6 ms·

I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism, before the TSA, before the NSA snooped on our phone calls or Hacker News posts, before all of this... I imagine there

I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism, before the TSA, before the NSA snooped on our phone calls or Hacker News posts, before all of this... I imagine there was a guy who wanted to do something, got stopped by police for a couple of questions, and got agitated by the hassle and it turned into something bigger. Now 100 years ago, that guy couldn't write a blog post about it and get worldwide attention. But then again, it's just always been true that when dealing with the authorities, if you rub someone the wrong way, if you act belligerent, if you want to run the other way as soon as the police ask you a question, if you test positive multiple times for explosives... well, it's always been true that you're going to have a bad day that day. Mr Mukerjee had a bad day. But then again, he tested positive for explosives multiple times!

InclinedPlane 13y ago
That's an extraordinarily shitty excuse.
- mintplant 13y ago
  Oh come on. > These events include Mr. Mukerjee becoming further agitated and aggressive after testing positive for explosives, as well as him repeatedly reaching for his not-yet-manually-searched bag. > However,multiple statements by TSA personnel reference Mr. Mukerjee repeatedly grabbing for his bag after he was told not to touch it. > While false positives are not unusual for ETD, it is unusual a person and their items could fail so many times using different testing equipment. What would you have done in a situation like this, when people's lives are at stake and it's your fault if something goes wrong and someone gets hurt?
  - weland 13y ago
    One of the things you get when you have a horde of untrained, uptight civilians dressed in uniforms is an incredibly unprofessional behaviour from someone who is supposed to do law enforcement. The agents did several things that escalated the whole deal, things which a cadet would have immediately understood. To quote just a few: > These events include Mr. Mukerjee becoming further agitated and aggressive after testing positive for explosives, as well as him repeatedly reaching for his not-yet-manually-searched bag. > However,multiple statements by TSA personnel reference Mr. Mukerjee repeatedly grabbing for his bag after he was told not to touch it. This is wrong on the following levels: 1. The first fucking thing you do when you detain someone is explain them why they are detained, how long they will be detained and -- if they have not actually broken any law and are there for preventive action, what you are doing in order to prevent it. If you exceed this period by the most infinitely small amount of time, you immediately tell them why it is taking longer (in some civilized countries not doing this is reason enough for the state to start selling politicians' kidneys to pay damages). Basically, what the dudes should have done was say: "Hello Mr. Mukerjee, we have to detain you on the basis of <whatever law they are doing it on> because we have suspicions that you might try to harm the passengers on board. We need to check a few things up, this will take <how much fucking time can it take to check a stupid suitcase and a handbag>. I understand this may sound outrageous to you, but we need to make sure." It's particularly important that you use normal-sounding words and sentences in an active voice. Someone who isn't a regular jail offender will most likely be panicked enough to to understand a word you're saying if you start throwing shit like "we believe you might be a threat to the safety of the crew and the passengers of the vessel". 2. If you don't want people to get agitated, you don't offer them external triggers. If you want to conduct a search, you immediately remove all the bags after conducting a thorough inventory of it in the presence of the guy you're searching. "Mr. Murkjee, we need to search your bag <on the basis of whatever law allows us to do that without a warrant>. Can you please tell me what's inside? We will have to remove all items in another room, we need to make a list of the items inside to make sure you get them all back". Of course people are going to get nervous if they are in danger of losing their work. They kind of depend on it to eat. If you don't remove these belongings, people will naturally keep peeking at them and grabbing them and insisting on touching them because they're afraid. It's a natural reaction. 