Comment by rquantz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rquantz | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com