a decade? Less than that? I'm frankly willing to live with those odds if it means I don't have to take my shoes off and submit to molestation every time I get on a flight.

I'm not sure whether you're arguing the state was "oppressive" because it had the temerity to put in place a policy of investigating people that set off explosive detectors, or because they weren't competent enough to establish his innocence within minutes, but I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree on both counts

Minimal security theatre isn't oppression, and neither is bungling for five hours.

Let's put things into perspective here. The Syrian government gasses its people largely indiscriminately. The Egyptian government shoots those guilty of the crime of public protest. This guy was, based on reasonable suspicion... asked more questions than competent interrogators would have bothered with and left rather thirsty and ticketless at the end.

Just because things are not as bad as they are in Syria or Egypt, doesn't mean we should not be seriously troubled by the conduct of our government. We should not have to wait until citizens are getting murdered in the streets by our government before we get concerned.

True, but I'd put "temporarily detains person who argues with security after setting off explosive detectors in airport" near the bottom of the list of reasons to be concerned, a long way below issues like "has death sentence" or even "has schoolchildren pledge their allegiance to the flag every day"

It's not even like there isn't a reason for increased security at US airports in the last 15 years.

Minimal security theatre isn't oppression, and neither is bungling for five hours.

Yep, we'll have to agree to disagree. As far as I'm concerned, being detained against your will for five minutes is oppressive.

But, I'm a radical individualist who believes in the primacy and sovereignty of the individual and who barely tolerates the idea of the modern nation-state at all. So I'm fairly biased.

The idea that authoritarianism requires competent enforcers is false. The Gestapo, the NKVD, the Stasi, the SD were all full of losers who were the mall cops and malcontents of their day. What they did have in common were a lust for power.

You miss the point. The most obvious explanation for the author's experience is that it was unpleasant because, rather than in spite of the various parties' inability to handle the situation. They were fumbling over what to do rather than lusting for power, and if anything half the problem was down to nobody having enough authority to insist that no further questions were necessary.

Of course, that's only an interpretation, and it's possible the individuals involved gain visceral thrills from asking questions about being "somewhat religious" or "very religious" and laughing as their fellow henchmen misunderstand the concept of venture capital, and only the last vestiges of American law prevented them from responding to his request for a drink by waterboarding him. It's possible they asked ignorant questions about Hinduism and then called their crack Hindi-speaking agent as part of a cunning plan to deter non-Christians from ever flying again. It's just.... I'm sure the concept of Hanlon's razor has come up on HN a few times before?

And you missed my point. I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether his experience is due to incompetence or malice. The fact is that his experience is not a black swan event. It's one that many, many people traveling to and from the US have to deal with. And yes, CYA is the norm in most three letter organizations, after all, no one gets fired for abusing someone.

If it's caused by malice, it's wrong and needs to be addressed. If it's caused by incompetence, it's wrong and needs to be addressed. If it happened to you, would you feel more comforted by the idea that hey, these are well-meaning but untrained and ignorant buffoons who couldn't use the common sense possessed by a housecat? Would it really matter?

> In this case, the pertinent detail is the fact the man set of explosive detectors.

Actually no, the pertinent detail is the fact that he wasn't carrying any explosives or planning anything nefarious.

> The most objectionable behaviour was arguably JetBlue's decision to refuse to honour the return ticket

You can't be serious. An innocent man was held against his will, questioned,with no water, for 18 hours, while in the mean some some secret police broke into his house, and the worst thing you can see about this is that he didn't get his money back??

> > I don't think this is that oppressive. > > Yeah, well, it didn't happen to you, did it?

Correct, and that's exactly what makes it not oppressive: the fact that it doesn't happen to random people pulled on the street. When this starts happening, then you are justified in claiming that your country is turning into a police state.

> "You can argue about the techniques; religious questions, not giving him water, but it's all a well-documented psychological game that they're trying to play. If they make the suspect mad, the suspect is more likely to start yelling hysterically without thinking, saving the taxpayer the cost of a long trial. It's worth a try, right? (I think the correct answer to any question is, "my lawyer will answer that. get me my lawyer.")"

This is about the techniques. As another commenter pointed out, details matter. "Securing our airports" is all well and good until you start "securing" them via forced detentions absent any charges, denying basic physical needs, "patdowns" that would qualify as sexual assault if someone not wearing a uniform did it, and so on. The whole point is that if you don't consider the details and only focus on the goals, then you only consider the benefits and not the costs. Judging from the public statements by officers of the TSA and DHS, this is exactly how they seem to think about these practices.

