14 ms·

FBI Checks Wrong Box, Places Student on No-Fly List

251 points by rosser 13y ago

lostcolony 13y ago
I really hope America in the future looks back on the government of this time the same way Germany looks back on the Nazi government (yes, just Godwinned it); with shame, and a fierce determination to never allow it to happen again.
- busterarm 13y ago
  If only we could be so lucky. There were a brief few decades in the United States where you couldn't be born the "wrong color", born the "wrong gender" (let's leave advanced concepts like non-binary gender and fluidity off the table for a moment, but they invalidate my statement), belong to the "wrong religion" or have the "wrong politics". We're just back to the status quo, that's all.
  - jwise0 13y ago
    When were these? I can't think of a time like that in the history of the United States, sorting by decade or so...
    - dubfan 13y ago
      For starters, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Massacre
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - busterarm 13y ago
      I hope i'm understanding you correctly in that you think there's never been "good times" with some degree of racial/gender/religious/political equality. Largely I would agree with you, but I don't think that's the general sentiment among Americans thinking of their history, especially with respect to the last quarter of the 1900s. I'm also not trying to claim them all at once, but individually and in very general terms. If you're arguing the opposite though, I don't know where we could begin to discuss the chasm between our understandings.
      - dalke 13y ago
        > I don't think that's the general sentiment among Americans thinking of their history, especially with respect to the last quarter of the 1900s "General" implies majority, yes? In which case isn't your statement almost tautologically true? At least if most Americans are part of the majority? Instead, shouldn't we ask instead how those of the historically "wrong color", "wrong gender", "wrong religion", and "wrong politics" perceive things? Certainly in 2006, "Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years" http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2816.html http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2... As it says, there has been a trend of "increasing social tolerance" over the last part of the 20th century, but that's not the same as couldn't.
        judk 13y ago
        Fun fact: Most people are in some minority group; there are many groups.
        shangxiao 13y ago
        I would even argue that all people belong to some form of minority group ;)
        dalke 13y ago
        Fun fact: there are only four minority groups in this discussion, those being "wrong color", "wrong gender", "wrong religion", and "wrong politics". Fun fact: discrimination in the workplace is generally legal. The law lists only a few exceptions. But when someone talks about anti-discrimination policies, they mean those few exceptions and not the entire universe of all possible ways to discriminate. Fun fact: billionaires in the US are indeed a minority, but not considered a traditionally oppressed minority which, you know, is the point of this conversation. Fun fact: there's plenty of evidence to show that being female, being black, being Muslim, and being a communist in the US is more likely to have a negative effect, compared to someone male, white, Lutheran, and Democrat. Fun facts: California still has a law preventing teachers from being in the Communist party: http://www.dailybulletin.com/social-affairs/20130113/california-law-keeps-communist-party-members-from-teaching http://www.dailybulletin.com/social-affairs/20130113/califor... , and in 2001, Michael Italie was fired from Goodwill for being a member of the Socialist Worker Party. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/07/can_your_boss_fire_you_for_your_political_beliefs.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2... or http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6543/654302.html http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6543/654302.html .
- lukifer 13y ago
  Honestly, I wish the Godwin moratorium would end. The lessons of Nazi Germany are not that Germans in the 1930s were the most evil persons in history, making it erroneous and offensive to compare anyone else to them. In fact, it's quite the opposite: the lesson is that all humans have the capacity for extreme evil when it is socially normalized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banality_of_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banal... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_Lucifer_Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_Lucifer_Eff...
  - busterarm 13y ago
    Moratoriums on topics of conversation only tend to exist when people understand the terms in meanings that are directly and completely contradictory. Your statement highlights this point quite nicely because yes, people believe that either "Nazis were the most evil people ever" or "Everyone is just as evil as the Nazis given the right circumstance/context." There are similar problems with topics like "fascism", "socialism", "patriotism", "freedom", "morals" and "religious belief"..and even Godwin's law itself. Following that, willingness to discuss these topics is usually a sign of either incredible intellect or incredible stupidity. Also, congratulations for not appearing stupid. I too do not find for Godwin's Law too favorably.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      Oh come on, don't pat yourself on the back for not liking Godwin's law when you haven't even bothered to understand what he was saying. It's criticism of people who resort to screaming Hitler when it is not warranted! That idiots have used an observation to shout down conversations is not the fault of the observer.
      - busterarm 13y ago