3. If you detain someone for longer than half an hour, you provide for their needs period. You ask if they need water or a snack. If they're guilty, they'll have a long time to be thirsty and hungry in prison, but there's a long way before that. You do this for two reasons that you hear about in the first six hours of training (if your instructor is slow, it can probably take as little as four...). First, basic sensations of thirst and hunger amplify the sensation of fear. Second, dehydration and low blood sugar levels heighten the symptoms of fear and panic, like anxiety and shaking. 4. When someone tested positive for something, you either don't tell him and get on with it on your own, or you tell him and ask for an explanation. Maybe the dude visited a friend whose kid got a chemistry kit as a present and splashed it all over the table in the living room. Either tell him "Mr. Murkjee, you tested positive for di-hidrogen oxide, a substance we believe may be explosive. We need to conduct a further search through your items -- we have people working on that right away so that you can be back on your trip as soon as possible, but in the meantime, do you know of any way in which you could have come into contact with this substance?". Either do that, or just tell him that their preliminary tests showed traces of an explosive substance, we need to search your items to know for sure if it can be dangerous. In both cases, tell the dude how long it takes. People can have a panic attack just because of missing a flight, can you imagine how awesome it has to be to have someone who carries a gun drag things along when you have a plane to catch? Bonus things the TSA folks fucked up: 5. If someone wishes to go but you haven't finished your procedure, you fucking tell them why and explicitly mention what you need to do before clearing them. People who fly have no way of knowing, and particularly no reason of knowing the whole procedure. Telling him he can go, but the bag stays was a major fuck-up that is usually reason enough for disciplinary action in a normal police force. You don't just tell people they can go without their items. The correct thing to do is say something along the lines of "Before clearing you for leaving, we need to check your bag, in case it may contain items that could be harmful for the passengers in the terminal. This will take <X minutes>, once we're done you're free to leave if you wish". 6. There is no such thing as a "limbo", not in any sane security procedure. Someone is always in one of three possible states, and if he goes from one to another you immediately mention it: he's either detained (for a definite or indefinite period of time), free to go after a procedure is finished (all suspicions are off, but there's some compulsory stuff that needs to be done -- e.g. you're sent home from the station, but you still need to get the receipt that confirms you received all your items from storage before they clear you to leave) or you're free to go. "There is nothing wrong with you but you can't leave" is a form of abuse period. It does not matter if things aren't that way: what the man sees is what you're telling him. There's no way a boarding passenger knows the whole procedure, so that he can go like "Oh, there's no need for me to worry... I'm ok but they can't let me leave while my bag hasn't been searched. I can't just go and mingle with the people who have been cleared to fly while I haven't, since I might stealthily hand them a knife or a pack of explosives after they've gone through the security check." 7. If the reason you are detaining someone is a subjective one (i.e. the dubious-guy-spotter said he looks dubious), you still need to provide a reason for detaining him. If you don't, the dude will naturally think you just picked him at random, which he will -- again -- perceive as a form of abuse. tl;dr There are some basic things you need to in order to tell if the person you're talking to is being aggressive or giving inconsistent answers because he's preparing to carry out a criminal offense. If you don't do them, you fuck up your screening process. Being under pressure is not an excuse for not doing a job you're supposed to do under pressure. Full disclosure/source: I wanted to spend an year in a computer security-related position for a state institution in my country of origin, and had to take a course on this. My memory of the details is fairly dim, I hope I haven't trashed anything significant.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      This is brilliant. Can we clone you to restaff the TSA?
      - weland 13y ago
