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Don't Fly During Ramadan (2013)
- merpnderp 10y agoHave people really asked for a place to pray while flying on a plane? Why would JetBlue ask such a weird question?
- tuna-piano 10y agoDefinitely, for sure both jews and muslims. The "following instructions from female flight attendants" thing I would guess also isn't out of the blue... maybe the airline has had experience with people not following female flight attendant rules.
- DanBC 10y ago> The "following instructions from female flight attendants" There have been a few instances of people refusing to allow a woman to sit next to them. They don't always move themselves, they sometimes insist the woman is moved. EG, but there are other examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11406112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11406112
- tps5 10y agoMale Hasidic Jews have a thing where they refuse to acknowledge female flight attendants. I've seen this at least 5 times.
- tankenmate 10y agoSome middle eastern airlines have prayer rooms on their aircraft as well as indicators in the room so you know which direction Mecca is.
- samsonradu 10y agoEtihad goes further and plays a short prayer before take-off. You can check where Mecca is at any time on your screen. Not sure where I have read it, nor can I confirm but I remember they also try to avoid scheduling flights during prayer hours (if possible)
- gech 10y agoThe sacred texts don't indicate what is appropriate to do while flying in an airplane?
- samsonradu 10y agoCan't read arabic :)
- a3n 10y agoIt would have given them an excuse not to let him on the plane. Not that they needed the excuse, obviously, but they would have liked it better if they had a reason. "There's no room on this plane that wasn't designed for such a thing."
- jacquesm 10y agoWhat a horrific story. JetBlue doesn't deserve any high marks for their actions here either.
- chrischen 10y agoI wonder if the FAA regulations for compensation on delayed flights apply here?
- Pilfer 10y agoHe set off the explosive detector, and didn't provide a good answer to why he set it off.
- jacquesm 10y ago> He set off the explosive detector, and didn't provide a good answer to why he set it off. What, short of "I was making a bomb" would be an answer that would satisfy you? It's not like it is up to him to know the intricacies of bomb detectors and their ridiculous false positive rates for certain chemicals, including such terribly dangerous goods as soap.
- Pilfer 10y agoHe doesn't know how to talk to security. The primary purpose of security questioning is to establish that you are a safe, non-violent, legal traveler. Of course, security agents can't ask you this directly, so they ask this through proxy questions. Varnull did not understand this, and when asked the proxy questions, he gave vague answers and did not address the primary purpose. When the questions became personal, Varnull became defensive and talked back (the exact opposite of what he should do). All that really matters here is the discussion with the explosives agent. This was the guy who had the power to 1) waive him on or 2) send him through tertiary screening. The interaction for the whole day was decided in this conversation. I honestly believe Varnull gave very bad answers here. Answering "I don't know" is a very bad answer. Even if he didn't answer the proxy questions, if he established that he was a safe and secure traveler, the security agent would have waived him on and he would have avoided the whole ordeal. One of the answers he gave was so bad it made me cringe. >“Well, I haven’t touched any explosives, but if I don’t even know what chemical we’re talking about, I don’t know how to figure out why the tests are picking it up.” After he said this, I'm completely unsurprised he got held up in tertiary screening.
- ajmurmann 10y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6258422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6258422
- burger_moon 10y agoThat last discussion was a shit show of people one-upping each other in the oppression olympics. It seems like as soon as you compare one persons experience to being not as bad or worse than another persons the entire thread devolves into terrible accusations and comparisons.
- dang 10y agoThat second sentence would make a good HN comment. The first one is pointlessly inflammatory; please don't do that here.
- burger_moon 10y agoI'm sorry you feel that way. It's a perfect characterization of how most non-technical comment threads threads go on here however.
