I Was Arrested for Learning a Foreign Language. Today, I Have Some Closure
aclu.org
aclu.org
1. Plaintiff received $25K (directed to ACLU legal and subject to tax)
2. Philadelphia PD must communicate the following for a period of months:
"Investigative detentions may be made only on reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct and any arrest must be based on probable cause. A referral by TSA agents is not grounds for arrest unless an officer makes a judgment ofprobable cause; similarly, referral by TSA agents is not grounds for detention unless an officer makes a judgment that there is reasonable suspicion ofcriminal conduct. Any detentions or arrests should be documented on appropriate police paperwork consistent with PPD Directives."
3. No admission of wrong doing or error on anyone's behalf
edit: How did they manage to drag this out for 5 years and still not have an actual judge or jury rule on this.
Reading through the history of the case[1], it looks like the District Court ruled that the Federal TSA officers involved were entitled to qualified immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act. The reasoning was that the TSA followed appropriated procedures and wasn't responsible for the longer (few hour) detention by the Philly Police. In my opinion, that seems reasonable. The TSA only detained him for 15-30 mins to question him about the cards, then turned him over the the state police.
After that ruling, the parties settled. I'm not sure why the case wasn't pursued further against the Philly Police. It could be that the case wasn't likely to succeed under Pennsylvania law, or maybe the ACLU wasn't interested in continuing to pursue it, since a Pennsylvania precedent wouldn't be a "worthwhile" expenditure of ACLU resources.
This rings true to me. The TSA in general does not want people in custody. They know themselves that most of what they do is bullshit, so what would be the point? When I was delayed by TSA, they were eager to turn me over to LVPD, who, after a short conversation about the best way to deal with TSA bureaucracy and escape with minimal fines, told me, "if you run you can still catch your plane". Which I did.
Author of TFA had the misfortune to deal with local police just as stupid as TSA, but without the built-in CYA aversion to arrests.
Accountability for what, exactly? He wasn't arrested. He was detained. Police have wide latitude to detain people that are suspicious. I think any objective human being would say that a second look at him was warranted with those items in his bag. Whether he meant to or not, he pretty closely matched the profile of a radicalized US citizen.
BTW, the title of this article isn't even accurate - he wasn't arrested - but then I guess "I was detained for a few hours because I raised several red flags at the airport" probably wouldn't make it to the front page of HN.
Second, how are the TSA agents stopping people from leaving until local PD arrives, if not by making arrests? The moment of arrest is "determined by whether a reasonable person under the circumstances would believe he was not free to leave. United States v. Mendenhall, 446 U.S. 544 (1980)
By contrast, an arrest may only be performed by a peace officer with probable cause to believe a crime has occurred. Detained suspects do not have to have their rights read to them, whereas they must be read to arrested individuals. Detained suspects are either arrested or released usually within hours, as was the case here.
Detention and arrest are vastly different things, both legally and practically, that are used for different purposes. The system worked here: he walked into an airport displaying many red flags. He was detained for a few hours, determined not to be a threat, and was released.
As soon as someone arrived who had the necessary pay-grade to release this guy, he was released. Sorry for missing your flight but I do expect TSA to flag me if I literally hand the agent a stack of cards with "bomb" and "terrorist" written on them.
It never occurred to Nick to put the cards away before going through security screening? Oblivious beyond belief.
> It never occurred to Nick to put the cards away before going through security screening? Oblivious beyond belief.
Obnoxious beyond belief. You're saying "he should know better and hide the perfectly legal thing that he was doing". In the same line of thought, if you're learning Arabic online without going through Tor, you're asking for it. Right?
EDIT: Found the source[1]. The full context is:
> The flashcards included every day words and phrases such as “day before yesterday,” “fat,” “thin,” “really,” “nice,” “sad,” “cheap,” “summer,” “pink,” and “friendly.” However, they also contained such words as: “bomb,” “terrorist,” “explosion,” “attack,” “battle,” “kill,” “to target,” “to kidnap,” and “to wound.”
Doesn't sound like he handed the TSA agent 10 suspicious flashcards, which is the point you're making, but rather that these words are as relevant in a Middle-Eastern context as they are in an English context.
So, this guy is guilty of not censoring his flashcards pre-emptively. Yes, I see your PoV now.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/george-v-reh...
There were 80 cards total. At least 10 were bizarre words that would get you arrested if you handed to a bank teller.
Guilty of not censoring? No you missed my point entirely. I am suggesting that handing these cards directly to a TSA agent will get you red flagged. Does that really surprise you? Basically Nick did everything possible to be the absolutely weirdest guy TSA saw that month. If they don't flag this, what do they flag?
Even the alleged line of questioning by the TSA officer isn't even necessarily that bad depending on how you imagine it;
Agent: "You know who did 9/11?"
Nick: "Osama bin Laden."
Agent: "Do you know what language he spoke?"
Nick: "Arabic."
[Agent: rifling through flash cards saying "Bomb", "Terrorist", "To Kidnap",
incredulous look on her face... Shrugs looking a Nick]
Agent: "Do you see why these cards are suspicious?!"