> "Let me ask you this: say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?"

They already had checked for guns and explosives. Both his bags were scanned and his body was repeatedly "inspected" as well. The statements made by the officers indicated they were well aware that false alarms due to various common chemicals are routine. Yet they decided to assume he was a terrorist carrying explosives because he was a brown person who hadn't eaten traveling during Ramadan, not because of any concrete evidence on his person or possessions.

Exactly. Should we start waterboarding all suspects because, hey, it might save the cost of a trial?

And besides, doesn't the government have armies of lawyers on their payroll already? The only significant cost to the taxpayer here would be if they lose.

> "Let me ask you this: say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?"

Politely. With the view that I'm dealing with people who are innocent unless found to be otherwise.

Edit: Please also note that permethrin is not an explosive. Should everyone who uses insect repellant be treated this way while going through security? I'm surprised the guy even knew the name of the chemical (I wouldn't have).

Well, considering that red teams are routinely able to smuggle weapons and simulated explosive devices on aircraft fairly routinely, the current procedures are shit. Security theater at its finest.

And you can't detain someone without reasonable suspicion which gives you the authority to investigate whether a crime has occurred. This detention can't be indefinite, and can't even come close to lasting 24 hours. Once your investigation exceeds around 30 minutes, you have to either arrest the person (assuming probable cause) or release them.

Can you cite sources for either of the two claims you made here? I'm genuinely curious.

"Most fake bombs missed by screeners" http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/travel/news/2007-10-17-airpor...

It's usatoday, I know, but the reporting seems straightforward.

Missed loaded guns: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-scre... http://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-lets-loaded-guns-past-security-...

> "Most fake bombs missed by screeners"

Seems like the screening is working, then.

> Missed loaded guns:

This statistic is meaningless without the number of times where they caught loaded guns.

And once we have these numbers, make a suggestion to improve that percentage.

Hey, would you like to buy this rock?

Here's a link to the legal stuff. I'll find the best link for the red team statement.

http://criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal-law/arrests_and_...

EDIT: Here's an example of a red team "success:"

http://www.9news.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=67166&catid=222

Setting off an explosives detector isn't reasonable suspicion?

My wife set off an explosives detector once. They asked her if she had used any lotions, she said yes, hand lotion, and they let her go.

This was about a year ago.

I'm sorry, but this is relevant to the original article in what way? No such courtesies were afforded to the author until long into the ordeal. (By my count of the author's timeline, ~2.5 hours after he stepped into the security lines.) The author mentioned explicitly that he cleaned his apartment and the TSA agent refused to give any indication that that might be cause for the flagging for explosives.

Regardless, contrarian anecdotal evidence does nothing to diminish the questionable approach to how airport security is, and in the author's case was, handled.

I think you are misinterpreting what I'm saying (aside from stating an experience). If hand lotion can (supposedly) flag the machine, setting off the detector shouldn't be handled in this fashion.

Yes, it's reasonable suspicion for further questioning; meaning he can be detained for a short period. When nothing else came of it, he should have been released, or arrested. Obviously, they didn't have enough evidence to arrest him. They just abused their authority.

Been there done that.

They also asked my religion. I said I'm Buddhist (sort of true, though I'm not a very good one) and after a brief chat, I was sent off with my beans. No pat down, no detention.

FYI, If you want to avoid this, handle as few volatile compounds as you can (E.G. Alcohol based products). Better yet, stop using that artificial malarkey altogether. You'll smell less offensive and it would probably be healthier for you anyway.

Of course, this is just a stop-gap measure to avoid getting inconvenienced. The real solution is to move from security theater to true security and that takes policy changes.

You cannot have true security. You can have acceptable security. The law of diminishing returns kicks very hard after a point.

Basically you should aim to keep terrorism the least of the risks for the society but to accept it as a non zero.

But the moment less people are dying from terrorism than lets say random obscure health condition then the money and resources are better invested elsewhere.

The point isn't the number of people dying. Its the chilling effect. Travel was way down after 9/11 due to fear. That has a much bigger economic effect than just the deaths.

In the 1970s there was no airport security. Airliners believed it would be cheaper to just pay off plane hijackers. That was before those hijackers started flying them into skyscrapers.

The lower airline travel isn't just from fear; it's also from the additional time and hassles of security.

