by mlm on 8/27/13, 4:04 AM with 222 comments
by ck2 on 8/27/13, 4:25 AM
This writeup is not only just nit-picking his story - it's using the TSA as witness against itself.
I am most certainly not going to the take TSA's word for what happened. That would be like taking the NSA's word to congress for example. What do you think happens by lesser agencies on non-sworn testimony when they see what their big-brother can get away with?
And the "behavior detection" has already been outed multiple times as a huge pile of poo. It's identical to the signals cops can give their dogs for false positives to search someone anyway just because they want to.
By the way, if he was so dangerous and already being watched YOU LET HIM GET INTO A CROWDED TERMINAL WITH LOTS AND LOTS OF PEOPLE WITH HIS LUGGAGE AND BACKPACK.
Morons. So someone is only dangerous if they get on the plane, not in the crowed terminal eh?
I feel so safe now at your crowded checkpoints.
Prove to me they didn't search his home without serving him a warrant and then we'll talk about the accuracy of this story.
by cup on 8/27/13, 4:30 AM
>Mr. Mukerjee appears to have been flagged by the Behaviour Detection Officer (BDO)
>Mr. Mukerjee became verbally aggressive
>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.
I know a lot of you HNs live in America and probably arnt familiar with dictatorial or cold war communist institutions but these kind of articles are classic examples of the publics refusal to acknowledge injustice perpetraded by a power hungry government institution. The sooner people realise that their government is not all good the better. In the meantime articles like these and those who write them continue to facilitate the decline of public freedoms and personal liberties.
Flying Fish should feel ashamed.
by beloch on 8/27/13, 5:20 AM
----------------
Deciding if I am detained: a rule of thumb.
If I receive word about an urgent emergency, such as my wife being hit by a bus or about to give birth, can I immediately go to the hospital? If yes, I am free. If not, I am detained.
This rule breaks down a bit on amusement park rides, but one would assume the ride operators would immediately let you off if you could communicate with them and, in any case, you're only going to be stuck there for a couple of minutes at the most.
Mukerjee was not in "limbo". He was detained. When someone chooses to redefine words White-House-style I tend to view whatever else they say as though they are serving an agenda.
by wpietri on 8/27/13, 4:31 AM
The guy makes his money as a consultant to airlines; he here gives the official side of things under cover of perfect anonymity and official deniability. He does it while pretending to be a neutral arbiter of fact, showing no skepticism at all about official claims. And, naturally, he doesn't bother to follow up with the author of the blog post he responded to. I guess he was just too gosh-darned busy writing down what people with nice uniforms told him.
This just in: guy with hand in pocket of airlines believes airlines did just the right thing. What innovative reporting!
by vowelless on 8/27/13, 4:32 AM
After an hour and a thorough search of my belonging, I was rescheduled on a different flight (for free) and I got back home.
Something about the original story did seem a little strange to me. I am a text book "random search" person - born in the middle east, Arabic sounding name, frequent trips to the middle east, etc. But I always tend to comply and be honest about what I have been doing. Besides that one detention and "random" screens, I've not been too bothered by the security personal (remember, they are people too). I guess I am just used to more intrusive searches in other countries.
Edit: For the record, I am not a citizen or permanent resident of the US (work visa).
by nikcub on 8/27/13, 5:01 AM
Who cares what the Behavior Detection Officer thought, he was wrong
Who cares what the screening machine thought he was carrying, it was wrong
Who cares what behavior the TSA officers and supervisors 'noted', they were also wrong
If a person cannot simply get up and leave the TSA area if they haven't been arrested, then the law is wrong.
If the TSA can't do their job without threatening the rights and freedom of movement of a large part of the population then they shouldn't be doing it at all. All this inconvenience for an organization that in its 12 years has yet to even catch a real terrorist.
by Yver on 8/27/13, 4:24 AM
Well I'm sold. Serves you right for looking suspicious in front of the Looking-suspicious Detection Officer!
by tlrobinson on 8/27/13, 4:37 AM
Also, regarding:
"There are no independent sources within the TSA or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who can find any record of NYPD involvement – let alone a search of his apartment by federal authorities – and there is no incident report referencing any further action involving Mr. Mukerjee."
Given what we know about NSLs and such, how could we possibly believe that the lack of unclassified records is proof that no search took place?
by interpol_p on 8/27/13, 4:36 AM
Seriously? If my bag has my expensive laptop, iPad and other stuff in it I'm gonna be likely to grab for it as well. I wouldn't want to leave it with the TSA — especially when there have been reports of theft and unprofessional behaviour.