Edit: Look, it's a really great headline, and just reading the ACLU post initially got my blood boiling. Then I read the first few pages of court documents and my opinion moderated quite a bit. So I thought the discussion would benefit from a more complete airing of the facts. Sorry if it doesn't fit the narrative!
Come on. Half of these are basic vocabulary and the other half are contextually relevant. Grab a random newspaper; you'll likely find 90% of them somewhere.
"Ou est les toilettes?"
"Un pain au chocolat et un cafe s'il vous plait."
...
"Est-ce une bombe dans votre sac à dos?"
By comparison, a Brooklyn man gets $75k for being dragged out of his car and choked. [1]
[1] - http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/nyc-settles-lawsuit-75000...
It's true on a global scale, not just in the Arabic context. As you immerse yourself in a language, you're encouraged to follow newspapers/articles/tv/shows/etc. It is entirely unreasonable to censor your own learning process. Take this unfortunately common headline:
Death toll of Yemen anti-Houthi bomb blast rises to 49.[1]
[? ?] of Yemen anti-Houthi [? ?] rises to 49.
To make a broader point: this is exactly what Schneier means by "security theater". If someone is a genuine threat, you can bet your ass he won't be carrying "suspicious" flashcards in airports. As they'd need to avoid suspicion/detention at all costs, every piece of their luggage/carryon would be scrutinized before they even got to the airport.
This hostility and pre-emptive guilt serves nothing except for ticking boxes in procedure reports and power trips.
> What a world we live in.
You can say that again.
[1] http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2015/01/01/...
In other words: the flash cards are most useful to him in his carry-on so he can study while waiting for/during his flight. Putting them in his checked baggage (assuming he even checked a bag) would defeat the purpose.
I don't care much for the TSA, but the fact is that an organization like that is always going to prioritize collective safety over the convenience of the individual. Thus, if you're a chemistry student, your might want to consider studying something other than explosive reactions on your next flight. If you're an engineering student you might want to consider studying something other than structural deficiencies in airframe design during your next flight. If you're a psychology student, you might want to consider studying something other than Stockholm syndrome and the interpersonal dynamics of hostage situations during your next flight.
The sad fact is that some people are inclined to jump to the worst possible conclusion and if the security screeners don't pick up on it, an overly imaginative/paranoid fellow passenger may do so and alert cabin staff to their suspicions, however ill-founded. People who are going to be crammed into a plane for hours on end, many of whom are nervous about flying to begin with, are simply not at their best, and if you're going to be sitting in close quarters with a bunch of strangers then maybe you should ask yourself 'would this weird people out?' in the interest of minimizing the potential hassle to yourself.
Case in point: I have a large reinforced equipment case that I often use on film shoots. It has huge bright yellow-and-block 'nuclear radiation' symbols on the main side panels. It's small enough to carry, large enough to carry my most important gear, and the striking graphics mean that a) it never gets lost/forgotten/mixed up with anything else when equipment is being moved around or loaded into trucks and b) anyone who doesn't know what it is leaves it the fuck alone, so I don't have to have eyes on it every second on the day on a busy film set where I have many other things to do. I've had it for years, I can pack and unpack it in the dark, and it's paid for itself many times over. I would go so far as to say it's part of my 'personal brand' - people remember from different jobs when they see the suitcase, it's a funny little icebreaker when I work with people the first time and so on.
Do I use it to transport my gear when I have to fly somewhere? No, because I'm not an idiot. When I need to fly I repack my stuff into a boring and rather inferior black ABS Pelican case, because a bright yellow box with radioactivity symbols on it is liable to give people the wrong impression. I'm OK with taking it on a train or something - I've had police officers ask me about it a few times but I'm always happy to open it and explain what is is, and it's never separated from me the way checked airline baggage is, so there's little potential for confusion. Under the first amendment I certainly have a right to use the sort of luggage I wan, and I know that there's no nefarious purpose or intent to disturb anyone when I carry the thing around. But I also realize that there's a potential for people to get the wrong impression if they encounter it in a different context, and that having people form the wrong impression in an airport would result in significant inconvenience, not least to myself. Accommodating the slightly irrational anxieties of people by leaving my 'radioactive' gear case at home is such a trivially small (and voluntary) abridgement of my rights to self-expression as to not matter. Life is too short for me to waste it sitting around trying to win arguments with security guards over my right to engage in attention-seeking display.
It's a myth that all dangerous criminals would never make a simple mistake.
No, the TSA's job is to prevent prohibited items from being brought into the secure area of the airport and onto a plane.
Note I said it's their job -- obviously they are not effective at it.
Lucky he hadn't handed them a dictionary then. That has all the bad words.
By the way, given you seem to agree with the TSA that it is suspicious for a traveler to be learning certain words, how would you plan on reading the news in a foreign language without learning words like bomb and kidnap?
To the point of another poster re "security theater" terrorists don't come with name cards. TSA is not supposed to just check you're not carrying any liquids. The agents need to be able to question people who trigger that gut feeling. The questioning should be professional, respectful, but curt and effective.