. . . although after many years of not flying, in the past 2 months I've gone through security about 10 times and it's always been pleasant and professional and quick.

That's hard to say. How accurate is the detector? How susceptible to false-positives is it? Does it even detect anything at all? Do we really know that the "bomb detector" isn't just another ADE-651?[1][2]

[1]: http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/01/world/europe/fake-bomb-detecto...

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651

My laptop once tested positive for TNT residue at ORD. They asked if I had any idea why it did, I said no, and they let me go after testing my shirt.

I can imagine that the same logic was applied in our colonial period to unwarranted searches and seizures. The Loyalists surely said, "Hey, you just lost the lottery. Sure they came in and stole some things and roughed you up a little, but the bruises heal in a few days and they didn't steal that much. Overall things are pretty good, so deal with it and quit your whining."

This is, of course, evil.

> I think the correct answer to any question is, "my lawyer will answer that. get me my lawyer."

Hopefully. But their answer to that might contain the word "Guantanamo" and there's a chance, given that you're now an uncooperative brown person, that they're not bluffing.

I'm normally not one to buy arguments that the US is truly on a slippery slope to becoming a police state, but this year has made me seriously rethink that.

At the very least, their answer will likely involve a permanent extrajudicial no-fly status as punishment for being insufficiently patriotic.

Israel does a marvelous job of it by a brief interview of every passenger. It's a matter of how each person reacts to initial eye contact; with proper interrogation training, ill intent is obvious.

The TSA technique does everything but what works. Gross wholesale violations of multiple Constitutional rights doesn't work.

This sounds terrible. Police make me very nervous. I avoid them if possible, especially making eye contact. How would I show up in Israel's interview?

There's a difference in reaction between someone nervous of cops vs. someone about to die in the willful act of mass murder.

> There's a difference in reaction between someone nervous of cops vs. someone about to die in the willful act of mass murder.

That's a pretty nuanced decision for the inspector to make. Polygraph machines and their operators routinely mess that one up.

I doubt that they themselves claim they can make that differentiation, and if they do so make that claim, I'd bet cash on it that it has been untested as far as accuracy regarding false positives.

Generally speaking, teaching 'technique' to a layman and expecting them to all be of equal caliber is just simply wrong.

True, but that's why they reportedly pay lots more than minimum wage, recruit carefully, and train heavily. And also profile the hell out of people.

The real difference is that it's only one airport. It would be very expensive and time-consuming to scale that up to secure every airport in the US.

Not much news about false positives for them makes it out, at least not in English-language media, but the worst I've heard of them doing is grilling suspicious people for a few hours.

Huh. I wonder how they train the inspectors?

Saying that there's a difference is a tautology. Of course there's a difference. There's also a difference between someone trying to decide between getting an apple or a blueberry danish.

The important bits are whether the difference is detectable in a manner that is convenient (putting each passenger through an MRI machine is out of the question), reliable (minimize false positives and false negatives), and so on. Just saying "there's a difference" adds no new information to the conversation unless you're able to expand on the quantifiable aspects of those differences.

It´s just the security girl that checks your ticket before you go with your bags through the bag cleareance (that happens before you check in). If you don´t know what´s happening you don´t notice it. In fact Ben Gurion airport has one of the fastest and least unpleasent security screening I´ve seen, while being at the same time maybe the most secure. Security people is very pleasent, even when they stop you for questioning, they do it fast and in a polite way. They are proffesionals that have to deal with daily and real threats. The most unpleasent airport security is the TSA and then the British, and it depends largely on the guy you meet at the filter. After the 9/11 the german airport security were very strict for a couple of years, now they seem to be back to normal, stricter rules but not offensive searches and that.

Edit: I stand corrected the British security is mostly Heathrow. I flew from Edimburgh this April and the security was mostly the same as the rest of europe. Also I have improved the wording a bit.

The British at what airport? There is no singular organization who carries out the security, and different airports subcontract the work to different companies. In general, my experience in the UK has been comparable to the rest of Europe.

4 hour immigration lines at Heathrow are normal for the rest of Europe? Schiphol is about 30 minutes. I am never flying in to Heathrow again, if I can avoid it.

4 hour? Wow. Longest I've ever had at Heathrow Terminal 5 was 15 minutes or so (it's been a decade or more since I last went to any other Heathrow terminal) — and I fly through both there and Amsterdam a fair bit. Typically quicker than Amsterdam, in my experience.

