4 ms·

You are missing the point. yes he set off the explosion detector for which he should have been questioned and he was. The issue is how they did it. No water for

You are missing the point. yes he set off the explosion detector for which he should have been questioned and he was. The issue is how they did it. No water for hours ? You seriously think that it is ok ? The rest 5% decorations that you were talking about is lot more than just decorations.

fennecfoxen 13y ago
The bit that got me as incontrovertibly hilariously-stupid was... they got all upset that he hadn't identified to them that he'd checked some baggage. If the guy is an adversary, you can't rely on him to bring that fact to your attention. If the guy isn't an adversary, his failure to identify it is (by definition) innocent in nature. In neither sense does harassing the guy about it make sense.
- btilly 13y ago
  They were hoping to use his failure to identify it as proof that he was an adversary. When it turned out that he had identified it, the person who had hoped that now had egg on his face. (I wouldn't be surprised if in another room they had figured this out as proof so that they could get him.)
- ctdonath 13y ago
  You think that was a stupid mistake? Probably a deliberate documented procedure: throw the person off-balance with some unexpected "stupid" weirdness. "You told the border guard you're entering the country to work." "What? No! I never said that! I'm entering to marry my fiancé!" "I'm here because of the MBA conference." "NBA? We didn't know there was a basketball event in this building." Yeah, I've seen it a number of times. They weren't upset. They were manipulating the author. They weren't stupid. They already had agents heading to the apartment to investigate.
  - greedo 13y ago
    And throw in the fact that lying to a Federal agent can lead to felony charges, the behavior of his interrogators is very typical.
  - jarek 13y ago
    My favourite was a CBP asking me "what do you do for work" (lovely unspecific question, that) then pretending to get upset with me for not telling him I was unemployed at the moment. I resisted telling him I personally don't consider unemployment a career...
jonahx 13y ago
> No water for hours? I often go until late afternoon or longer without realizing I haven't had any water to drink. This really doesn't seem that bad. The OP's claim that his mouth was like sandpaper because he hadn't had water for a few hours reads like hyperbole to me.
- codegeek 13y ago
  We all go a long time without water or realization but on a regular usual day when we are not under pressure by the TSA or police or what not. This situation is not a hyperbole.
- pooriaazimi 13y ago
  And Rumsfeld said "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?" and asked for detainees to be forced to stand up in "stress positions" for more than the previously specified (and already inhuman and torturous) 4 hours... N.B.: I'm not pulling out a strawman, or claiming you agree in any way with what Rumsfeld did. I'm just pointing out that your logic could, and actually does, lead to such inhumane practices. So don't be too hasty to dismiss stuff like this just based on your personal experience and preferences. I'd personally die without drinking ample amount of water (not an illness; just habit, and it would make me really, really nervous and angry if you denied me water).
  - jonahx 13y ago
    To be clear, they absolutely should have given him water. I just don't find some of the comparisons and adjectives that people are using to describe their failure to do so warranted. The only part of what happened to him that seems truly unjust and worthy of outrage is the purely speculative accusation that they broke into his apartment. There is very little consideration in this thread for the shittiness and stressfulness of the TSA jobs, especially when faced with passengers who refuse the scan and set off the bomb detectors. If you want to argue that TSA should employ highly skilled workers and pay them better, I'm all for that. But given that's not the case, workers being incompetent and rude to people who set off bomb detectors, and holding them too long, doesn't seem like human rights violation to me. It's just a crappy and annoying and stressful situation.

fennecfoxen 13y ago

The bit that got me as incontrovertibly hilariously-stupid was... they got all upset that he hadn't identified to them that he'd checked some baggage. If the guy is an adversary, you can't rely on him to bring that fact to your attention. If the guy isn't an adversary, his failure to identify it is (by definition) innocent in nature. In neither sense does harassing the guy about it make sense.

btilly 13y ago
They were hoping to use his failure to identify it as proof that he was an adversary. When it turned out that he had identified it, the person who had hoped that now had egg on his face. (I wouldn't be surprised if in another room they had figured this out as proof so that they could get him.)
ctdonath 13y ago
You think that was a stupid mistake? Probably a deliberate documented procedure: throw the person off-balance with some unexpected "stupid" weirdness. "You told the border guard you're entering the country to work." "What? No! I never said that! I'm entering to marry my fiancé!" "I'm here because of the MBA conference." "NBA? We didn't know there was a basketball event in this building." Yeah, I've seen it a number of times. They weren't upset. They were manipulating the author. They weren't stupid. They already had agents heading to the apartment to investigate.
- greedo 13y ago
  And throw in the fact that lying to a Federal agent can lead to felony charges, the behavior of his interrogators is very typical.
- jarek 13y ago
  My favourite was a CBP asking me "what do you do for work" (lovely unspecific question, that) then pretending to get upset with me for not telling him I was unemployed at the moment. I resisted telling him I personally don't consider unemployment a career...

jonahx 13y ago

> No water for hours? I often go until late afternoon or longer without realizing I haven't had any water to drink. This really doesn't seem that bad. The OP's claim that his mouth was like sandpaper because he hadn't had water for a few hours reads like hyperbole to me.

codegeek 13y ago
We all go a long time without water or realization but on a regular usual day when we are not under pressure by the TSA or police or what not. This situation is not a hyperbole.
pooriaazimi 13y ago
And Rumsfeld said "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?" and asked for detainees to be forced to stand up in "stress positions" for more than the previously specified (and already inhuman and torturous) 4 hours... N.B.: I'm not pulling out a strawman, or claiming you agree in any way with what Rumsfeld did. I'm just pointing out that your logic could, and actually does, lead to such inhumane practices. So don't be too hasty to dismiss stuff like this just based on your personal experience and preferences. I'd personally die without drinking ample amount of water (not an illness; just habit, and it would make me really, really nervous and angry if you denied me water).
- jonahx 13y ago
  To be clear, they absolutely should have given him water. I just don't find some of the comparisons and adjectives that people are using to describe their failure to do so warranted. The only part of what happened to him that seems truly unjust and worthy of outrage is the purely speculative accusation that they broke into his apartment. There is very little consideration in this thread for the shittiness and stressfulness of the TSA jobs, especially when faced with passengers who refuse the scan and set off the bomb detectors. If you want to argue that TSA should employ highly skilled workers and pay them better, I'm all for that. But given that's not the case, workers being incompetent and rude to people who set off bomb detectors, and holding them too long, doesn't seem like human rights violation to me. It's just a crappy and annoying and stressful situation.