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.
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:
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.
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?
I'm basically agreeing with you, but one of the most amazing things from the court's decision (that didn't make it into the Wired article--bad reporting) is that the FBI agent didn't know that he had filled out the form incorrectly until he was deposed in September 2013.
So I would say that there is more than one bureaucratic mistake that happened here. Nobody went back to Agent Kelley for years and asked, "Hey, man. Why did you fill out this form this way?"
He would have looked at the form, blinked twice, and said "Oh, shit!"--which is what I'm sure happened at the closed court proceedings when he was deposed.
I find it very naive to believe that the FBI agent filled out the form incorrectly.
Looks like a bad excuse to me to get over that issue finally.
It rather looks like that she was put on the list just because of an overzealous agent who didn't want to risc anything or maybe mixed up her name. And he didn't care to put that back, esp. after she complained. So they played the national security game for a while.
Probably the reason for that was the level of secrecy the government tried to maintain over the whole thing. It's likely the agent didn't even know the case was happening until he was told to show up in court. He didn't need to know the woman was contesting so no one bothered to tell him nor ask him about it.
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?
The US government never admits to being wrong. The only way to overcome a confrontation with the US government is to get a newer bill signed into law, at which point you can protect other people from the same adversity but the government will pretend the past never happened and you won't get any kind of amelioration of already-wronged wrongs.
This is the real issue. They want more power while claiming it's in the good hands, so you shouldn't worry. Your private data is safe. Your rights are respected. Your have nothing to worry if you are not a bad guy.
Government constantly shows that it shouldn't be trusted with anything sensitive. It makes stupid mistakes, but never admits that. How many cases happen that nobody ever realizes, because they are swept under the rug?
In the end we all should believe that they are "good" and competent. In spite of them proving us wrong all the time...
> 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.
I doubt you'd measure success exclusively by the number of false positives but you'd also need to factor in the impact of a false positive.
For eg: There was an x-ray machine [1] with a software bug that would accidentally deliver a dose 100 times the intended dose. I'm sure the machine operated correctly thousands of times however there were "at least 6 accidents" and 3 deaths (worst case scenario). One would not say that this system works.
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.
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.
I just did so. Your link supports my conclusions 100%.
It was mostly waiting time (95% of it from the looks of it), everyone trying to figure out jurisdiction and law issues, and the fact they were suing for lots and lots of money from the start - that made the government "fight" it by mostly conceding on the issues.
This whole story attempts to spin 1 human error event against the system.
It isn't the one human error that's the problem. It's the obstinate, malicious, willful unwillingness to admit and correct the error. It's the lying and coverup. It's the harassment (blocking the daughter, an American citizen, from flying to the trial). Check out the original case of the state secrets privilege to see that this has been going on for much too long.
If you really did read that link, then you'll have noticed that it's not just one error. A large fraction of all entries in the watchlist system are likely to be erroneous.
In case you missed that part, the statistics quoted in the paragraph starting at page 36, line 22 are particularly interesting.
It's not the time spent working which is the issue.
If you were accidentally put on the no fly list tomorrow would it be okay that you were not allowed to board an airplane anywhere in or bound for the us for 7 years?
I understand mistakes. That's no problem. The problem is refusal to admit a mistake except when ordered to by a court. All the government had to do was say, "Woops, misfiled that, you're off the list."
When we analyse a process, we don't simply measure failure rate, we also measure the failure mode. For instance, take a car which only fails with a probability 10^(-10) (pick a number you're happy with). Sounds not so bad? Well, what if the failure mode is "destroy the universe"? Not good now, is it? In fact, such a car would simply not be permitted to be used.
Anyway, this isn't some big argument against America. It's an argument against perpetrating a system that fails to correct its errors. With criticism, and bugfixes, it will become better.
How you recover from an error is a defining characteristic of the character of an individual or organisation. People make mistakes. Fixing them is what matters. Come clean and fix it as fast as you can. Anything less is not good enough.
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.
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.