        Well, for sure. I understand what he was saying and I don't even disagree. I'm just stating plainly that people use Godwin's Law in exactly the manner as what he was criticizing to begin with. It's just become another tool to ruin conversations.
- yaix 13y ago
  Comparing it to the GDR ("East Germany") would be more apropriate, I guess. And you'd avoid Godwin.
beedogs 13y ago
> Attorneys working pro bono spent as much as $300,000 litigating the case and $3.8 million in attorney’s fees. So it costs about 4 million dollars to recover from the United States government accidentally, arbitrarily ruining your life. What a sad and terrifying place America has become.
- DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
  Don't forget that it took 7 years for them to admit a guy filled out the form wrong.
  - a3n 13y ago
    And that she was the only person so far to have done so. We're stabbing ourselves in the heart with a fork.
- jackgolding 13y ago
  This is the real travesty, mistakes happen but the cost is life-breaking.
- powertower 13y ago
  > What a sad and terrifying place America has become. 1 human error is not a statistic, nor does it represent the system in any way. I still like America and I'm okay with this happening... The system took some time, but it ultimately worked. Which is a credit to it, and not a penalty against it.
  - mcpherrinm 13y ago
    7 years and 4 million dollars to get on a plane is not working. It absolutely represents the system: There's no way to handle human error, which we all know happens.
    - powertower 13y ago
      I seriously doubt that pro-bono counsel actually worked 24/7 for 7 years on this case. I also doubt the 3-5MM amount, which is probably designed to extract as much cash from the government when the time comes (it's probably 3x of whatever the ceiling is for the damage award). More than likely, the 7 year figure involved about a month of form submitting, a month or two of figuring out the system/process, a few days in court, and a whole lot of wait time. At the end, this complicated matter worked itself out. In a secret court no less. Which is a testament to itself.
busterarm 13y ago
Let's be real here. The only "bureaucratic mistake" here is an agent filling out a form improperly in a way that victimized someone. Everything that happened after that is both deliberate and malicious. If a mistake was made, it should be easy to correct and not be followed by years of fighting to not only keep it from being corrected but to keep it a secret. They've successfully kept most of it a secret, even though the direct victim had their suffering eased. The indirect and ultimate victims of this, our individual rights and society's ideals, are still suffering.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Mithaldu 13y ago
  This is a very important detail of the whole dreary affair. As surprising as the cause of the whole matter may be, the government after that willfully lied to anyone and everyone, including the judge of the court case, ignored legally binding orders and probably broke several laws. The Paper's Please blog has an excellent timeline of this case: http://papersplease.org/wp/category/papers-please/ http://papersplease.org/wp/category/papers-please/
  - busterarm 13y ago
    What's amazing is that I'm well familiar with the details of this story, but Wired's reporting of it was so dry and disinteresting that I didn't associate the names or facts with the case I was already aware of. What's sad is that I didn't even need to know the facts to agree that what you said was true.
  - DateK 13y ago
    I wonder if there are any public APIs for those "TSDB, TIDE, CLASS, KSTF, TECS, IBIS, TUSCAN, TACTICS" etc. databases. Would be interesting to look at the data. What are the acronyms? select * from TUSCAN.Errorists;
- Natsu 13y ago
  When I look at this, I understand why mistakes happen. Checking the wrong box, ok, someone could easily do that. What I don't understand is why the system reacts so harshly to double-down on an obvious mistake rather than simply fixing it and preventing the whole thing from being an issue? Surely that would be easier than years of litigation, no?
brosco45 13y ago
Nah, it was the right box.
sdegutis 13y ago
Honestly, I feel that there are situations where a government makes mistakes. I think some cases should be assessed and handled on a case-by-case basis, whereas others are very black-and-white and should be handled en masse. Personally, I believe this situation may be one of these two, in which case it should be handled appropriately by the government. But overall, I think the most important thing is that governments should handle the cases correctly depending on what kind of case it is, and be held accountable for their mistakes.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
rwg 13y ago
Her daughter, an American citizen, was also denied boarding on a flight from Malaysia to the US. She was trying to take the flight in order to appear in court as a witness in this same trial. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131208/00164525497/witness-no-fly-list-trial-who-was-blocked-flying-to-trial-shows-that-doj-flat-out-lied-court.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131208/00164525497/witnes...
- teraflop 13y ago
  Interestingly, there's a section of Judge Alsup's ruling regarding this incident, nearly all of which (paragraphs 72 through 76) has been redacted.
  - e12e 13y ago
    [edit: formatting to conform to intended dramatic effect] I find especially the conclusion hilarious (hilarious because I'm not a US citizen, I suppose I should find it tragic): (...) C. The government must inform Dr. Ibrahim that ███████████ █████████████████ (...) IT IS SO ORDERED [edit2: It just occurred to me that Dr. Ibrahim would probably risk being placed back on the no-fly list if she made the full ruling public...]
protomyth 13y ago