How can they possibly classify his behaviour as "unusual"? It seems pretty normal to me.
by arjie on 8/27/13, 5:27 AM
1. Don't talk to the police: You are being impolite, and you will be unable to assert your rights.
2. Be polite: Obviously violates "don't talk..." but also if you say, even politely, that you refuse certain police requests which you have a right to, then "they're just trying to help you out" and you're rude to refuse.
3. Assert your rights: "May I search your vehicle?" "No, officer." "Listen, man, there's no reason to be suspicious, I'm just trying to make sure there's no trouble. We're here to protect you. Why not just do it?" "I'm asserting my right to refuse a search, officer." That last line is perceived as rude by hundreds of people on social networking sites and is likely to be perceived as 'suspicious', 'rude', or 'aggressive' by the officers themselves.
The thing is, no matter what you do, if you catch a police officer on a bad day you will be in trouble. This is because you are always violating the law in America. For instance, I've noticed that driving the speed limit is something no one does and doing so in some places will lead to your being honked at at best and being cut off rudely to "teach you a lesson" at worst. This means the authorities can always catch you on something because it is socially unacceptable to follow the law.
Personally, I have the feeling that Aditya Mukherjee was just doing exactly what any of us would have done if we had opted out and been treated as disgracefully as that.
by ISL on 8/27/13, 4:47 AM
"This is absolutely correct, at this time he was in limbo, he was not being detained, but he could not leave. A person cannot simply leave the security area of any airport once they are on the airside but have not satisfactorily completed screening. Once a person has passed through security, but is not cleared to fly and then chooses to leave, such as Mr. Mukerjee, s/he must be escorted out of the secure area (and usually the terminal)."
by Zaheer on 8/27/13, 4:27 AM
What 'unusual behaviors' led to him getting flagged? While maybe Mr. Mukerjee had suspicious behavior I'm skeptical of saying that his looks did not contribute to the heightened harsh treatment. Would a Caucasian male get the same treatment?
by unalone on 8/27/13, 4:30 AM
by rdtsc on 8/27/13, 5:15 AM
The fact that they need to build a straw man argument basically dismissing all those who might disagree as conspiracy nuts (a well known PR tactic) should make one scared and worried. This is a pretty good PR technique used by those that know what they are doing.
> Fish, is globe hopping professional photographer, airline emerging media consultant working with large global airlines and founder of The Travel Strategist.
"airline emerging media consultant" does it mean airlines are basically paying him to PR on their behalf? What does that soup of words even mean.
by mabhatter on 8/27/13, 4:48 AM
Ts not enough for the agent to recognize his time was clearly wasted.. There it 0.0001% this guy might really be a terrorist because somebody else said so. They kept pouring resources into trying to prove him "wrong" rather than verifying a threat existed or not.
It's Kaffkaesque at its best... I'm scared of you because of my training, so it's your fault what you did to me that makes me scared. If it wasn't FOR REAL, it's so absurd to be a comedy skit.
by codezero on 8/27/13, 4:50 AM
No, I think most people just believe the TSA to be completely inept and operated without much oversight or coherence. Complaining about (repeated) bad treatment doesn't make it a conspiracy.
by InclinedPlane on 8/27/13, 4:47 AM
Where is the presumption of innocence? Where is the protection of the liberties and rights of the individual? Where is the responsibility and accountability of the agents of government and the officers of the law?
Nowhere to be seen here.
These are not the sorts of trends and behaviors on behalf of the state we should be defending.
by slg on 8/27/13, 4:29 AM
by Anechoic on 8/27/13, 4:15 AM
by molecule on 8/27/13, 4:37 AM
also, his shilling herein for TSA and Jet Blue smells like a conflict of interest:
Steven Frischling, aka: Fish, is... airline emerging media consultant working with large global airlines...
by rjvir on 8/27/13, 5:19 AM
by jonah on 8/27/13, 5:54 AM
by sehugg on 8/27/13, 4:47 AM
by senthilnayagam on 8/27/13, 4:29 AM
please read yesterdays post Detained in the US for “Visiting Thailand Too Much” http://www.richardbarrow.com/2013/08/detained-in-the-us-for-... discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6276939
read the last couple of sentences
"Be careful about what you have on your laptop and memory card in your camera. They could search everything. The pictures of your kids taking a bath maybe interpreted in a different way by immigration officers. .... And certainly don’t buy any porno DVDs here in Thailand to take home. You have been warned. Don’t take this lightly."
edit: removed the context about pirated goods
by reso on 8/27/13, 4:44 AM
by morisy on 8/27/13, 5:16 AM
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/tsa...