A guy going through airport security, recently in the middle east, not familiar with key aspects airport protocol (take out electronics, empty pockets), carrying cards with those words. Yeah, talk to him for a few minutes. I'd rather that than spending their time patting down kids and grannies.
Ideally get him through the full eval without even missing the flight. Don't handcuff a non-violent suspect, etc. The process here was imperfect but simply not as insane as the blog post made it out to be.
As for myself, I'd much rather support someone who provides all facts than conveniently leaves out stuff that could damage his cause. What happened to him was bad and this extra details would not have made much of a difference. By leaving them out he gave them far more importance than they would have been before…
As entirely explicable as his actions might have been, this guy did an awful lot more to inadvertently provoke suspicion than the several people per day detained for questioning for being in a particular area at a particular time, and possibly even the same colour as the perpetrator. A few of them undoubtedly suffer the inconvenience of missed flights and public embarrassment too, and/or encounter more objectionable behaviour from law enforcement than a overuse of handcuffs and amateurish-sounding line of questioning.
I mean, I am not kidding myself, the "threat of terrorism" has been used to justify far worse abuses, up to and including torture and extra-judicial prisons. But expected or not, this should be morally and legally indefensible.
Also, at a personal level, it makes me think that, should I decide to travel any time soon, my reference papers for work in computer systems' security, the book I am reading on the NSA/Snowden material and my textbook on introductory Chinese should all stay back home. Because "that sure looks like some suspicious literature right there, doesn't it?"
I seriously hope that is a carelessly worded interpretation on your part.
Because that is one scary concept.
Society's job is to spot outliers and oddities and protect and support them from thoughtless bullying and cruelty; TSA's job is to support that by preventing violence in transportation.
This is a perfectly reasonable smoke test for civil liberties and there's no shame, crime, or dishonor in running it.
For those wondering more about this type of action, I suggest a study of the works of Ben Masel of Madison, Wisconsin, who passed away a few years ago. He was arguably a master.
It's highly unlikely, since he had already studied Arabic at university and studied in Jordan. He clearly has a genuine interest in the language, including wanting to learn to read newspapers (which unfortunately feature words like "terrorists" and "kidnapping" in addition to the more mundane cards in his possession).
What happened to him is clearly not acceptable, but the story is not "Learning Arabic got me arrested" but "handing a list of words including 'bomb' and 'terrorist' to a security screener got me arrested".
I'm not sure the Arabic is relevant - I suspect the NSA screener could not read the Arabic and could only read the English portion of the flashcards, and that he would have had similar results if the cards were in English and French.
I'm sure you'll find many other examples. They mostly don't get arrested, but they certainly suffer unjustifiable abuse. And keep in mind that the TSA can't arrest people, only hand them over to the local police.
It's my presumption they don't have a "TSA," at least by that name, in the UK.
They are just words, it is not OK to "flag" anyone for carrying that around. Next thing you know we'll be "flagged" for reading Rousseau (whose works were a major influence on Robespierre, a renown "terrorist") or Karl Marx, a guy whose works were appropriated by a lot of bad guys who killed a lot of people in the 20th century.
There can be nothing redeeiming about a philosophy that does not treat individuals as ends in themselves.
Such a philosophy will always lead to people and their lives/property being sacrified for "the common good," which means: for everybody and nobody.
Sure, there are different permutations of Marxism. Stalin and Mao may not have done it the way Marx would advocate, but it's still a permutation of Marxism. We see a different permutation of it in Britain and gaining ground in the US. We also saw it on Pol Pot's killing fields. I am not talking about Marxism as a specific political position; I am talking about Marxism as an underlying philosophy.
Really? What else should you have not written on cards when trying to learn a foreign language? Insults? Names of body parts? Names of crimes?
This is odious civic discourse on its face.
So now Nick has failed to follow all the basic instructions (empty pockets, electronics out) and he's got a pocket full of What The Fuck.
If Nick pays any attention in the security line that day and follows simple instructions none of this happens.
As usual, his rights were not violated until the police showed up. Only at that moment do I concede anything wrong happened.
If you think about it, either TSA is a glorified toiletry inspector, or they are trying to use their brains to deduce who should be screened more thoroughly. If we ask them to use their brains, and given as a society we don't want our Elon Musks of the world as TSA agents, you tell these agents to look for certain flags and then tell them they must call for help. That's exactly what Jane Doe TSA agent did. Kudos to her for actually trying to make it more than security theater.
Make no mistake, when the agent calls for help assessing a cooperative passenger, the $25k cringeworthy thing to do is handcuff them and drag them away to sit in a cell for a few hours until help arrives.
We've all heard the stories of the guy who says sarcastically to TSA "well its not like I have a BOMB or anything?!" I see this similar to that.
It's not even "put the cards in checked bags" it's simply follow instructions to get through security, empty your pockets and put the cards into you carry-on.
That's a different story to the one presented. It's still an unjustifiable arrest; he still deserves his compensation and the police must learn the lesson.