Skip the article and go read the actual ruling. It makes me quite mad what they edited out and the crappy relief given. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2014/02/ibraruling.pdf http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2014/02/ibraru...
- hudibras 13y ago
  Page 22 will make your blood boil: Dr. Ibrahim was given a letter by the consular officer informing her that the Department of State was unable to issue her a visa...The consular officer wrote the word (Terrorist) on the form to explain why she was deemed inadmissible. The judge helpfully includes a photocopy of the letter with the handwritten note.
  - protomyth 13y ago
    I get the feeling our government would be a bit more responsive if individuals and agencies could be sued for libel.
- A1kmm 13y ago
  Although there are quite a few hints that allow an educated guess about the censored parts of the order to be made. > and the very real misapprehension on her part that the > later visa denials are traceable to her erroneous 2004 > placement on the no-fly list The judge's choice of the word 'misapprehension' implies that the visa denials were not related to the original mistake, and were for some other reason. > Plaintiff’s counsel became cleared to receive SSI, > but never tried to become cleared to read classified > information > Everyone else in this case [except the plaintiff] knows it. This implies that in the case, 'Security Sensitive Information' was presented about the real reason her visa was denied - and part of the order is that the plaintiff should be given this information. > One might wonder why, if Dr. Ibrahim herself is > concededly not a threat to our national > security, the government would find her inadmissible > under the Act. In this connection, please remember that > the Act includes nine ineligible categories. Some of them > go beyond whether the applicant herself poses a national > security threat. This strongly hints that the section the visa was denied under was this one: "is the spouse or child of an alien who is inadmissible under this subparagraph, if the activity causing the alien to be found inadmissible occurred within the last 5 years". Therefore, it seems very likely that the information that the government was ordered to hand over (but was censored) is that the government believes that her husband or one of her parents meets the criteria for exclusion under the terrorist activities section.
coldcode 13y ago
What a sad and frighting story that the US has become. I wonder how many of the soldiers who died for this country would volunteer if they had known then what their fight for freedom would become.
- judk 13y ago
  Most of them, military is the highest paying job for a large class of Americans.
noonespecial 13y ago
So all you have to do is slip an error into "the machine" and it becomes nearly impossible to fix? I'm thbiking that makes "bureaucratic terrorism" a very real possibility. One database hack or clever feat of social engineering could effectively end the paper lives of dozens of citizens.
- theandrewbailey 13y ago
  I'm stealing the term bureaucratic terrorism. Thank you.
linuxhansl 13y ago
I read somewhere that the no-fly list is so widely distributed that currently known terrorists are not actually placed on that list as this would leak information about who the US considers a terrorist to too wide an audience. Obviously I have no way to validate that story, but if true it would cement the story about that list being an utterly useless farce.
- judk 13y ago
  Perhaps the whole set of noflys are a cover so that when someone is harassed or tortured by the govt, that doesn't leak any info about who is actually a terrorist.
ilamont 13y ago
A string of incidents starting not long after 9/11 revealed to me what a farce the system is. The first was seeing old men in their 80s being frisked at TSA checkpoints. The second was a close friend, mixed race and wearing a beard, who was repeatedly stopped for "random" in-terminal personal questioning and searches (that is, beyond the checkpoint). He was the only person I knew who got this kind of treatment, and the only obvious difference was his appearance. And then there was this (1): Washington Post: Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list. Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed. If it took a powerful senator weeks or months to fix the problem, I knew it was hopeless for us mere mortals. When I was in college many years ago, a punk band called the Dead Kennedys released an album called Bedtime For Democracy that had this famous piece of artwork (2). It was a cartoon representation of the Statue of Liberty, crawling with Wall Street thieves, jack-booted SWAT teams, Madison Avenue shills, and other cons and clowns. There were tears coming out of the statue's eyes. Take a look at it zoomed in if you can, or buy the LP with the full-sized cover. I liked the DKs for their music and lyrics, and the cover went right along with the band's brand of socio-political satire. Nevertheless, at the time I thought the image was a little over the top. Not anymore. 1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug... 2. http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/d/deadkennedys_bedtime_cd_uk_2001_images.html http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/d/deadkennedys_bedtime_cd_uk_...
- kyro 13y ago
  Funnily enough, I watched Dr. Strangelove for the first time last night and was saddened by the assumed accuracy of its portrayal of political and governmental theater.
  - shangxiao 13y ago
    I take it you read the article "Almost everything in Dr Strangelove was true" [1] ? :) [1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/strangelove-for-real.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/stran...
defen 13y ago