Given that involves a lot of personal information, I also asked for more general information sans personal details:
https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/sec...
I'd be surprised if either are fulfilled with any actual information.
by etchalon on 8/27/13, 5:44 AM
What's most interesting to me is this line: "However on any given day, the TSA and Port Authority Police at JFK interact with passengers departing on non-stop flights to and from Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait City, Lagos, Istanbul, Jeddah, Riyadh, Casablanca, Amman, Riga and Tashkent."
Mukerjee’s entire account, and virality, is predicated upon implied racism. And yet, the numbers stack against him pretty heavily. He was not the only "muslim-looking" person to go through the airport that day. Not even close.
He was not singled out just because he was Muslim-looking. He was singled out because, if for no other reason, the dude tested positive for explosives, and, according to both accounts, was clearly agitated about it.
Now, yes, there's a completely logical reason for that. Yes, he has every right to be agitated when falsely accused. But no, it is not unreasonable for any security personal anywhere to throw up massive red flags about a guy who TESTED POSITIVE FOR EXPLOSIVES and was acted incredibly suspicious. Mukerjee is literally case example of what agents are trained to look for.
Everyone is up in arms about this, not because Mukerjee is even remotely worth being up in arms about, but because people just like bashing the TSA, regardless of the facts.
by joelrunyon on 8/27/13, 4:27 AM
Not withstanding the original article, the above statement alone should be enough for us to question the pervasive use of the TSA.
by tokenadult on 8/27/13, 4:31 AM
I appreciate seeing someone else's perspective on the incident that has appalled all my Facebook friends who have seen Mr. Mukerjee's own account
http://varnull.adityamukerjee.net/post/59021412512/dont-fly-...
of his experience at the airport (which was a top post on Hacker News for about a full day). We can all learn something about any incident by hearing a second opinion on it.
That said, if Mr. Mukerjee’s behavior that day was "aggressive," my interpretation of that, never having met him, but knowing his roommate very well indeed, is that he was assertive about claiming the civil rights of an American. (I imagine he was also hungry, tired, and eager to travel to see his family.) It's too bad that people who assert their rights are taken to be acting suspiciously, but let's examine the incident and modify the system in a way that makes it easier, not harder, for a tired and hungry traveler to get straight answers and have factual misimpressions resolved, rather than assuming that every loyal American[1] is a terrorist.
After formal study of the law and work as a judicial clerk in a state supreme court, I find that my bottom line is that I still have to remind myself to be very deferential in the presence of law enforcement officers--especially armed law enforcement officers. Asserting my rights is not something the system makes easy to do, EVEN FOR A LAWYER, once the situational triggers of law-enforcement occur. But this is all the more reason to let the great majority of travelers who are neither terrorists nor lawyers, but just people trying to make a living and spend time with their families, enjoy efficient, friendly travel. Something went awry here, and being just one remove away from directly knowing the victim, I'm inclined not to blame the victim.
[1] I am sure that Mr. Mukerjee has a strong sense of being an American because he met my son in Ireland, where both were as part of a summer program. The Irish kids teased all the Americans in the program for their horrific accents in spoken English [smile]. My son and Mr. Mukerjee forged their friendship through their shared Americanness in a foreign land, and I think the United States ought to treat all its own citizens and all the foreigners who visit America better than current TSA procedures treat air travelers.
AFTER EDIT: Another comment in this thread reminded me to check the background of the author of the blog post kindly submitted here. Wired reported in 2009
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/dhs-threatens-blogg...
that the blogger was questioned by TSA agents after releasing a TSA document on his blog. It seems that at least some of the time he has been most interested in posting an interesting read for frequent travelers, and not necessarily trying to curry favor with TSA. I think he succeeded here, too, agree or disagree, in writing an interesting blog post (as did Mr. Mukerjee in his blog post).
by mindslight on 8/27/13, 4:35 AM
And please do tell, why is it wrong for one to be agitated or aggressive when being hassled by goons? Any pretense of civilized interaction vanishes the minute they threaten you into complying with their theatre.
by lessnonymous on 8/27/13, 6:47 AM
I mean he's a blogger, so just like you and me, he'd have to put in requests to all those agencies for information, and then have to re apply when they lost his paperwork. Then they'd say no in a hundred different ways. And about five years later everyone would have lost interest.
It didn't happen.
There's only two possibilities: 1. He made it all up, or 2. They gave him the story
by artellectual on 8/27/13, 4:46 AM
by jMyles on 8/27/13, 4:37 AM
by dnautics on 8/27/13, 7:19 AM
No. Mr. Mukherjee refused screening in private. It's unacceptable to be unconsensually screened in private without a third party (I.E. not TSA officer) witness. I've refused to be screened in private, the TSA makes it VERY hard for you to do that, and I definitely got verbally agitated. How would you feel if there you were exposed to a significant risk of being sexually assaulted with no witnesses present?