But why did the ACLU not mention the content of the flashcards?
Edit: I supplied a corrective upvote. I don't know why your reasonable question was downvoted.
Because:
>Nothing justifies the illegal detention
So the content of the flash cards is not relevant, but instead an attempt to justify his detention, to make the reader think the TSA made an honest mistake when, in fact, what they did was not an honest mistake.
This headline - "I was arrested for learning Arabic" is almost dishonest.
EDIT: as I have said elsewhere in this thread I think that he should not have been arrested. I'm not agreeing with the way he was treated. This post is just stating what the court documents say, as I understand them.
Speaking of which, Merriam Webster confirmed for top international terrorist propaganda organization
I get it, liability is a bitch. But that's not a reason to refuse to admit guilt, that's the reason you shouldn't do the deed in the f*^king first place.
How are we going to grow and advance as a society when we can't even admit wrong-doing when there is sufficient evidence of a cockup? It's like trying to argue with Creationists.
I take responsibility for the mistakes I make, and I think a LOT less of people who do not.
Yeah, if only the British haven't raped their freedoms, they'd be playing the victim totally virtually.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/banking/ar...
How alarming! Aaand in the very next sentence:
> The money has been pumped into Ulster Bank, a subsidiary of the state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland which was rescued by a public cash injection of £45 billion five years ago.
Somehow your glorious Times seems to have confused the Republic of Ireland with RBS's subsidiary Ulster Bank.
An analogy should not be necessary. The difference between a country and a subsidiary of one our own country's banks should be quite obvious to you.
However you slice it, Ireland was enjoying a quality of life that could not be sustained, paying for it with EU subsidies, which enabled them to charge less tax than running their state really cost, which they used to lure jobs from the UK. Then when the money ran out, those jobs went to Poland or other lower-cost locations, and they went cap in hand begging to England for more money.
You have no evidence of this, the link you posted earlier was a bailout of RBS. You'll have to do better than that.
EDIT incidentally, if the jobs were lured from Britain why did they ultimately go to Poland?
Ireland joined the EU in 1973. If "subsidies" and "job luring" are the explanation, I'd have expected to see more progress way back then.
I'm not sure where you're going with your arguments that it was all based on "EU subsidies" and "luring jobs", but since others may read this I wanted to correct the record.
edit: it is true that the UK lent money to the Republic of Ireland in order to bail out UK banks with massive exposure to the property bubble - a bubble created in large part by the reckless practices of those very same banks. That loan has to be paid back by Irish tax payers.
Crime prevention and offender rehabilitation are not the goals of modern American policing and the modern American prison system respectively. Profit is.
I'm saying that as a German, mind you.
A lot of the stories I'm aware of are hearsay, but it's not exactly easy to get reliable accounts about this kind of thing. One example is that in Eastern Europe in the early stages of WW2 the Wehrmacht soldiers would allegedly often not care much for the orders regarding the jews (they were just regular soldiers after all, often ones that had been soldiers before the nazis came to power) and would initially often be greeted with sympathy because the locals thought they came to kick the Soviets out. But then the Wehrmacht would often soon be followed by the SS who would of course be far less friendly to the civilians.
As far as I can tell, things generally got progressively worse throughout WW2 as the older soldiers died out and were replaced by younger soldiers who had been raised under the nazi rule and were thus far more likely to just follow the orders and believe the ideology.
An extreme example of this is the last ditch attempt at the end of the war where they tried to raise a militia of what were essentially still children to protect the mostly defeated fatherland against the "invaders".
I think it helps to remember events like the Christmas truce in 1914 when thinking about WW2: yes, the nazis were far worse than any of the powers in the Great War before that, but initially a lot of the soldiers were simply German soldiers, not "nazi" soldiers. And even those that would eventually "earn" that label would often do so for far more complex reasons than just being "evil demon soldiers".
For example, the idea of racial supremacy (which was popular in many other places than Germany at that time, btw) coupled with the economic changes caused by the seizure of Jewish properties, horrible as it was, meshed well with the less educated and less well-off segments of the population. If your life is in the gutter, it can be very uplifting to be told you're special because you're part of the master race. Especially if that is combined with a clear enemy (the treacherous Jews sabotaged the wealth you deserve) and what at that moment superficially seemed like a change for the better (look up the opinions of other European leaders about Hitler in the years before WW2 if you find the time -- it's pretty disconcerting).
Basically, Hollywood tropes aside, I doubt that there were as many hardcore nazis as you'd think. There were a lot of war crimes and a lot of crimes against humanity, of course, and the Holocaust is one of the worst things that happened in the last century, but I don't think you need to be a truly evil person to do unspeakable things -- and IMO that's the real lesson here.
As a German I'm anxious about the direction the US (in particular) is heading, not because I worry they could become Hollywood-style "evil" but because it's so easy to end up in a situation where you don't even realise what you're contributing to until sufficient time has passed. I'm certain most people who ended up contributing to the horrors of the Third Reich had no idea what they were doing even if from the perspective of today you'd think it must have been crystal clear to them at the time.