You complain about old men being frisked, and then immediately complain about your friend being selected based on his appearance. Do you not see the massive contradiction there? Either it's reasonable to search people based on their appearance, or it's not. If it is, then why shouldn't your mixed-race, bearded friend be searched more? If it's not, then why shouldn't old men be searched too?
Personally, I am on the "not" side simply because it's good security: nothing stops attackers from recruiting old white men, and any appearance-based profiling you do can be exploited.
You complain about old men being frisked, and then immediately complain about your friend being selected based on his appearance. Do you not see the massive contradiction there?
Yes, I do. See "farce", referenced in my first sentence.
While I think your response is justified in this specific case given the small sample size, I don't think making two "contradictory" complaints is necessarily wrong in this context. If you make a lot of Type I errors, it might be the cost for reducing Type II errors, and if you make a lot of Type II errors, it might be the cost of reducing Type I errors, but if you make a lot of Type I and Type II errors, then maybe whatever you're doing just sucks.
They don't completely contradict each other. He's pointing out what he considers two examples of an unreasonable search, one is about racial profiling the other is about what he seems to consider common sense.
So called "common sense" encourages [racial] profiling. That's the problem with it, and why the two comments are at odds.
The only way that you remove the profiling, incidentally, is to remove discretion from agents and/or have some level of accountability for each stop. If they had to publish statistics detailing the profiles of everyone who went through additional security searches and why it was done I think you'd see a lot of action
so to him- its common sense to not search a demographic due to it being unreasonable, but also common sense not to search a demographic when it actually is reasonable?
Wasn't that precisely the first complaint - observing a pair of incidents which make no sense as a consistent policy? (the second complaint being that even a senator had trouble clearing up a mistake). Both the original comment and reply are consistent with that reading.
The "random" algorithm in a media player is not supposed to be "random pick with replacement". It is meant to be shuffle, and that's indeed what it is called instead of "random". A shuffle algorithm that plays the same song twice is indeed a broken shuffle algorithm (except if, of course, the playlist actually contains two instances of the same song).
Yes, but that's not what the GP was talking about. Sometimes shuffle will play two consecutive songs from the same album consecutively, just from randomness, and people will complain.
Incidentally, I prefer random pick with replacement, at least when selecting from a set of tracks greater than one album.
> If it took a powerful senator weeks or months to fix the problem, I knew it was hopeless for us mere mortals.
I see there've been a few references to the no-fly list and Judge Alsup, in this discussion, but I find this quote to be pertinent enough to warrant highlighting:
"At this point, Judge Alsup interrupted to ask a hypothetical question about the process. Suppose there’s some wrong information in a file that suggests that someone is a Communist, and as a result they get put on a watchlist. They apply for redress, and say, “I’m good person. I’ve never done anything wrong.” If they don’t know that they’re on the watchlist because they have been accused of being a Communist, how do they know to say, “And by the way, I’m not a Communist”?
“I can see that DHS TRIP would clear things up in the case of misidentification.” But how does the TRIP process allow the aggrieved party to address the secret information. “How does a person know that there is an improper reason that they would need to try to rebut?”"
Is there some courtroom subtlety going on that I'm unfamiliar with, or is the judge seriously taking for granted the idea that being a Communist is sufficient reason to be placed on a watchlist, and that the only injustice would be if you weren't really a Communist?
I believe it's a historical reference on the part of the judge. It certainly used to be enough to be placed on a watch-list in the US.
On a related note, I see the question about communism is now gone from the form for applying for a visitors visa to the US -- I can't find any documentation as to if it was ever there, or if I just remember it being there:
I'm pretty sure that line about terrorist organization has to be from after the first time I was in the US (the early 90s) -- but I could be wrong.
There's still this:
(a) Classes of aliens ineligible for visas or admission
Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, aliens who are inadmissible under the following paragraphs are ineligible to receive visas and ineligible to be admitted to the United States:
(D) Immigrant membership in totalitarian party
(i) In general Any immigrant who is or has been a member of or affiliated with the Communist or any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible.
On #1: If the TSA didn't frisk 80 year old men, any smart terrorist would begin recruiting 80 year olds. You can't have gaps in enforcement by policy or they will be exploited (sadly).
Bruce Schneier likes to say this too, as if it makes sense.