So, I'm curious which of the terrorist screening databases - "Consular Lookout and Support Systems", "Interagency Border Information System", "TSA Selectee List" "TUSCAN", "TACTICS" Mr. Kelley did intend to sign Rahinah Ibrahim up for, and why. Clearly it was at least one of them, since the ruling states that he filled out the form "exactly the opposite way from the instructions on the form".
- hudibras 13y ago
  It's left unsaid, but my guess is that he left all the boxes blank thinking that would keep her from being added to any of the databases. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to your next question: if that's true, why was he filling out the form in the first place?
acdha 13y ago
This is a powerful reminder that the entire state secrets privilege was invented to cover up official incompetence[1] and obviously has not strayed very far from its origins. I'd like to get rid of the unconstitutional no-fly list but it's even more important to remove a privilege with so few benefits and such great potential for abuse. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds
- judk 13y ago
  This need to be reminded every time state secrets are mentioned, until this case is every US History textbook.
seanccox 13y ago
Harry Buttle?
XorNot 13y ago
The real question here is why the no-fly list exists in the first place. Because it really makes no sense: there is no human-being alive who is too dangerous to, with appropriate screening, be put on airplane and flown somewhere. The no-fly list is solely punitive, and argued for on the ridiculous basis that it somehow prevents the organization of dangerous individuals (as though they can't just drive between states, or you know, send email).
- einhverfr 13y ago
  I am waiting for the perfect case to challenge the no fly list on its face. Scenario: A resident of Hawaii ends up on the list. Problems: There is no alternative to air travel to/from Hawaii to travel about the country, much less about the world. Thus while the government may argue there is no right to air travel, there is a right to engage in interstate travel that is well settled and removing the only form of interstate travel interferes with that unquestionably. So you have the possibility of saying flights to/from Hawaii can't be covered, in which case the equal protection guarantee read into the 5th Amendment doesn't apply independent of state of residency, or you have to throw the whole list out.
  - erichocean 13y ago
    You could take a cruise ship, or hire your own airplane. The no-fly list only applies to commercial airports. So I don't think that merely being in Hawaii is going to help.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      How practical are each of these, and to what extent do other means of transportation at least check the no-fly list (that it is only binding to commercial airports doesn't mean it only applies to them).
    - theandrewbailey 13y ago
      Someone could successfully argue that such would be an unreasonable burden, unless they are a millionaire.
revelation 13y ago
There are obviously things where it becomes completely immaterial if something happened by error. Depriving someone of their constitutional rights is most certainly one of these. The only remedy can be to handle these cases as if intentional, such as to rectify the processes that allowed it to happen. Look at page 9 of the ruling, the VGTOF form. It shows checkboxes, which any human being can reasonably interpret as boolean values. But the intent is negated! It asks you to check those lists that you do NOT want someone entered in (so true (checked) becomes false (not in list)). This is terrible style in programming, it is completely unacceptable in forms that brand you a terrorist. (Regardless, someone needs to be fired for the $4M alone that will be going to plaintiff to cover their costs. Theres error, and then theres refusing to fix them.)
mnw21cam 13y ago
So, if the agent checked the wrong boxes, presumably (in order to place this person on the no fly list) there must have been something dodgy in the boxes that were checked. Does this mean that someone else (who the boxes actually belonged to) was mistakenly not put on the no fly list? Shouldn't the government be trying to track this person down?
- andrewaylett 13y ago
  My reading of the article suggests that the form was for the right person, but was filled in ticking each question the opposite of the way it should have been filled in. My conclusion is that adding someone to the no-fly list is purely a box-ticking exercise (in the literal meaning of the phrase), without actually requiring any written reasoning or any proof of anything.
  - mnw21cam 13y ago
    Yeah, but what about the boxes that were checked, and what did they have in them? I don't see what this has to do with a form-filling mistake.
    - andrewaylett 13y ago
      I've just realised that the idiom 'checking boxes' might be foreign to you. In this case, the 'boxes' are squares on a piece of paper, and 'checking' them refers to filling them with a tick-mark. I managed to avoid using the term in my comment as I'm from the UK and it's definitely a US thing.
lhnz 13y ago
Does anybody on Hacker News think they could design a system with a 0% error rate? Whenever you design a system like this, it's just a matter of time before a mistake is made. Small errors don't necessarily mean that the whole system should be gotten rid of. If there's a benefit to the system existing you might want to consider adding an undo feature [0] or simply using it less. It's becoming pretty clear to me that system designers are needed at a government bureaucracy level. [0] Other UX features like authorisation or confirmation boxes would decrease the error rate but not zero it.
leobelle 13y ago
Now that everyone in this thread has pointed out what the problem is and has shared how they feel about the problem, what's a real world, plausible solution so this doesn't happen again in the future?
mariuolo 13y ago
Any chance to obtain any financial redress?