Your last two paragraphs really touched on the heart of my curiosity, since the aformentioned documentaries I saw did convey what you described about "normal soldiers", their experiences and the changes their society underwent is as you say a critical piece of understanding how to avoid it, one which we're taught very little about (at least in my American education.)
Either they are outnumbered enough to not be able to make a difference, or they're in the majority and thus complicit in those immoral acts because they allow the minority (of "bad" cops) to go by unpunished.
Which one is it? Is there something else at play that's preventing the majority (of "good" cops) from fixing the problem?
If this makes the "cops who care" uncomfortable, they should put the blame squarely on the "cops who don't care" not on me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
The police do not have a duty to protect you [nytimes]. Why do you have a duty to help them?
[nytimes] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html
(If you intend to downvote, please kindly leave a note as to why I am wrong.)
"it's the sort of cynicism that leads to [...] making sure your rights are respected"
I like to think of it as maintaining a preemptive strategy. I don't like this, but the world we live in is unfair and full of assholes who don't play by their own rules.
> How can you describe it as a strategy for "making sure your rights are respected"?
A man who faces no wars carries no battle scars.
> It is on its face an attempt to make the question of whether you have rights or not a no-impact detail.
Disarmament was a critical and controversial part of the peace process.
Whereas the case for firearm ownership in the US is ostensibly to call to arms a militia to overthrow a tyrannical government, what has actually happened is the populace are too busy shooting each other to realise tyranny.
Although, I think, to believe what I just wrote requires a bunch of biases and leaps of faith with regard to rates of violence governmental tyranny. I'm reading Steven Pinker's 'The Better Angels of Our Nature', which is doing a good job of highlighting that, even in the US, violence has decreased over time.
Edit: a word
Also, there are parties on both sides of the divide who are still armed; it's just the largest and most politically engaged groups who are no longer armed.
What I think you mean to say is "populations that are treated with equal discretion and respect by police, and, when they are very young, by school discipline."
Otherwise someone might think you are a racist.
Your total lack of knowledge about Northern Ireland is showing. Try walking down the Falls Road or Shankill in Belfast, and see if you see a homogenous community (for bonus points, go into any bar in the area flying either a Irish or UK flag proudly, and see if you find much agreement about segregation or firearms). I had a friend in school in Ireland whose family moved from Belfast (in late 1990s!) because he and his brothers were badly beaten for being Catholic. But I'm sure that was a mistake, as they were an ethnically homogenous population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Welfare_Services_(Norway...
As someone said, accused parents in such cases have less rights than Breivik.
Hang on a minute. Here in the US, my tax dollars support your children. WIC and Food Stamps and school lunch programs which come from my tax dollars ensure your infants and children do not starve in case something happens to you or your income. As a parent, you get to claim tax deductions which means more money out of my pocket to cover for the loss of tax revenue. As I see it, your children are not your property. The children belong to the community at large. They are my investment. If you are damaging our collective investment, I very much expect you to be relieved of your duties to take care of my investment.
Parents have an obligation to protect their children, and you are attacking that.
Taxation is not an "investment" and does not confer rights. It is non-contractual; it is merely force; it is not entered into voluntarily. You cannot start any valid argument with "Taxation, therefore..." If you don't like paying for WIC and Food Stamps, advocate against those taxes.
Parents have right for due process, right to raise their own children and so on. Children also have some rights, those might colide wiuth rights of parents in some cases.
Problem is that in Norway parents have ZERO rights. Norway have not signed relevant EU treaties for Child Protection. Once children is taken by social servies, there is were little chance for return. SS than bullies parents, forces them to divorce, not even allowed to seek help.
To put it in US context: Imagine Alabama would start abducting children of people who just moved in, because their parenting is not religous enough. All perfectly legal with zero chance to get children back (or sometimes even see them ever again).
I can agree with that.
> right to raise their own children and so on.
Says who? Why, precisely? Where is this right enumerated and what is its basis?
> Imagine Alabama would start abducting children of people who just moved in, because their parenting is not religous enough.
But the issue with this is religious discrimination and a lack of separation between church and state. The wrongness of this has nothing to do with parental rights.
> Convinced that the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community,
> Recognizing that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding,
And Article 5
> States Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognized in the present Convention.
There are reasons why states can intervene in family life. But those interventions need to be in the child's best interest; and they need to be proportionate.
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
Article 12
> No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Also probably a bit of article 16.
Who determines the "appropriate direction and guidance"? What is a "family environment"? When is "interference" arbitrary? As an example, if local custom dictates beating a child mercilessly every other month for absolutely no reason but tradition, that's a good reason for intervention, to me. I don't care about local custom in such a case.
(Also, holy shit, you think honor and reputation are sacrosanct according to the UDHR? I just lost a ton of respect for that document if your reading is correct. Goodbye, journalism.)
This is obviously not true. Norway has laws that safeguard both parents and children, and is in the process of ratifying the relevant Hague convention.
Bear in mind that when you read or hear about these seemingly horrifying stories, you only hear one side of the story. This is due to very strict privacy laws protecting all parties.