It doesn't. Your hypothetical terrorist group can't recruit with equal ease from any demographic group that strikes their fancy. So if we screen everyone equally, all[1] of the terrorists will be young single men.
If we start screening young, single, Arab men so heavily that it's more economical for a terrorist group to recruit Laotian grandmothers, that's exactly what we want. It will dramatically reduce the incidence of attacks, because it's extremely difficult to convince Laotian grandmothers to make them.
The optimal way to allocate screening resources is to produce the result that everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist. But you can't begin by assuming it; it's the goal you want to reach. If there's a demographic group with an elevated risk of offending, we want to dedicate screening to it until it has only the baseline risk. Even if that raises the baseline risk, it's a win for us.
With all that in mind, screening a particular group at a 0% rate won't get you there. But screening 80-year-olds at 0.001% of the rate you screen men 15-25, or less, is probably fine.
I wouldn't count 80 year old men out as recruitment targets for suicide bombing.
Traditionally, the rate of suicide among men only goes up as they get older and in the US is at ~29/100k/year after 65 years. If a group were well-funded they could make this an attractive offer to take care of families for folks who had no assets to pass on. The have less to look forward to and thus less to lose/more to gain. This already happens in other ways besides suicide bombing.
I think the perception that most terrorists are young single men demonstrates less about their willingness to blow themselves up than what they're willing to trade blowing themselves up for. Young single men, especially poorly educated ones, are generally dreadfully bad at cost-benefit analysis and planning for their futures. Terrorist groups tend to be incredibly poorly funded without state sponsorship and then it all depends on which state.
Tangentially, all[1] decisions are economic decisions.
But this is exactly what I'm talking about. If the direct cost of sending a suicide bomber goes from "transportation" to "transportation + $2,000,000", there will be less of it.
Certainly there are additional complexity issues and those work to the benefit of law enforcement. However, there are some significant costs as well.
How confident really, is one that you aren't going to find 80 year old men willing to give their last few years of life for what they believe, money aside, or do we care whether their spouses are still alive?
The other real major cost is the social cost. If we do start making really fine-grained decisions regarding appearance, married status, etc. then we risk essentially ensuring that Americans are not equal before our government and that's something that is really hard to put a price on, particularly given the history of racial issues in the US.
That presumes that recruitment is a limiting factor. Given that there are thousands, perhaps millions, of young, single, Arab men willing to martyr themselves for the cause, and roughly zero of them attempt to blow up or hijack US airliners, that doesn't seem to be the case.
"Bruce Schneier likes to say this too, as if it makes sense."
I think you missed his point when he says this.
His point was, if you give people an easy way and a hard way, they'll choose the easy way. Bruce has made this clear.
Nothing you say changes this point - if you make it easy for 80 year olds to get through security, 80 year olds will be the ones with bombs. Whether by recruiting, coercion, or anything.
I'm really not sure why you would think otherwise, and your argument about recruiting rates, while possibly correct, is, well, irrelevant :)
> Nothing you say changes this point - if you make it easy for 80 year olds to get through security, 80 year olds will be the ones with bombs.
The whole point of my comment is to refute this idea, so I guess I'm in trouble. Let me try to phrase things differently.
For every person in the world, there is a cost to recruit them into your organization as an attacker, which I postulate is low for young Arab men and high for Laotian grandmothers (and also high for 80-year-olds generally). Call this cost function COST(x).
There is also a likelihood that if they attempt an attack, they will succeed. Call this EFFECTIVENESS(x).
I can only interpret "if you make it easy for 80 year olds to get through security, 80 year olds will be the ones with bombs. Whether by recruiting, coercion, or anything" as saying that a terrorist group sending an attacker t will strictly try to maximize EFFECTIVENESS(t). But that's wrong. A terrorist group sending an attacker t will try to maximize EFFECTIVENESS(t)/COST(t).