251 points by rosser 13y ago

I really hope America in the future looks back on the government of this time the same way Germany looks back on the Nazi government (yes, just Godwinned it); with shame, and a fierce determination to never allow it to happen again.

busterarm 13y ago
If only we could be so lucky. There were a brief few decades in the United States where you couldn't be born the "wrong color", born the "wrong gender" (let's leave advanced concepts like non-binary gender and fluidity off the table for a moment, but they invalidate my statement), belong to the "wrong religion" or have the "wrong politics". We're just back to the status quo, that's all.
- jwise0 13y ago
  When were these? I can't think of a time like that in the history of the United States, sorting by decade or so...
  - dubfan 13y ago
    For starters, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Massacre
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - busterarm 13y ago
    I hope i'm understanding you correctly in that you think there's never been "good times" with some degree of racial/gender/religious/political equality. Largely I would agree with you, but I don't think that's the general sentiment among Americans thinking of their history, especially with respect to the last quarter of the 1900s. I'm also not trying to claim them all at once, but individually and in very general terms. If you're arguing the opposite though, I don't know where we could begin to discuss the chasm between our understandings.
    - dalke 13y ago
      > I don't think that's the general sentiment among Americans thinking of their history, especially with respect to the last quarter of the 1900s "General" implies majority, yes? In which case isn't your statement almost tautologically true? At least if most Americans are part of the majority? Instead, shouldn't we ask instead how those of the historically "wrong color", "wrong gender", "wrong religion", and "wrong politics" perceive things? Certainly in 2006, "Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years" http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2816.html http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2006/UR_RELEASE_MIG_2... As it says, there has been a trend of "increasing social tolerance" over the last part of the 20th century, but that's not the same as couldn't.
      - judk 13y ago
        Fun fact: Most people are in some minority group; there are many groups.
        shangxiao 13y ago
        I would even argue that all people belong to some form of minority group ;)
        dalke 13y ago
        Fun fact: there are only four minority groups in this discussion, those being "wrong color", "wrong gender", "wrong religion", and "wrong politics". Fun fact: discrimination in the workplace is generally legal. The law lists only a few exceptions. But when someone talks about anti-discrimination policies, they mean those few exceptions and not the entire universe of all possible ways to discriminate. Fun fact: billionaires in the US are indeed a minority, but not considered a traditionally oppressed minority which, you know, is the point of this conversation. Fun fact: there's plenty of evidence to show that being female, being black, being Muslim, and being a communist in the US is more likely to have a negative effect, compared to someone male, white, Lutheran, and Democrat. Fun facts: California still has a law preventing teachers from being in the Communist party: http://www.dailybulletin.com/social-affairs/20130113/california-law-keeps-communist-party-members-from-teaching http://www.dailybulletin.com/social-affairs/20130113/califor... , and in 2001, Michael Italie was fired from Goodwill for being a member of the Socialist Worker Party. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2002/07/can_your_boss_fire_you_for_your_political_beliefs.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2... or http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6543/654302.html http://www.themilitant.com/2001/6543/654302.html .
lukifer 13y ago
Honestly, I wish the Godwin moratorium would end. The lessons of Nazi Germany are not that Germans in the 1930s were the most evil persons in history, making it erroneous and offensive to compare anyone else to them. In fact, it's quite the opposite: the lesson is that all humans have the capacity for extreme evil when it is socially normalized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banality_of_evil http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banal... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_Lucifer_Effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_Lucifer_Eff...
- busterarm 13y ago
  Moratoriums on topics of conversation only tend to exist when people understand the terms in meanings that are directly and completely contradictory. Your statement highlights this point quite nicely because yes, people believe that either "Nazis were the most evil people ever" or "Everyone is just as evil as the Nazis given the right circumstance/context." There are similar problems with topics like "fascism", "socialism", "patriotism", "freedom", "morals" and "religious belief"..and even Godwin's law itself. Following that, willingness to discuss these topics is usually a sign of either incredible intellect or incredible stupidity. Also, congratulations for not appearing stupid. I too do not find for Godwin's Law too favorably.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Oh come on, don't pat yourself on the back for not liking Godwin's law when you haven't even bothered to understand what he was saying. It's criticism of people who resort to screaming Hitler when it is not warranted! That idiots have used an observation to shout down conversations is not the fault of the observer.
    - busterarm 13y ago
      Well, for sure. I understand what he was saying and I don't even disagree. I'm just stating plainly that people use Godwin's Law in exactly the manner as what he was criticizing to begin with. It's just become another tool to ruin conversations.
yaix 13y ago
Comparing it to the GDR ("East Germany") would be more apropriate, I guess. And you'd avoid Godwin.

beedogs 13y ago

> Attorneys working pro bono spent as much as $300,000 litigating the case and $3.8 million in attorney’s fees. So it costs about 4 million dollars to recover from the United States government accidentally, arbitrarily ruining your life. What a sad and terrifying place America has become.