"This is absolutely correct, at this time he was in limbo, he was not being detained, but he could not leave."
That is completely unacceptable.
Once you are threatened with sexual assault, it is unreasonable to expect to be anything besides "aggressive evasive".
by pcl on 8/27/13, 5:46 AM
by tptacek on 8/28/13, 4:20 PM
My take is that this is a facile analysis that harms the credibility of its source; I am less likely to take this person seriously in the future after reading this.
I appreciate that they took the time to do actual "reporting" by contacting officials involved with the story.
However, a couple things worth keeping in mind as you read it:
* We can reasonably be convinced that Mukerjee wasn't hiding anything. The concern evinced by TSA, NY PAPD, and JetBlue was that Mukerjee was a danger to the flight he was trying to board. We know he wasn't! This article routinely supplies innuendo about Mukerjee's evasiveness during screening. But we know he had nothing to be evasive about, and thus that the signals TSA picked up on were false; the article's framing puts the onus for that on Mukerjee, incorrectly.
* TSA's rationale for detaining Mukerjee doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. The reasoning supplied by this article could be applied just as effectively to an 85 year old grandmother or a 10 year old boy. It's not falsifiable and not relevant to what happened.
* The analysis glosses over the pivotal moment in the story. The problem wasn't that Mukerjee was denied water or questioned by people that don't know anything about the world's third largest religion. The problem happened when TSA refused to escort Mukerjee, with his carryon, out of the airport, as they are required to do when a passenger refuses screening. Mukerjee's own account has him trying to leave, but put in a position where doing so would cost him his bag and computer. That's the problem here.
There's a worthwhile case to be made for skepticism about some elements of Mukerjee's story. I agree with the article that it seems unlikely for PAPD to have searched his house. It's interesting that Mukerjee claims he was interviewed by an FBI agent when no record seems to have existed of that. I buy the analysis that says that a coherent rebuttal to Mukerjee's story could not easily have self-assembled from 3 different security agencies in the span of a couple days.
Unfortunately, it's hard to take skepticism seriously when it's framed in an article that seems hellbent on taking TSA's claims at face value.
by linuxhansl on 8/27/13, 5:13 AM
I'm not known to be a conspiracy terrorist, and I do not believe there is one here. Just a bunch officers doing their (IMHO) misguided and useless jobs.
As a rational person I am not afraid of terrorist - the chances to be victim of an attack are minuscule compared to the risk of dying in car accident. I am afraid of getting into gear of law enforcement - for example by not simply behaving right in the eyes of the BDO, as in this story.
Lastly what is this "limbo" state the article refers to? Either I am being detained or I am free to go. There is nothing in between, if you are not allowed to leave you're not "free to go" and thus you're being detained.
Edit: Spelling.
by LordHumungous on 8/27/13, 5:09 AM
by eksith on 8/27/13, 5:08 AM
Steven Frischling, aka: Fish, is globe hopping professional
photographer, airline emerging media consultant working with large
global airlines and founder of The Travel Strategist.by glenra on 8/27/13, 9:52 PM
Near as I can tell, this post confirms the original account. The differences between what he saw and what is being reported are trivial minutia. But if anyone actually cares to be able to find the truth in such cases, the thing to do is record all such searches. (And encourage the people being searched to do the same, and make the official tapes available to the searchee on request.)
It is REALLY HARD to defend one's rights against the morons of the TSA without getting angry at them. Any interaction with them raises blood pressure. If anything, it ought to be deemed "suspicious" if somebody doesn't get "agitated" when their trip is pointlessly interrupted by TSA agents demanding you bow and scrape before their authority.
by suprgeek on 8/27/13, 7:00 AM
This blog post is their way of saying "Fuck you..we will not change anything"
Figures.
by xdissent on 8/27/13, 4:27 AM
by dendory on 8/27/13, 6:00 AM
by sinkasapa on 8/27/13, 6:00 AM
Why do they allow children to fly then? :-)
by Zigurd on 8/27/13, 12:53 PM
Let's get those self-driving cars soon, so we can give the airlines what they deserve for not pushing back on behalf of their customers.
by mdasen on 8/27/13, 6:20 AM
by logn on 8/27/13, 5:10 AM
by goggles99 on 8/27/13, 7:08 AM
by rubiquity on 8/27/13, 4:57 AM