Imagine some categories like so:
Age Sex Ethnicity EFFECTIVENESS COST
19 M Syrian 10% $20,000
80 M Egyptian 60% $150,000
80 F Laotian 80% $250,000
Obviously, it's easier for the 80-year-old Laotian female to get through security (or they're just generally more competent, or whatever). But it's cheaper (80% of the cost), and more effective (25% more expected successes), to send 10 19-year-old Syrian men. So, in a world where these numbers were accurate, we'd expect to see terrorist organizations using young Arab men to make their attacks even though they're eight times less likely to clear security than 80-year-old Laotian women. That means the correct thing to do with extra security is to completely ignore the high success rates of 80-year-olds and try to drive the effectiveness of Arab teens even lower.
> your argument about recruiting rates, while possibly correct, is, well, irrelevant :)
I'm not making an argument about recruiting rates; point me to where I mentioned the concept. I'm making an argument about recruiting costs. Doesn't matter why the cost is what it is, or whether your attackers are there voluntarily.
"For every person in the world, there is a cost to recruit them into your organization as an attacker, which I postulate is low for young Arab men and high for Laotian grandmothers (and also high for 80-year-olds generally). Call this cost function COST(x)."
If you are including the cost of coercion in COST(X), then i strongly disagree with your theory that there is a huge cost differential between young arab men and 80 year old laotian grandmas.
Maybe you can explain why you believe there is?
It seems, for example, that holding the family member of an 80 year old grandma hostage is cheap and effective as a mechanism of recruitment.
Well, the first thing we can observe is that we're not getting attacks by these highly nonsuspicious types, so we can safely assume that for whatever reason they're not cost-effective (we do know that in fact nonsuspicious types get much less screening than suspicious types, so, theoretically, they should be 100% of attackers).
The real beauty of this logic is that it doesn't actually matter if it's correct. If it is, great -- we need to harass suspicious types even more than we already are. But maybe it isn't. If terrorist groups are sending suspicious attackers for irrational or idiosyncratic reasons... that doesn't matter to us! We're trying to defend against the people they do send, not the people we think they should send. So we need to harass suspicious types again.
That said, there are plenty of heavy costs associated with kidnapping foreigners from around the world and using them as hostages:
1. The language barrier. If you want to coerce someone, you need to be able to make them understand what you want them to do.
2. Security. Your target country will hate you and make great efforts to root you out. These groups survive in countries where they have popular support. Pakistan might be willing to look the other way while you hang out and make trouble for the US; they're much less likely to look the other way while you kidnap and threaten to kill Pakistanis.
3. Public relations. Again, these groups survive where they have a certain level of popular support. But the same populace that doesn't really care when bad things happen to the Great Satan might not feel the same way about randomly kidnapping and killing bystanders from around the world.
4. Morale. The internal reflection of public relations. Most of the people in the group are there because they think it's the right thing (or can be talked into it). Kidnapping and killing peaceful foreigners from around the world could be a blow to that. Telling 80-year-old women to kill themselves just doesn't feel like the right thing.
"Well, the first thing we can observe is that we're not getting attacks by these highly nonsuspicious types, so we can safely assume that for whatever reason they're not cost-effective"
[citation needed]
For example, there were plenty of IRA bombings by older folks, etc.
Even if you only consider airplanes, there have been hijackings, suspected bombings, etc by older folks.
Just because today's media focuses on certain ethnotypes and attacks does not make them actually predominant in actual attacks.
The people the screening is supposed to protect. If you force terrorists to recruit from a group that is small and that is less likely to pull off the operation well, then everyone but the terrorists profits.
He didn't say they aren't "us". They do legitimately and regularly fly and are thus those that are to be protected by the security mechanisms and thus by his/her definition a part of "us". Also that they are singled out for more intensive search does not mean they are not a part of "us".
I do agree with you though that this kind of ethnic screening has a ton of ethical problems. And that airport security is mostly security theater.
Agreed 100%. We'd be better off without most of it.
> this kind of ethnic screening has a ton of ethical problems
This, obviously, is a value judgment. If you think ethnic screening is unworkable for ethical reasons, that's fair. But you need to acknowledge that, by giving up ethnic screening, you're purposefully making your security less effective -- you would rather see some additional people die to terrorism, and some additional non-ethnics harassed in precisely the way you don't want to see happen to ethnics, than dirty your hands with ethnic screening.