What terminal do you fly into? T4 is quite bad since it seems to handle all the flights from Asia. It really was 4 hours, but this was also before the Olympics while they were also busy doing renovations. If you are European, the experience is obviously faster (different lines), though being American doesn't seem to help.

Schiphol was still 30+ minutes (was in line behind a flight from...Iran), but not incredibly annoying like London was.

I should google first:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2012/04/immigration-...

I don't know if they've fixed the problem, but its permanently soured me on flying into England.

Terminal 5, as I said — nowadays all BA flights go there, so there are flights from all over the world there (the distinction between the other terminals is basically that of airline, the fact a lot of Asian airlines happen to be in T4 is coincidence rather than explicit planning, AFAIK).

I am British — which helps somewhat — but I've known them to throw us on the back of the "All Passports" queue when it's been relatively busy, and never noticed it take any longer than otherwise. That all said, I more often than not pass through the passport control used for domestic transfers, rather than that for leaving the airport (though my experience is that that tends to have shorter queues than the one for transfers).

And no, I wouldn't expect being from the US to help, except for not requiring a visa.

The difference is that New York, in and of itself, has more airports than Israel. Israel also pays extremely handsomely for its security. We would have to massively increase the funding for the TSA to attract better people and give them more resources.

> ill intent is obvious

I always here about it. Is it true? Couldn't terrorists just practice being interrogated knowing this.

Double agents when working for secret agencies regularly get training in how to pass polygraph testing (i.e. interrogation) so it is very doable..

As someone who was in a fraternity in college that practiced a waterboarding procedure as part of the initiation process, around our time in Iraq, I have come to never accept torture as someone who experienced one of the basic methods.

So, go ahead, try it. Call me a troll but you should check your moral compass. Do not argue for the torture, psychological or physical, of others if you cannot hack or attempt to at least once. That is where I draw the line.

> Call me a troll but you should check your moral compass. Do not argue for the torture, psychological or physical, of others if you cannot hack or attempt to at least once.

That's a weird line of reasoning. For example, according to you, I shouldn't have an opinion on death penalty unless I'm willing to see what it does?

Besides, the debate is not whether torture hurts the victim or not: everybody on either side of that fence knows that it does.

The question is: is torture ever justified?

Surely I can have an opinion on this without having to lie down and have gallons of water poured into my mouth through a cloth?

> Surely I can have an opinion on this without having to lie down and have gallons of water poured into my mouth through a cloth?

You certainly are entitled to having an opinion on anything. Personally, on topics such as water-boarding, I will lend much greater credence to someone that has experienced water-boarding.

> the debate is not whether torture hurts the victim or not: everybody on either side of that fence knows that it does. The question is: is torture ever justified?

To determine whether torture is justified you need to know both the costs, and the benefits. It's far too simplistic to say the "cost" of torture is that "it hurts the victim". Pain isn't a binary condition. How much pain is being inflicted? For how long? Is it permanent? Is the psychological trauma of the fear of death part of the calculation?

I won't go so far as 616c as saying "Don't argue for it", but I will say "Expect a less serious consideration of your arguments from me".

What I was saying is that it is morally reprehensible to find ways to justify torture. If that does not work for you and you need to reconsider your side-stepping passive support of something so abhorrent, go the empirical way and try it. You will realize then why no person should have to go through it, even if you think there is a good reason. No one stands up to torture well for any given period of time, or no one would use it.

I think that you're missing the point.

The prolem is not that he was interrogated. It's rather how he was interrogated and how the agents conducted themselves. They treated him like a spy and employed some psychological techniques. Was that even necessary? Doesn't e deserve to be treated with respect? Why did they immediately assume he was a criminal? Especially when they knew the machhines were defective?

Considering the fact that they knew the machines weren't perfect and that household items set them off, they should've considered him innocent until proven otherwise and treated him with respect. Even more so if he's a citizen. They should've atleast told him that "hey, the following items could set it off, have you used one of these?" They could've then verified his claims with the chemical that showed up.

All this will only become obvious once it happens to you I guess.

> say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?

Like this: you check them for guns and explosives. Finding none, you let them on the plane. Total elapsed time: 5 minutes.

It's really not that hard.

How do you check for explosives?

There are AQAP designs that involve zero metallic parts, and they've been attempted twice.

In both instances the bombs actually made it on the plane and the attacks were only prevented by other means. That's one of the reasons TSA is trying to shift to machines that detect explosive chemical residue directly instead of just magnetometers, but that necessarily brings with it false positives.