DerpDerpDerp 13y ago
Don't forget that it took 7 years for them to admit a guy filled out the form wrong.
- a3n 13y ago
  And that she was the only person so far to have done so. We're stabbing ourselves in the heart with a fork.
jackgolding 13y ago
This is the real travesty, mistakes happen but the cost is life-breaking.
powertower 13y ago
> What a sad and terrifying place America has become. 1 human error is not a statistic, nor does it represent the system in any way. I still like America and I'm okay with this happening... The system took some time, but it ultimately worked. Which is a credit to it, and not a penalty against it.
- mcpherrinm 13y ago
  7 years and 4 million dollars to get on a plane is not working. It absolutely represents the system: There's no way to handle human error, which we all know happens.
  - powertower 13y ago
    I seriously doubt that pro-bono counsel actually worked 24/7 for 7 years on this case. I also doubt the 3-5MM amount, which is probably designed to extract as much cash from the government when the time comes (it's probably 3x of whatever the ceiling is for the damage award). More than likely, the 7 year figure involved about a month of form submitting, a month or two of figuring out the system/process, a few days in court, and a whole lot of wait time. At the end, this complicated matter worked itself out. In a secret court no less. Which is a testament to itself.

busterarm 13y ago

Let's be real here. The only "bureaucratic mistake" here is an agent filling out a form improperly in a way that victimized someone. Everything that happened after that is both deliberate and malicious. If a mistake was made, it should be easy to correct and not be followed by years of fighting to not only keep it from being corrected but to keep it a secret. They've successfully kept most of it a secret, even though the direct victim had their suffering eased. The indirect and ultimate victims of this, our individual rights and society's ideals, are still suffering.

deleted 13y ago
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Mithaldu 13y ago
This is a very important detail of the whole dreary affair. As surprising as the cause of the whole matter may be, the government after that willfully lied to anyone and everyone, including the judge of the court case, ignored legally binding orders and probably broke several laws. The Paper's Please blog has an excellent timeline of this case: http://papersplease.org/wp/category/papers-please/ http://papersplease.org/wp/category/papers-please/
- busterarm 13y ago
  What's amazing is that I'm well familiar with the details of this story, but Wired's reporting of it was so dry and disinteresting that I didn't associate the names or facts with the case I was already aware of. What's sad is that I didn't even need to know the facts to agree that what you said was true.
- DateK 13y ago
  I wonder if there are any public APIs for those "TSDB, TIDE, CLASS, KSTF, TECS, IBIS, TUSCAN, TACTICS" etc. databases. Would be interesting to look at the data. What are the acronyms? select * from TUSCAN.Errorists;
Natsu 13y ago
When I look at this, I understand why mistakes happen. Checking the wrong box, ok, someone could easily do that. What I don't understand is why the system reacts so harshly to double-down on an obvious mistake rather than simply fixing it and preventing the whole thing from being an issue? Surely that would be easier than years of litigation, no?

brosco45 13y ago

Nah, it was the right box.

sdegutis 13y ago

Honestly, I feel that there are situations where a government makes mistakes. I think some cases should be assessed and handled on a case-by-case basis, whereas others are very black-and-white and should be handled en masse. Personally, I believe this situation may be one of these two, in which case it should be handled appropriately by the government. But overall, I think the most important thing is that governments should handle the cases correctly depending on what kind of case it is, and be held accountable for their mistakes.

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rwg 13y ago

Her daughter, an American citizen, was also denied boarding on a flight from Malaysia to the US. She was trying to take the flight in order to appear in court as a witness in this same trial. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131208/00164525497/witness-no-fly-list-trial-who-was-blocked-flying-to-trial-shows-that-doj-flat-out-lied-court.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131208/00164525497/witnes...

teraflop 13y ago
Interestingly, there's a section of Judge Alsup's ruling regarding this incident, nearly all of which (paragraphs 72 through 76) has been redacted.
- e12e 13y ago
  [edit: formatting to conform to intended dramatic effect] I find especially the conclusion hilarious (hilarious because I'm not a US citizen, I suppose I should find it tragic): (...) C. The government must inform Dr. Ibrahim that ███████████ █████████████████ (...) IT IS SO ORDERED [edit2: It just occurred to me that Dr. Ibrahim would probably risk being placed back on the no-fly list if she made the full ruling public...]