- akud 10y ago> At the same time, the U.S. is rapidly degenerating into something that isn't quite the sinister oppressive regime, but getting close to the point where it could become one, if a wrong leader gets elected. It's scary. Seems prescient
- jordigh 10y agoI have to fly today, from Canada to Europe. I probably shouldn't be reading stories like these before a flight, but I did, top to bottom, transfixed by the details. I hope I manage to make it through airport "security" without any problem. I'll smile, I'll cooperate. Hell, maybe I'll even step into the radiation machine for the first time in my life if I have to (I also always have opted out). I hate how scary this whole thing is. I fear it's going to keep getting worse.
- epmaybe 10y agoSorry you have to go through that. Also, what radiation machine are you referring to? The millimeter wave scanner?
- jordigh 10y agoYes. Besides the uncertainty about the harmful effects of that radiation, there's also the issue of how they collect and pass around the naked images.
- ff10 10y agoDo you have any source of them passing around any images? Are they even able to do that without in-depth knowledge of the system?
- gnud 10y agoI suspect the in-depth knowledge might consist of 'taking a photo of the screen'.
- jordigh 10y agoThe stories are not hard to find: https://epic.org/privacy/litigation/apa/tsa/bodyscanner/ https://epic.org/privacy/litigation/apa/tsa/bodyscanner/ I'm pretty sure that even if they couldn't get the actual images out of the machine, they can easily take a picture of the image with their mobile cameras.
- deleted 10y ago
- tpolm 10y agoOpting out of multimeter scans: not even once
- Cyph0n 10y agoExactly, all it does is dial up the suspicion level.
- jacquesm 10y agoThen why offer the option to opt out?
- revelation 10y agoBecause it's theater, the options decisions and actions are not motivated by data or reason. If any of it was, the whole lot of them would be flipping burgers.
- ISL 10y agoWhy not? Rights are like muscle. They atrophy without exercise.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Gorbzel 10y agoI've opted out every time I traveled prior to the introduction of (opt-in, non-frequent flyer based) Precheck, so 8-10 times per year from 2010-2014(?) and never had a notable issue. As the other child comment says, rights atrophy if you don't exercise them.
- leesalminen 10y agoIf you're traveling with someone you know, one trick to ending the pat down early is to try to embarrass the agent while in a sensitive area. My favorite is "you know, he's only doing this because his girlfriend dumped him and is lonely". ~50% of the time they stop immediately and say "you're good".
- tuna-piano 10y agoDo you believe the government entered his apartment? It seems at least somewhat likely. They see the sparse apartment and picture of some religious thing on the wall, and it freaks them out. They take the picture back to their office to figure out what the hell it is. I'm not knowledgeable about this stuff, but it seems like they could have used a "sneak and peek" warrant, as authorized in the patriot act. https://www.aclu.org/other/how-usa-patriot-act-expands-law-enforcement-sneak-and-peek-warrants https://www.aclu.org/other/how-usa-patriot-act-expands-law-e... I kind of think this guy should look into a civil lawsuit against those agencies. Did they violate any of his constitutional rights? Not letting him get food / drink, threatening to hold his bag if he walked away? Was a search warrant attained and he was never given notice, even after the fact?
- a3n 10y ago> Do you believe the government entered his apartment? Yes, I do believe that, because it's plausible, and because they asked him, when facing his apartment building, which side the parking lot is on. Which suggests that someone was there who could verify the answer.
- daveFNbuck 10y agoTo me it suggests that they had someone in the building trying to figure out which unit he lives in.
- learn_more 10y agoThey probably just looked it up on Google maps.
- Vivtek 10y agoStole his picture.
- jtchang 10y agoIt's sad how much flying has changed since 9/11. Younger individuals will never realize how much easier it was to get through security. I'm sad at how he was treated and it's something that needs to be changed. It's not like treating anyone badly is going to result in more information.