I certainly think false positives can and should be handled better than what happened to OP, but you have provided no insight on how to check for guns and explosives here.

Do they also have magic bombs that are invisible and intangible? If not, hands and eyes will do a good job of finding such things.

So the idea is to give everyone a thorough pat-down on the way through along with an even-more-intensive bag search? Not that I'm opposed... it would be way more 'action' than I normally get, but somehow I don't see everyone seeing it the same way.

Just because you didn't find explosives on them doesn't mean there are no explosives. It could also mean they set them elsewhere and are now at the airport to make a getaway, like the guy who set up that unsuccessful car bomb attempt in Times Square.

  > say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane.
  > How do you do it?

The way we did it before the one-off event that made airports unbearable and sane people behaving like headless chicken.

Things have changed since 9/11. Explosives have gotten smaller and more stable. And nobody checks bags anymore, because it's cheaper to carry them on. So now you have to do the same screening you did before, but in "real time" and looking for something smaller.

9/11 did cause a lot of hysteria, but the risk profile has also changed since then. (Also, if you get TSA Pre, the security standards become essentially what they were pre-9/11.)

First of all: We can agree to disagree and stop this, I guess? At least for me, this will be my last post here.

You're a name that comes up a lot here, and frankly I don't want to start a "That's insane" discussion with one of the top HN contributors. I've got no idea what's going on in you to defend that process, I'm certainly surprised to see your "It is necessary" comments in this thread, but .. I guess I leave the discussion again after this post.

I really, really don't want to offend you, but I guess this might be taken personal anyway: I'm confused, surprised and - to some degree - disgusted that this pro-terrorism scheme could be supported here, by a hacker.

Regarding your arguments: I'm no expert on explosives (hello NSA?) and wouldn't know about that. Actually I don't believe that claim (think citation needed), I haven't heard about major breakthroughs in explosive materials. You might be right.

I'm always checking in my bag. It's more comfortable for me and allows me to put stuff in that thing that I cannot take on board (yeah, but it can be on board below deck of course..).

Real time is crap. Before and after you needed to pass security. It was always 'one check, at one point, every passenger'. Now they just go nuts and try mentally insane procedures on top.

I doubt that 9/11 changed the risk profile. I think some people, a group of interested parties, changed the risk profile instead.

TSA Pre: Wouldn't know about that. I'm not from the US, never been there, will never travel there. The whole country has so much to offer (culture, country, vast and large) and it was my teenage geek dream to move there one day. Today? I laugh about that. The requirements to enter the country are just not worth it and there's plenty of stuff elsewhere that I need to see.

> this pro-terrorism scheme

Care to elaborate?

A tiny, miniscule group of braindead idiots does something awful, once.

The majority of people suffer everyday from thereon because they might potentially be bad guys by bringing more than 100ml of toothpaste.

Mission accomplished.

The political opinions of Hacker News commenters aren't that different from the general public's in their respective nations. There's plenty of people around America, at least, who think the TSA is just fine.

You're surprised by this guy because it's hard to voice certain opinions on certain topics (like the incessant and almost always redundant TSA / NSA / Manning / Snowden coverage) without having someone condescend to you, which gets tiresome quickly. So all the people who agree with him usually don't bother to comment, and often avoid these threads entirely.

In other words, we've just the illusion of conformity around here, and the surprising thing isn't that someone disagrees, it's that they were masochistic enough to start arguing in the first place.

Everytime I travel, I notice a huge number of people checking bags. See how that anecdata works?

And if explosives have magically gotten smaller and more stable in the last 12 years (somehow defying chemistry and physics), why aren't we seeing more successful attacks? Or arrests of terrorists who underestimate how good the TSA is? Could it be that we're protecting ourselves against a miniscule threat? I bet if we invoked some type of placebo security where the guards just watched a rerun of South Park instead of the xray screen, we'd be just as "effective."

> I bet if we invoked some type of placebo security where the guards just watched a rerun of South Park instead of the xray screen, we'd be just as "effective."

I think they already do, except they're only showing that one early episode where Cartman goes all RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAYH

By coincidence I was watching again the "Don't talk to the police" video on youtube.

Seems to me that this guy had to talk a lot, answer a lot of questions, without any of the protection the 5th amendment is supposed to provide.