So you get the stories about the "unfortunate parents" that do not understand why their child(ren) were taken away. The reality is that you never hear about the abuse or neglect in these cases... and that is the truly horrifying part.
They are people, not property.
There has been no country stupid enough to ever make such an outrageous claim, no matter how communist they were.
For starters: Children are not property at all, not their parents, nor society at large. They belong to themselves, they're independent and they are people just like adults, not cattle or objects. Second, parents are the primary agents responsible for their children and if at all possible parents should be the ones to raise their kids. Only in extremely rare cases should children be removed from their parents care, the main reasons are that this is the natural order of things, that parents tend to have their childrens best insterests at heart and that parents are by and far the best placed to relate to their children.
Last but not least: the number of violations per capita of the physical integrity of children placed in 'care' vastly exceeds that of those children living with their parents.
Hueving makes a reasonable point in counter to several things you said. Your snark is sub-optimal.
Americans are, in general, I think (please note this is my opinion and do not down vote me for making this observation) more likely to support solutions that appear to resolve the given issue in the most intuitive and seemingly fastest way. While the intention may be good, this rather simplistic view contradicts the reality that subtler, research-based and longer-view solutions are often the wiser choice. Examples of this include things like research into prison sentences and conditions and their relation to recidivism rates; or ideas about parental leave being better for businesses in the long term, despite the short term loss of productivity.
In this particular case, it is an issue of very short-term thinking from the police who do not realize that their draconian tactics, which seemingly are for the best interest of security today, are in fact more likely to engender civil unrest (or emigration, in my case, since I have no appetite for that) in the long run.
Keep in mind the US is always going to be on someone's bad side as long as they assume the role of world watch dog. It's convenient for Norway to wash their hands of any messy killings, but they don't seem to care for the spread of ISIS either.
Something something nanny state.
Back in college I sometimes rushed to the airport straight after finals week and packing my dorm room, so I may not have shaved a couple days, and I was almost guaranteed to have to deal with an extra hour of special checking (which I would probably have to have dealt with anyway, so it was more important to reach the airport early than to shave). They'd make me go get my checked luggage and empty every suitcase and identify every item there and I'd have to pack it all back again. At least the random stuff they'd confiscate like pickled lemons from my mom would create extra space in my bag making it a bit easier to pack in a hurry.
I've never actually been detained or questioned or made to miss a flight because of this, but I think that's just dumb luck and not because the process is just or reasonable. It's one thing I do not miss at all since leaving the states, airport security in America.
As horrific as the situation, I think we can all enjoy the humorous nature of the conversation above. Lack of shame and intelligence is surreal.
Briefing documents used to train staff in assessing the threat level of new detainees advise that possession of the F-91W – available online for as little as £4 – suggests the wearer has been trained in bomb making by al-Qaida in Afghanistan."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/25/guantanamo-file...
http://www.amazon.com/Casio-F91W-Digital-Sports-Watch/dp/B00...
Looks nice enough for what it is and the price.
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f17/casio-f91w-mod-negative-dis...
"Timothy McVeigh"
"Do you know what language he spoke?"
"English"
"So you see why talking in English is suspicious?"
[1] http://www.wnypapers.com/news/article/current/2015/01/23/119...
I majored in Arabic. I have a chip on my shoulder. I live in the Arab world, and have stickers from many countries in the Arab world, and Iran, AND China (lived there teaching with a family for a year).
Beyond being asked what I do for work in my country residence. I have never been harassed. I expected the opposite and joke about it often. I carry novels in Arabic, and used to carry learning materials for Persian/Farsi.
I have not been stopped once. Whether or not you helped, thanks to this guy for making this effort.
Here is why we can't have nice things:
We caution, however, that the detention at the hands of these TSA Officials is at the outer boundary of the Fourth Amendment. Once TSA Officials were satisfied that George was not armed or carrying explosives, much of the concern that justified his detention dissipated. However, it did not totally vanish or suggest that further inquiry was not warranted. Suspicion remained, and that suspicion was objectively reasonable given the realities and perils of air passenger safety. The TSA Officials still were confronted with an individual who was carrying Arabic-English flashcards bearing such words as: “bomb,” “terrorist,” “to kill,” etc. In a world where air passenger safety must contend with such nuanced threats as attempts to convert underwear into bombs and shoes into incendiary devices, we think that the brief detention that followed the initial administrative search of George was reasonable.
(https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/george-v-reh...)
It's basically pages upon pages of personal opinions and value judgements. At the end of the day, the law does nothing to protect you when the judge dealing with the government appeal is a right-wing nutjob that attaches no significance to constitutional freedoms.
* Being asked if he was a communist
* Asking one police officer why he was being detained, and being answered "I don't know, what'd you do?"
Shouldn't have to be that way, but I really don't want to give any indication I am anything but White Bread.
On the other hand, it would be humorous if you wore a shirt, pants, and underwear with the American Flag on them. It'd make the TSA look extra ridiculous during a strip search, so make that Option B.