protomyth 13y ago

Skip the article and go read the actual ruling. It makes me quite mad what they edited out and the crappy relief given. http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2014/02/ibraruling.pdf http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2014/02/ibraru...

hudibras 13y ago
Page 22 will make your blood boil: Dr. Ibrahim was given a letter by the consular officer informing her that the Department of State was unable to issue her a visa...The consular officer wrote the word (Terrorist) on the form to explain why she was deemed inadmissible. The judge helpfully includes a photocopy of the letter with the handwritten note.
- protomyth 13y ago
  I get the feeling our government would be a bit more responsive if individuals and agencies could be sued for libel.
A1kmm 13y ago
Although there are quite a few hints that allow an educated guess about the censored parts of the order to be made. > and the very real misapprehension on her part that the > later visa denials are traceable to her erroneous 2004 > placement on the no-fly list The judge's choice of the word 'misapprehension' implies that the visa denials were not related to the original mistake, and were for some other reason. > Plaintiff’s counsel became cleared to receive SSI, > but never tried to become cleared to read classified > information > Everyone else in this case [except the plaintiff] knows it. This implies that in the case, 'Security Sensitive Information' was presented about the real reason her visa was denied - and part of the order is that the plaintiff should be given this information. > One might wonder why, if Dr. Ibrahim herself is > concededly not a threat to our national > security, the government would find her inadmissible > under the Act. In this connection, please remember that > the Act includes nine ineligible categories. Some of them > go beyond whether the applicant herself poses a national > security threat. This strongly hints that the section the visa was denied under was this one: "is the spouse or child of an alien who is inadmissible under this subparagraph, if the activity causing the alien to be found inadmissible occurred within the last 5 years". Therefore, it seems very likely that the information that the government was ordered to hand over (but was censored) is that the government believes that her husband or one of her parents meets the criteria for exclusion under the terrorist activities section.

coldcode 13y ago

What a sad and frighting story that the US has become. I wonder how many of the soldiers who died for this country would volunteer if they had known then what their fight for freedom would become.

judk 13y ago
Most of them, military is the highest paying job for a large class of Americans.

noonespecial 13y ago

So all you have to do is slip an error into "the machine" and it becomes nearly impossible to fix? I'm thbiking that makes "bureaucratic terrorism" a very real possibility. One database hack or clever feat of social engineering could effectively end the paper lives of dozens of citizens.

theandrewbailey 13y ago
I'm stealing the term bureaucratic terrorism. Thank you.

linuxhansl 13y ago

I read somewhere that the no-fly list is so widely distributed that currently known terrorists are not actually placed on that list as this would leak information about who the US considers a terrorist to too wide an audience. Obviously I have no way to validate that story, but if true it would cement the story about that list being an utterly useless farce.

judk 13y ago
Perhaps the whole set of noflys are a cover so that when someone is harassed or tortured by the govt, that doesn't leak any info about who is actually a terrorist.

ilamont 13y ago

A string of incidents starting not long after 9/11 revealed to me what a farce the system is. The first was seeing old men in their 80s being frisked at TSA checkpoints. The second was a close friend, mixed race and wearing a beard, who was repeatedly stopped for "random" in-terminal personal questioning and searches (that is, beyond the checkpoint). He was the only person I knew who got this kind of treatment, and the only obvious difference was his appearance. And then there was this (1): Washington Post: Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list. Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed. If it took a powerful senator weeks or months to fix the problem, I knew it was hopeless for us mere mortals. When I was in college many years ago, a punk band called the Dead Kennedys released an album called Bedtime For Democracy that had this famous piece of artwork (2). It was a cartoon representation of the Statue of Liberty, crawling with Wall Street thieves, jack-booted SWAT teams, Madison Avenue shills, and other cons and clowns. There were tears coming out of the statue's eyes. Take a look at it zoomed in if you can, or buy the LP with the full-sized cover. I liked the DKs for their music and lyrics, and the cover went right along with the band's brand of socio-political satire. Nevertheless, at the time I thought the image was a little over the top. Not anymore. 1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug... 2. http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/d/deadkennedys_bedtime_cd_uk_2001_images.html http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/d/deadkennedys_bedtime_cd_uk_...

kyro 13y ago
Funnily enough, I watched Dr. Strangelove for the first time last night and was saddened by the assumed accuracy of its portrayal of political and governmental theater.
- shangxiao 13y ago
  I take it you read the article "Almost everything in Dr Strangelove was true" [1] ? :) [1] http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/strangelove-for-real.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2014/01/stran...