        Thanks :-). Restaffing the TSA may not be necessary though -- not radically; there seems to be a problem with the culture there and with how performance is measured. That's systemic and comes from higher in the hierarchy. Specifically, I think good directions would be: 1. Driving away the "law enforcement" culture. Are members of the TSA staff registered as policemen, assigned to a station, going through police academy and under the rules and discipline of police training? If not, they aren't law enforcement and shouldn't be treated as such, and should either a) be disallowed from conducting any kind of search without the supervision of a policeman or b) covered by the same regulation as a regular policeman. You can't have people do police stuff with non-police discipline, eschewing the checks and balances law enforcement has in order to make sure it enforces, you know, the law. 2. Providing immediate legal counseling as soon as you step into a private room. Large crowds tend to be a good protection against abuse. Once you step into a room, anything more than searching through personal items should be covered by a lawyer, and people should particularly only be questioned only in the presence of a lawyer. This is because a) the lawyer would be able to assert the rights of the person being questioned and b) the lawyer would be able to explain what's happening in layman's terms. When a particularly uptight ex-postal employee who just discovered authority exceeds gets nasty, a third-party reminding him he's stepping outside the law works much better than the person on the receiving end of his newly-discovered authority asserting his rights -- risking to be regarded as "aggressive" and "overly-assertive" by someone whose most important previous responsibility had been making sure stamps are correctly positioned on the envelope. 3. Explicitly encouraging and rewarding correct behaviour from TSA personnel, while at the same time applying serious disciplinary action. Let's be honest here, there's a large enough supply of unemployed people who can search a bag that you can afford discharging abusers, and sufficient public frustration that you can afford offering the occasional bonus to people who go out of their way to clear up misunderstandings.
    - InclinedPlane 13y ago
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    You should be careful and say that lives may be at stake. Even if we had a much improved system, the vast majority of closer examinations would be of innocent people. Actually, I guess the false positive rate goes up with the effectiveness for quite a while.
  - glenra 13y ago
    > it is unusual a person and their items could fail so many times using different testing equipment. So maybe it's finding something true. BFD. You look in the bag, verify there's no explosive there, and let him through. Maybe the bag had fireworks in or near it at some point. Or magician's supplies. Or a chemistry set. Or any number of other things. There are a dozens reasons why a bag might actually have been near explosives or chemicals that are similar enough to explosives or explosive precursors that the test would correctly show positive. Nobody cares whether the test result was an error or a "correct" reading based on something that IS NO LONGER IN THE BAG - either way, you let him through. Why the hell not?
    - mintplant 13y ago
      Or it could be somewhere hidden in the bag, in a lining somewhere, etc. Or it could be somewhere else on his person, having left traces on the bag after coming in contact with it.
      - glenra 13y ago
        Right, that's why they do a search. Amd if it's hidden so well you won't find it in a search, it'll be hidden that well tomorrow too - where is the sense in pestering this guy for hours and sending him home to get on a plane tomorrow rather than letting him get on a plane today? The sad truth is that the terrorists here are us. The primary reason nobody has blown up a plane recently in the US is that nobody is TRYING to blow up a plane in the US. If somebody were seriously trying, they'd have done it already.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism, Please read some history.
smsm42 13y ago
He tested positive for some chemicals that produce false positive on TSA explosives test, not for explosives. As the original article admits, this is a common occurrence. However, it became very clear very soon that he actually does not have any explosives on him. What were they doing once that was clear?
- T-hawk 13y ago
  They were trying to catch him for anything they could imagine. Maybe he was the next marathon bomber, coming from a laboratory session. They'd be national heroes, or at the very least they'd make damn damn sure that nobody's ass could be on the line for letting the next marathon bomber slip through TSA. (What? TSA's job isn't to protect marathons? Silly patriot, do you want to let the terrorists win?)

