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Comment by kghose | Hacker News Reader

Finally, some one with additional details I was waiting to hear. If they hauled everyone learning Arabic off the false positive rate should be sky high. I wonder, just wonder, if this person was an "activist". You know, someone who tries to go positive on sufficient features of the detector to pass the threshold.

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> if this person was an "activist". You know, someone who tries to go positive on sufficient features of the detector to pass the threshold.

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.

> I wonder, just wonder, if this person was an "activist".

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).

The false-positive rate is already sky high because the probability of any given person being a terrorist is extremely low, and because of Bayes' theorem that makes profiling generate a lot of false positives.

...why were you waiting to hear these details? Court documents are open to the public.

The details were not part of the reporting and it seems like many HN readers were not aware of the details until the links to the court document were posted.

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.

If you think the presence of Arabic on the cards didn't help twig the TSA screener, then I have a bridge I would like to sell you.

They screen Arabs every day. They screen people who speak Arabic every day. Why haven't we heard about the illegal arrest of any of those people? Because those people don't use the English words "bomb" or "terrorist" or "murder" in front of security screeners.

Here's an example of a guy who wasn't allowed to board a plane because his shirt had Arabic on it: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-tariff-p...

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.

That link is not about a person with an Arabic t-shirt, nor is it about the U.S.

It's my presumption they don't have a "TSA," at least by that name, in the UK.

It's a pretty well known case and easy enough to find.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5297822.stm

Wow, I clearly need to pay more attention to what comes out of my pasteboard. Thanks for posting a proper link.

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