defen 13y ago

So, I'm curious which of the terrorist screening databases - "Consular Lookout and Support Systems", "Interagency Border Information System", "TSA Selectee List" "TUSCAN", "TACTICS" Mr. Kelley did intend to sign Rahinah Ibrahim up for, and why. Clearly it was at least one of them, since the ruling states that he filled out the form "exactly the opposite way from the instructions on the form".

hudibras 13y ago
It's left unsaid, but my guess is that he left all the boxes blank thinking that would keep her from being added to any of the databases. Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to your next question: if that's true, why was he filling out the form in the first place?

acdha 13y ago

This is a powerful reminder that the entire state secrets privilege was invented to cover up official incompetence[1] and obviously has not strayed very far from its origins. I'd like to get rid of the unconstitutional no-fly list but it's even more important to remove a privilege with so few benefits and such great potential for abuse. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds

judk 13y ago
This need to be reminded every time state secrets are mentioned, until this case is every US History textbook.

seanccox 13y ago

Harry Buttle?

XorNot 13y ago

The real question here is why the no-fly list exists in the first place. Because it really makes no sense: there is no human-being alive who is too dangerous to, with appropriate screening, be put on airplane and flown somewhere. The no-fly list is solely punitive, and argued for on the ridiculous basis that it somehow prevents the organization of dangerous individuals (as though they can't just drive between states, or you know, send email).

einhverfr 13y ago
I am waiting for the perfect case to challenge the no fly list on its face. Scenario: A resident of Hawaii ends up on the list. Problems: There is no alternative to air travel to/from Hawaii to travel about the country, much less about the world. Thus while the government may argue there is no right to air travel, there is a right to engage in interstate travel that is well settled and removing the only form of interstate travel interferes with that unquestionably. So you have the possibility of saying flights to/from Hawaii can't be covered, in which case the equal protection guarantee read into the 5th Amendment doesn't apply independent of state of residency, or you have to throw the whole list out.
- erichocean 13y ago
  You could take a cruise ship, or hire your own airplane. The no-fly list only applies to commercial airports. So I don't think that merely being in Hawaii is going to help.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    How practical are each of these, and to what extent do other means of transportation at least check the no-fly list (that it is only binding to commercial airports doesn't mean it only applies to them).
  - theandrewbailey 13y ago
    Someone could successfully argue that such would be an unreasonable burden, unless they are a millionaire.

revelation 13y ago

There are obviously things where it becomes completely immaterial if something happened by error. Depriving someone of their constitutional rights is most certainly one of these. The only remedy can be to handle these cases as if intentional, such as to rectify the processes that allowed it to happen. Look at page 9 of the ruling, the VGTOF form. It shows checkboxes, which any human being can reasonably interpret as boolean values. But the intent is negated! It asks you to check those lists that you do NOT want someone entered in (so true (checked) becomes false (not in list)). This is terrible style in programming, it is completely unacceptable in forms that brand you a terrorist. (Regardless, someone needs to be fired for the $4M alone that will be going to plaintiff to cover their costs. Theres error, and then theres refusing to fix them.)

mnw21cam 13y ago

So, if the agent checked the wrong boxes, presumably (in order to place this person on the no fly list) there must have been something dodgy in the boxes that were checked. Does this mean that someone else (who the boxes actually belonged to) was mistakenly not put on the no fly list? Shouldn't the government be trying to track this person down?

andrewaylett 13y ago
My reading of the article suggests that the form was for the right person, but was filled in ticking each question the opposite of the way it should have been filled in. My conclusion is that adding someone to the no-fly list is purely a box-ticking exercise (in the literal meaning of the phrase), without actually requiring any written reasoning or any proof of anything.
- mnw21cam 13y ago
  Yeah, but what about the boxes that were checked, and what did they have in them? I don't see what this has to do with a form-filling mistake.
  - andrewaylett 13y ago
    I've just realised that the idiom 'checking boxes' might be foreign to you. In this case, the 'boxes' are squares on a piece of paper, and 'checking' them refers to filling them with a tick-mark. I managed to avoid using the term in my comment as I'm from the UK and it's definitely a US thing.

lhnz 13y ago

Does anybody on Hacker News think they could design a system with a 0% error rate? Whenever you design a system like this, it's just a matter of time before a mistake is made. Small errors don't necessarily mean that the whole system should be gotten rid of. If there's a benefit to the system existing you might want to consider adding an undo feature [0] or simply using it less. It's becoming pretty clear to me that system designers are needed at a government bureaucracy level. [0] Other UX features like authorisation or confirmation boxes would decrease the error rate but not zero it.

leobelle 13y ago

Now that everyone in this thread has pointed out what the problem is and has shared how they feel about the problem, what's a real world, plausible solution so this doesn't happen again in the future?

mariuolo 13y ago

Any chance to obtain any financial redress?