InclinedPlane 13y ago

That's an extraordinarily shitty excuse.

mintplant 13y ago
Oh come on. > These events include Mr. Mukerjee becoming further agitated and aggressive after testing positive for explosives, as well as him repeatedly reaching for his not-yet-manually-searched bag. > However,multiple statements by TSA personnel reference Mr. Mukerjee repeatedly grabbing for his bag after he was told not to touch it. > While false positives are not unusual for ETD, it is unusual a person and their items could fail so many times using different testing equipment. What would you have done in a situation like this, when people's lives are at stake and it's your fault if something goes wrong and someone gets hurt?
- weland 13y ago
  One of the things you get when you have a horde of untrained, uptight civilians dressed in uniforms is an incredibly unprofessional behaviour from someone who is supposed to do law enforcement. The agents did several things that escalated the whole deal, things which a cadet would have immediately understood. To quote just a few: > These events include Mr. Mukerjee becoming further agitated and aggressive after testing positive for explosives, as well as him repeatedly reaching for his not-yet-manually-searched bag. > However,multiple statements by TSA personnel reference Mr. Mukerjee repeatedly grabbing for his bag after he was told not to touch it. This is wrong on the following levels: 1. The first fucking thing you do when you detain someone is explain them why they are detained, how long they will be detained and -- if they have not actually broken any law and are there for preventive action, what you are doing in order to prevent it. If you exceed this period by the most infinitely small amount of time, you immediately tell them why it is taking longer (in some civilized countries not doing this is reason enough for the state to start selling politicians' kidneys to pay damages). Basically, what the dudes should have done was say: "Hello Mr. Mukerjee, we have to detain you on the basis of <whatever law they are doing it on> because we have suspicions that you might try to harm the passengers on board. We need to check a few things up, this will take <how much fucking time can it take to check a stupid suitcase and a handbag>. I understand this may sound outrageous to you, but we need to make sure." It's particularly important that you use normal-sounding words and sentences in an active voice. Someone who isn't a regular jail offender will most likely be panicked enough to to understand a word you're saying if you start throwing shit like "we believe you might be a threat to the safety of the crew and the passengers of the vessel". 2. If you don't want people to get agitated, you don't offer them external triggers. If you want to conduct a search, you immediately remove all the bags after conducting a thorough inventory of it in the presence of the guy you're searching. "Mr. Murkjee, we need to search your bag <on the basis of whatever law allows us to do that without a warrant>. Can you please tell me what's inside? We will have to remove all items in another room, we need to make a list of the items inside to make sure you get them all back". Of course people are going to get nervous if they are in danger of losing their work. They kind of depend on it to eat. If you don't remove these belongings, people will naturally keep peeking at them and grabbing them and insisting on touching them because they're afraid. It's a natural reaction. 3. If you detain someone for longer than half an hour, you provide for their needs period. You ask if they need water or a snack. If they're guilty, they'll have a long time to be thirsty and hungry in prison, but there's a long way before that. You do this for two reasons that you hear about in the first six hours of training (if your instructor is slow, it can probably take as little as four...). First, basic sensations of thirst and hunger amplify the sensation of fear. Second, dehydration and low blood sugar levels heighten the symptoms of fear and panic, like anxiety and shaking. 4. When someone tested positive for something, you either don't tell him and get on with it on your own, or you tell him and ask for an explanation. Maybe the dude visited a friend whose kid got a chemistry kit as a present and splashed it all over the table in the living room. Either tell him "Mr. Murkjee, you tested positive for di-hidrogen oxide, a substance we believe may be explosive. We need to conduct a further search through your items -- we have people working on that right away so that you can be back on your trip as soon as possible, but in the meantime, do you know of any way in which you could have come into contact with this substance?". Either do that, or just tell him that their preliminary tests showed traces of an explosive substance, we need to search your items to know for sure if it can be dangerous. In both cases, tell the dude how long it takes. People can have a panic attack just because of missing a flight, can you imagine how awesome it has to be to have someone who carries a gun drag things along when you have a plane to catch? Bonus things the TSA folks fucked up: 5. If someone wishes to go but you haven't finished your procedure, you fucking tell them why and explicitly mention what you need to do before clearing them. People who fly have no way of knowing, and particularly no reason of knowing the whole procedure. Telling him he can go, but the bag stays was a major fuck-up that is usually reason enough for disciplinary action in a normal police force. You don't just tell people they can go without their items. The correct thing to do is say something along the lines of "Before clearing you for leaving, we need to check your bag, in case it may contain items that could be harmful for the passengers in the terminal. This will take <X minutes>, once we're done you're free to leave if you wish". 6. There is no such thing as a "limbo", not in any sane security procedure. Someone is always in one of three possible states, and if he goes from one to another you immediately mention it: he's either detained (for a definite or indefinite period of time), free to go after a procedure is finished (all suspicions are off, but there's some compulsory stuff that needs to be done -- e.g. you're sent home from the station, but you still need to get the receipt that confirms you received all your items from storage before they clear you to leave) or you're free to go. "There is nothing wrong with you but you can't leave" is a form of abuse period. It does not matter if things aren't that way: what the man sees is what you're telling him. There's no way a boarding passenger knows the whole procedure, so that he can go like "Oh, there's no need for me to worry... I'm ok but they can't let me leave while my bag hasn't been searched. I can't just go and mingle with the people who have been cleared to fly while I haven't, since I might stealthily hand them a knife or a pack of explosives after they've gone through the security check." 