The worrying part is that you don't know what will be "alerted" on. Flash cards? Pictures of your kids in the bath? You have no idea.
He's not worried about being one of those that won't have any problems.
He's worried about becoming one of those that did and that chance is way too high.
- I told the border guy I got paid via 'PayPal' and he had no idea what that was, they had to spend 20min Googling it
- My friends friend paid for our plane tickets, so they grilled us why we didnt buy our own
- I made a mistake on the customs claims sheet where I crossed something out and replaced it. Apparently they think this means you are trying to hide something and need to look through every piece of luggage, including possible hiding places in the luggage (that didnt turn out to exist).
There are countless reasons to get harassed. Hardly has to do with obvious security issues.
The biggest reason is the frequent harassment I have went through going there on numerous occasions, not just by US but also coming back into Canada. But this is very much a quiet protest, same with you I presume, I'm not an activist. The true cost of their security theater is largely unreported IMO. I'd expect there are countless people like us not contributing to the US business world or tourism thx to overly-aggressive security.
This happened to my parents, surgeons in their late 50s who travelled together visiting family in the UK and Canada having no trouble. My dad (having a name that is pretty Christian) passed immigration at the Canada/US border just fine. My mum (having a name that is pretty Muslim) had her immigration official's computer stop working and she was detained for hours. They did let my dad join her, so I guess we should be thankful for that. They had exactly the same itinerary and were eventually released with no explanation.
So excuse me if I don't buy the idea that you have to antagonize people.
Because she didn't have much fun.
Anyway, this must be the 10th article I read about the paranoid surveilance system at USA airports. So many bad experiences, it actually makes me fearful of coming to USA, but I'm sure that's the point they want to make.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
"I was arrested for possessing a debugger"
> “bomb,” “terrorist,” “explosion,” “attack,” “battle,” “kill,” “to target,” “to kidnap,” and “to wound.”
...are not going to arouse suspicion, especially among low-paid staff with little training.
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/george-v-reh...
Everything else aside, how are we to expect them to behave accordingly and justly if we do not punish/reprimand them for doing the opposite?
When people like you rationalize every individual curtailment on civil liberties without considering the bigger implications and precedents being set, that's how you wake up to discover you've completely lost freedoms that your parents took for granted.
And you go even further, talking about how citizens should have to consider how their actions are going to be perceived by low-paid, under-educated TSA agents, rather than giving a moment's pause to wonder why low-paid, under-educated TSA agents are handling security for our nation's airports.
Question nothing, blame the victim. Superb critical thinking.
TSA alerts as they should, they are not qualified to do any more. The police should have called this guy an idiot and told him to get lost but it doesn't surprise me that it was beyond their pay grade and it took a few hours to call in a unit that could actual evaluate this guy.
Read Section I of the court doc and this is actually a reasonable edge-case [1]. Not to mention the recent travel to the middle east!
https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/george-v-reh...
The whole thread has been a debate, the two sides seemingly "this shouldn't happen!" vs "this guy could have trivially avoided this result!"
Both are correct. Quite frankly I think he wanted to fight this fight.
Any reasonable person knows that those words will cause alarm in security agents. Why chose to handwrite those cards and then hand them over to those agents?
The ACLU articles all make it sound like Arabic language is the problem. But if he had French language flashcards with those words on he'd have got a similar result.
The ACLU does not mention the content of the flashcards in their articles. The ACLU has an illustration with words like "sun" and "dog". This is borderline deceptive. Arabic flashcards without words like "bomb" would have been fine. Any language flashcards with words like "bomb" would not have been fine.
> Question nothing, blame the victim. Superb critical thinking.
Interesting that you accept the ACLU story without question -it obviously appeals to your biases- and are affronted when someone presents the court case. Critical thinking indeed.
This report says "I took the set of flashcards from my pocket and handed them to the officers."
That was done in response to "empty your pockets", a command from a TSA agent.
Paper doesn't trigger metal detectors so there's no real need to put it all into the tray the first time.
Perhaps you missed the great scandal of the 'body scanners.'
Another odd detail, TSA didn't randomly read a stack of paper in his carry-on. TFA says "handed cards to the agent" after being asked to empty pockets. How is a TSA lacky supposed to NOT alert a supervisor in that situation?
The only thing more ridiculous would be after handing the deck of flash cards directly to the agent is if the top cards were in the order "Bomb", "Touting", "Terrorist".
Perhaps weirdly we don't chitchat about bombs and death and murder. We talk about the soccer and about the roadworks and about what they watched on telly and how their allotment-garden is doing.
Why, when you hear "Arabic", do you think a natural topic of concersation is "terrorism"?
Can you imagine the sort of words that would be in my vocab list if it had been done in the last few weeks ?
> I've taken several years of French in college, never had
> a vocab set quite like that!
Edit: $25k went straight to the ACLU. I apologize, Nick did not "make out". @goodcanadian is right, he was arrested, but not charged.
While I think that saying "bomb" in an airport is dumb I certainly agree that what happened to him was way too much.