You don't get protection from the 5th without actually using it. He didn't have to talk to the police/TSA/FBI/DHS but he willingly did. If he simply said 'I don't want to talk' and shut up that would've been the end of the questioning - but obviously not the ordeal.

I suspect that the rules regarding interactions with the TSA are likely to bypass that. And, good luck getting food or water in that time.

how much of that applies to the TSA? I'd like to know for my own benefit during travel. I know how to speak to a policeman, but I was under the idea that the TSA had even larger authority.

All of it? Why would it only be a portion?

Just because you exercise the 5th doesn't mean the police or Feds have to suddenly make you comfortable.

He asked for water and probably could've gotten some if he had pushed the issue, it didn't seem as though he was being very vocal about being hungry and thirsty.

How much should one have to scream at armed men before getting water?

It lies somewhere between being Vocal enough to be heard and being so vocal that you are charged with assault. Clearly his fault that he couldn't strike that balance in such comfortable conditions.

Are you asking me if all of it applies?

Because time and time again the aggressive treatment of passengers by the TSA has proven that we DO NOT have the same rights when dealing with the TSA.

Care to answer my question in a non-snark way? Regardless of the rules and laws in place, it's obvious (to a signifigant amount of other people) that American rights are being trampled on a near daily basis.

>>Why would it only be a portion?

I agree. Why is it?

Even if you ignore the fact that the US government considers airports and a 100 mile border zone around the US to be a "constitution-free zone" [1] and assume that the TSA, FBI, NYPD, and Homeland Security officers would have respected his rights fully and treated him with courtesy, invoking the 5th guarantees that you will miss your flight, and the security apparatus at airports is well aware of this. So you can invoke your right to remain silent, but only by sacrificing your right to move about freely in the process.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/fact-sheet-us-co...

I'd suspect he was guaranteed to miss his flight the moment he "admitted" his trip had a religious dimension, after having set off the explosion detector. At that point, I suppose you may as well try to cut your losses, stop talking and get escorted out of the airport as soon as possible.

fwiw, i started dating a lawyer and she and I went deep into the 100-mile free zone topic. Me, on the paranoid side and she, siding with the SCOTUS. We spent a few hours researching Supreme Court cases and eventually found lots of details. I'll try to relate the most important nuances. 1. it's not an official u.s. policy. i love the ACLU, i'm a member, but they're inducing some unnecessary fear. 2. you can't be unreasonably searched, they have to have some reason. typically, this reason is immigration. 3. this power to search has been challenged in the Supreme Court repeatedly. in some cases it was upheld, b/c the primary reason for the search was immigration. in others, the executive branch could not hold up the case and it was dropped. so, checks and balances still work. 4. after searching for immigration, anything they find such as drugs or explosives is utterly admissible. so immigration is often used as a pretense, but they can't get away with arbitrary immigration searches 5. it's not just 100 miles around the border, it's also around every port of entry, such as airports.

I hope this helps. I really wish she or other lawyers like her would interpret this stuff for everyday people like you and me. The government and the ACLU both seem to benefit from our ignorance (and the fear we inherit due to it), so neither is incentivized to present the true picture.. and that's the real problem.

> Let me ask you this: say you want to check for guns and explosives before people get on an airplane. How do you do it?

Do you really think that's a hard question? You just literally look for guns and explosives, and if you don't find any, there aren't any.

Am I the only person that thinks that he should have the slip of paper with the "10:40" time on it tested as the trace explosive trigger, or is that too cynical?

Let me guess, are you white?

What do you think about the part where they broke into his home? (Assuming they did.)

My luggage once set off explosive alarms at JFK. But my experience was completely different, and only lasted 5 or 10 minutes. They also told me what the chemical was, when I asked.

In his case, there was some profiling going on.

And by all appearances, they went into his house. While he was at the airport.

> Nowhere in the Constitution does it say the government can't hamfistedly accuse you of a crime. All it says is that they have to charge you or let you go in 24 hours, give you a trial, and punish you in a consistent way. They did that here; they asked some questions and they let him go.

They also broke into his apartment while doing that, and detained him for the better part of a day with no real probable cause other than "this machine said something".

You know, as probably causes go, that really isn't that bad. Certainly, people have been stopped for less, and kept just as long or longer. If they made a mistake, it was that they didn't have an efficient procedure for figuring out whether the chemicals detected by the machine were actually explosives or not. Incompetence is bad, certainly, but not as bad as corruption.

There's an unhealthy mixture of both incompetence and corruption within the TSA.

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