- appleflaxen 10y agoaviation has suffered, for sure, but liberty has suffered more
- macspoofing 10y ago>It's sad how much flying has changed since 9/11. Sad but predictable in a world with a global movement of suicidal religious fanatics willing to murder thousands of people and cause billions in property damage. It is what is. I miss the old days too, but I wouldn't vote to water-down airport security. >I'm sad at how he was treated and it's something that needs to be changed. Does it? He refused the millimeter wave scan, got a pat-down, tested positive for an explosive or poison, and then refused further screening - what should happen at that point? Should he be cleared? Where did the TSA go wrong here?
- phkahler 10y agoHe didn't refuse the scanner, he was given a choice and when his choice was going to get complicated he could no longer switch back to the scanner. He did opt for the scanner on his new flight. But none of that is really relevant to how he was treated. Why deny him a glass of water?
- Vivtek 10y agoWhat better way to put him in his place than to deny him his humanity?
- phkahler 10y agoOn thinking about it, the mild mistreatment over a period of hours could be deliberate so as to induce stress and make him crack. Hence repeatedly asking the same questions looking for him to slip up if any part of the story was fabricated.
- zodiakzz 10y agoOr, don't contaminate your stuff with dangerous chemicals before flying.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- whack 10y agoThe "dangerous chemicals" you're referring to is bed-bug spray from months ago, that happened to get on his clothes while he was changing his bed sheets. I've seen victim-blaming before, but this takes it to a whole other level. It's genuinely scary that people like you exist.
- goodcanadian 10y agoI highly doubt it was the insecticide. It is far more likely that it was some combination of the cleaning supplies used. Many household cleaners can be used in bomb making.
- Vivtek 10y agoI've tested positive for "explosives" after contact with beach sand in Puerto Rico, so maybe you need to understand that you don't know jack.
- badthingfactory 10y agoThose who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
- notburnt 10y agoThe chemical test positive happened to me too: they swabbed my bag and the machine beeped and I got a free full body massage. This was when I was flying home from college for summer. I explained it as "This is the bag I use for school: something must have touched it during chem lab". I am a coward for saying this, but your objective when flying is to get to point B. So, make it easy on the jack-booted thugs. You don't affect change by annoying your local officially sanctioned thug. You affect change by voting. If you want to make a stand, then come prepared for that: knowledge of law + 24 hours to kill.
- cmrdporcupine 10y agoThe chemical swab (at least the one they use in Canada) seems to get set off by something in my wife's cosmetics pantheon. An agent made life hard for us on our last trip, almost made us miss our flight, very stressful. I have heard, can't confirm, that glycerin soap will detect as a "bomb ingredient". Considering how ubiquitous glycerin soap, that's a rather terrible test.
- designium 10y agoYou are going to be tracked forever.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- thr3290 10y ago> timestamp on the paper: 10:40. ..... It was 2:20PM So this guy sets off the alarm (swab probably found traces of explosives ), has no paperwork in order (proof of work), and has to wait for 3 hours before it gets resolved. Last time the HN crowd was enraged over someone who was questioned for 15 minutes... I was detained overnight, and some of my friends were denied entry to US for bullshit reasons... It is like a different planet.
- literallycancer 10y ago>has no paperwork in order (proof of work) Oh? I must have missed the law that required people to do be able to prove where they work at all times. >and has to wait for 3 hours before it gets resolved By this time, I hadn’t had any food or water in almost eighteen hours. Learning to read would be a good start.
- thr3290 10y agoDid you ever cross international border? My reading is just fine, read the article. He was 'fasting' before security check. And he should say it is a medical emergency, if he felt like passing out.
- dang 10y agoPlease don't create many obscure throwaway accounts; we ban those. HN is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be an entirely different forum.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Cpoll 10y agoI think you're the only consistent identity that I recognize, because you post this a lot :) I always have some concerns when I see it: - Obviously controversial (but not clearly trolling) posts like thr3290's can't be made without potentially endangering the poster (we've seen people fired for public or semi-public remarks e.g. "donglegate"). I feel that this would have a chilling effect on voices that go against the common sentiment on HN. I for one would not be comfortable using my account to make a comment like that one, which means that with your rules, my opinion would be suppressed (hypothetically speaking - I don't agree wth thr3290). - "We ban those" isn't corroborated by any clear HN code of conduct. I (perhaps incorrectly) recall reading one at some point, but I'm currently hard-pressed to find it. - It's not obvious to people who don't know you that you're a moderator. Your account doesn't have any clear demarcation, and you don't mention it in your profile.