I don't think that those two words had anything to do with the situation! Sorry 'bout that! And, in an important sense, the training was right on target! Again, sorry 'bout that!
It's called CYA or cover your ass. Or, what would, could it look like to a higher up who worried what it could, would look like to a reporter and what it would, could look like to someone who wanted to make a big stink, create a gotcha that later they might be able to use, etc. Or, the poor, lowly TSA agent had to think:
"My supervisor is under a lot of pressure and has me under a lot of pressure. If he hears that I didn't regard that passenger as suspicious, then it could be my job. Letting the passenger board the plane had no good upside for me and possibly a big downside. Calling the cops had a big upside for me, took the hot potato out of my hands, and had no downside for me. So, dirt simple decision: Call the cops, get rid of the issue and threat to my job, and get back to inspecting swag some 4 year old girl got from her trip to Disneyland."
Or, it's all a stage play, commonly called security theater. The passengers have to play along, look like middle America tourists to Disneyland, a salesman going to a sales convention where he will eat and drink too much, or other cases of a common man in the streets. Or, first rule of such a sick, paranoid social situation -- don't stick out. Instead, fit in, conform, go along with the crowd. Else will need someone with a lot of authority, power, rationality, integrity, etc. to bail out your poor, suffering back side, and that can take a long time.
Did the SCOTUS ever pass out such advice? Likely not.
Is that what the US Constitution says? Nope.
Is there a gap between reality and formality? Yup, wider than the Grand Canyon.
Or, to paraphrase a common statement: "It's not good enough to be innocent. You also have to look innocent."
Have to understand that TSA, police, etc. can get away with total nonsense behavior at least occasionally and can say "My long experience has taught me that he was suspicious" and get away with that.
Is such nonsense TSA, police behavior fair, just, reasonable, constitutional, objective, etc.? Nope. Real? Yup. Do I like it? Nope. Can I do anything about it? Not much. What can someone do? Try to stay out of airports. Try to stay out of neighborhoods where the police like to beat up on people. Fit in.
The training? The TSA agents and police likely do understand such things. One of the little social secrets in the US, call it social intelligence or understanding of Organizational Behavior 101, is that the citizens have to understand such things also.
Yup, my blood boils, too. But I haven't been to an airport since 9/11, and I'm not eager to go again.
Here is some information about what an arrest is.
http://www.hendonpub.com/resources/article_archive/results/d...
> What, then, is a correct definition of arrest, for purposes of federal Constitutional law? An arrest is a seizure of a person in which the subject is 1) required to go elsewhere with police, or 2) deprived of his freedom of movement for more than a brief period of time, or 3) subjected to more force than is reasonably part of an investigative detention.
> So, if an officer has said or done things that would cause a reasonable person to believe that he was not free to leave or to decline the contact with the police and either the subject is required to leave and go elsewhere with police or a detention persists for more than a short while, or more force is used than is reasonable to simply restrain someone, then that person has been arrested.
He would have been better off if he had been arrested.
Many of the places without those resources default to "you're fucked", not "we can't prove anything, let him go!"
That said, I often suspect there is more to stories like this than is being told. More than the book and flashcards. A suspicious look. Furtive eye movement in the TSA line. A "look" that might be interpreted as capable of violence. And lastly, pissing someone with a gun and a badge off with an insolent attitude.
None of which makes what happened right of course. But maybe there is more to the story.
What I didn't realize was better stated above. 80 cards handed to TSA agent 10 of which contained "alarming" words in Arabic. I thought there was more to the story. Not justifying this arrest but really.... what does a reasonable person expect from cops and security agencies? Almost seems like deliberate antagonism rather than being innocently caught up.... but who knows.
On other side author was detained for 5 hours. That is practically rounding error in __ANY__ country. I would argue there are other causes, more worthy money and effort.
Serious question: How many hours does a person have to be detained illegally in the United States for it to warrant money and effort from the ACLU? You appear to have a specific metric for when injustice warrants response and I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you to task about it.
I am not sure what exact laws are in US. But in most countries police has right to detain people up to 24 hours without a warrant. I think in that case it was 'illegal' because police officer forgot some paperwork or said something explicit on record. Easy shot for ACLU.
This case does not really solve anything. With more similar cases, parliament just passes new law: Airport has special security rule, is not US soil until you pass some checkpoint whatever.
Real solution is to go after causes where it really hurts. This guy got $5.000/hour. Now imagine someone who spend 7 months in jail at this rate.
Per hour in jail. Not including the time in the airport detention, the missed flight, the missed journey, and all the hours spent preparing and dealing with the legal case.
Here, being absent from 99.9% of jobs here for 2 months because you're in jail would result in getting fired, which is without doubt "permanent damage".
And once you've been incarcerated here in the US, your chances of getting a job become substantially harder. So this kind of event routinely cause permanent unemployment.
Even worse, 2 months in a US jail and you have a decent chance of getting raped. Is that serious enough for you?
As someone who was detained for about the same amount of time, under circumstances about as ridiculous as OP's, I take serious issue with this characterization of five hours' illegal detention as "practically a rounding error".