7. If the reason you are detaining someone is a subjective one (i.e. the dubious-guy-spotter said he looks dubious), you still need to provide a reason for detaining him. If you don't, the dude will naturally think you just picked him at random, which he will -- again -- perceive as a form of abuse. tl;dr There are some basic things you need to in order to tell if the person you're talking to is being aggressive or giving inconsistent answers because he's preparing to carry out a criminal offense. If you don't do them, you fuck up your screening process. Being under pressure is not an excuse for not doing a job you're supposed to do under pressure. Full disclosure/source: I wanted to spend an year in a computer security-related position for a state institution in my country of origin, and had to take a course on this. My memory of the details is fairly dim, I hope I haven't trashed anything significant.
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    This is brilliant. Can we clone you to restaff the TSA?
    - weland 13y ago
      Thanks :-). Restaffing the TSA may not be necessary though -- not radically; there seems to be a problem with the culture there and with how performance is measured. That's systemic and comes from higher in the hierarchy. Specifically, I think good directions would be: 1. Driving away the "law enforcement" culture. Are members of the TSA staff registered as policemen, assigned to a station, going through police academy and under the rules and discipline of police training? If not, they aren't law enforcement and shouldn't be treated as such, and should either a) be disallowed from conducting any kind of search without the supervision of a policeman or b) covered by the same regulation as a regular policeman. You can't have people do police stuff with non-police discipline, eschewing the checks and balances law enforcement has in order to make sure it enforces, you know, the law. 2. Providing immediate legal counseling as soon as you step into a private room. Large crowds tend to be a good protection against abuse. Once you step into a room, anything more than searching through personal items should be covered by a lawyer, and people should particularly only be questioned only in the presence of a lawyer. This is because a) the lawyer would be able to assert the rights of the person being questioned and b) the lawyer would be able to explain what's happening in layman's terms. When a particularly uptight ex-postal employee who just discovered authority exceeds gets nasty, a third-party reminding him he's stepping outside the law works much better than the person on the receiving end of his newly-discovered authority asserting his rights -- risking to be regarded as "aggressive" and "overly-assertive" by someone whose most important previous responsibility had been making sure stamps are correctly positioned on the envelope. 3. Explicitly encouraging and rewarding correct behaviour from TSA personnel, while at the same time applying serious disciplinary action. Let's be honest here, there's a large enough supply of unemployed people who can search a bag that you can afford discharging abusers, and sufficient public frustration that you can afford offering the occasional bonus to people who go out of their way to clear up misunderstandings.
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
- maxerickson 13y ago
  You should be careful and say that lives may be at stake. Even if we had a much improved system, the vast majority of closer examinations would be of innocent people. Actually, I guess the false positive rate goes up with the effectiveness for quite a while.
- glenra 13y ago
  > it is unusual a person and their items could fail so many times using different testing equipment. So maybe it's finding something true. BFD. You look in the bag, verify there's no explosive there, and let him through. Maybe the bag had fireworks in or near it at some point. Or magician's supplies. Or a chemistry set. Or any number of other things. There are a dozens reasons why a bag might actually have been near explosives or chemicals that are similar enough to explosives or explosive precursors that the test would correctly show positive. Nobody cares whether the test result was an error or a "correct" reading based on something that IS NO LONGER IN THE BAG - either way, you let him through. Why the hell not?
  - mintplant 13y ago
    Or it could be somewhere hidden in the bag, in a lining somewhere, etc. Or it could be somewhere else on his person, having left traces on the bag after coming in contact with it.
    - glenra 13y ago
      Right, that's why they do a search. Amd if it's hidden so well you won't find it in a search, it'll be hidden that well tomorrow too - where is the sense in pestering this guy for hours and sending him home to get on a plane tomorrow rather than letting him get on a plane today? The sad truth is that the terrorists here are us. The primary reason nobody has blown up a plane recently in the US is that nobody is TRYING to blow up a plane in the US. If somebody were seriously trying, they'd have done it already.

moocowduckquack 13y ago

I imagine 100 years ago, before terrorism, Please read some history.

smsm42 13y ago

He tested positive for some chemicals that produce false positive on TSA explosives test, not for explosives. As the original article admits, this is a common occurrence. However, it became very clear very soon that he actually does not have any explosives on him. What were they doing once that was clear?

T-hawk 13y ago
They were trying to catch him for anything they could imagine. Maybe he was the next marathon bomber, coming from a laboratory session. They'd be national heroes, or at the very least they'd make damn damn sure that nobody's ass could be on the line for letting the next marathon bomber slip through TSA. (What? TSA's job isn't to protect marathons? Silly patriot, do you want to let the terrorists win?)