- rokhayakebe 10y agoI am Muslim and I've been "randomly" selected at airports before. My advice: smile and be nice as you should be with anyone. Granted you have every right to not comply, when you are being hostile it does not help you get out faster.
- arjie 10y agoFor what it's worth, practically every brown guy I know goes through the rituals when interacting with US Gov officials. Shave, look as clean cut as possible, and don't stand out. So no opting out of the scanners, no joking at security or immigration, better have backup ID. I'm not saying it's right that it's this way but it's safer. The officials are not very smart people but they have power, so you just give them what they want. I'm not going to wage this war for liberty or whatever it is. I'm just going to go on vacation.
- klarrimore 10y agoThe security charade is nonsense, there's no doubt but I see hundreds of brown people going through security with zero issues every time I go to JFK.
- mustaflex 10y agoI've always wanted to visit U.S.A. but coming from a muslim background I'll probably never do it. Just reading the post infuriate me.
- cs2818 10y agoI recently was selected for a more thorough screening at the DFW airport, which included walking through the metal detector twice, having a body scan, the new "universal pat-down" [0], and individual swabbing and x-ray of every item in my bag (everything required to be powered up as well). I am often selected for pat-downs, despite using the scanner, and I must say the newly implemented pat-down procedure was much more intimate than I was comfortable with. There's got to be a better way. [0] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/03/tsa-rolls-out-new-more-intimate-airport-pat-downs/98713844/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/03/tsa...
- js2 10y agoI set off the chemical detector at SFO once. I'm convinced it was because I'd been to one of those indoor go-kart'ing places the day before as part of a company event, and wore the same jeans. Extended screening was not a fun experience. I've always opted out so I'm used to the standard pat down. This was a lot more invasive. I was directed to a private area with two security officers (SFO uses a private contractor, not TSA). Besides a more thorough pat down, my bag was unpacked and its items were swabbed and chemical tested. I don't think the chemical tester went off a second time. The whole procedure took about 15 minutes. It's not the easiest situation in which to remain calm. But, instead of getting annoyed at the security personnel (TSA or otherwise), I remind myself that this is ultimately the doing of congress and my fellow citizens. And then I send the ACLU another donation.
- bbarn 10y agoI'm an average looking, run of the mill white software developer in my late 30's. I still get massive anxiety about taking air trips because of the hassle and harassment I've received in the past from TSA agents. I have a hope that the backlash against the recent two failed Trump bans will continue to escalate and we'll see the end of this nonsense in our lifetimes. I think even the people who voted for this administration are starting to think it's absurd.
- username223 10y agoI'm the same, more or less -- middle-aged, boring-looking white dude -- and I also dread encounters with TSA and Border Patrol. Stealing my toothpaste is the least of it. As far as I can tell, the people they hire have the petty-authoritarian mindset of mall security, but with fewer legal constrains on their power.
- no_acc_recovery 10y agoI have the full sympathy to the guy. That said I am at loss what is it to do with Ramadan? I have not seen a single statement that his ordeal has anything to do with Ramadan but it just happened during Ramadan. Otherwise this is happening to all walks of life including white dudes (though much much less frequently). Just a catchy title? edit: my objection is to the title not the content.
- hoschicz 10y agoDiscussion on HN from 4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6258422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6258422
- GlennS 10y agoTo me the most surprising thing: do people really not know the difference between a Hindu and a Muslim? They are the 2nd and 3rd largest religious groups in the world.
- enoughisenough 10y agoSome real "hacker news" here. Jesus the slide of this site...