(I habitually take a fairly aggressive tone. I really don't care whether you make the call one way or the other -- but I do care that, if that's what you believe, you should cop to it.)
To make it concrete: Do you skip screening of the young pregnant Irish woman? I hope not. That was Anne-Marie Murphy, whose boyfriend put Semtex and a timer in her bag. [1]
Do you skip screening of the attractive blonde woman? Sorry, that was hijacker Leila Khaled with a blonde wig and hidden grenades. [2]
(These are both very interesting stories and I recommend reading the links below.)
Well, you have to skip screening some people (in fact, most of them). Given the presence of holes in your net, positioning them over young pregnant women is going to give you much better results than just about any other policy imaginable.
The Anne-Marie Murphy example is interesting; as you point out, she was sabotaged and didn't know she was carrying explosives. So -- she would pass demographic profiling with flying colors, as she should. She didn't want to do anything. The very commonly suggested approach of behavioral profiling is also useless here. People who believe they're not carrying explosives act exactly the same as people who really aren't carrying explosives.
Network analysis ("passenger's boyfriend is Arab") could flag her. Would you support that?
Why is this laughable? There are stories of kids and women being used as suicide bombers.
The comment above makes the dreaded profiling word seem like a dirty thing, it should be a perfectly acceptable thing. Follow Israel's lead and behavior profile people as soon as they step into the airport and flag them appropriately.
Why is "be like Israel" the be all end all solution? Profiling does not scale to the 800 million US travelers. Who are we profiling for? Arabs? Don't forget the 2nd largest terrorist attack on US soil was committed by a white Gulf War veteran who was raised Christan.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There is no moratorium, and "Godwin's Law" is just some guy's pithy observation. It doesn't mean shit in the end. As far as I'm concerned, anybody "invoking Godwin's Law" should be downvoted to the 9th circle of Hell. shrug
People say "invoking Godwin's law" as if that person is demanding the conversation halt there - but I very rarely see this happen in practice. It's simply an observation. "Oh, we compared them to the Nazis". In decent discussion fora such as this one I almost never see an associated suggestion that the argument is invalid, or that discussion should end.
There is an oft-cited corollary, sometimes misunderstood as part of Godwin's Law itself, that whoever brings up Nazis first automatically loses the argument. In practice, it really does shut down discussion amongst even otherwise intelligent people, usually by preventing people from making comparisons in the first place.
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".
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.
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.
> 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.
I don't think my point was entirely made if you're saying this.
While I wholeheartedly agree with you, the premise was that it's a whole lot better to be female/black/communist/non-Protestant in 1980 than it was to be in 1940. The point that I was making was that it was a whole lot better to be Muslim in 1980 than it is to be in 2014 and that if anything, rather than this being some period we'll reflect on sadly like Germany, we're simply returning to the mean.
Tangentially, things are going to get worse for everyone disenfranchised, not just Muslims and those who look like them.
> I don't think my point was entirely made if you're saying this.
There are two parts. First was your statement
> There were a brief few decades in the United States where you couldn't be born the "wrong color", born the "wrong gender" ...
I agree with jwise0, that I can't think of a decade where this assertion was true. It looks like you've toned your original statement.
Second, you pointed to "general sentiment" among Americans.
This isn't a valid basis for making a useful inference. In a hypothetical case where 97% are in the majority and 3% are an oppressed minority, then it's entirely possible that general sentiment is that things are well, while if you ask the 3% they will tell you that things are horrible.
Thus, if all "bad" groups but one - let's say "atheists" - achieve parity, then your analysis, based on "general sentiment", would conclude that things have improved. While my argument is that you have to look to the traditionally-considered "bad" groups specifically.
And yes, tolerance for traditionally "bad" groups have generally improved. I pointed out research which agrees with that statement, though it does comment that atheists are now the least accepted.
> Atheists are at the top of the list of groups that Americans find problematic in both public and private life, and the gap between acceptance of atheists and acceptance of other racial and religious minorities is large and persistent. It is striking that the rejection of atheists is so much more common than rejection of other stigmatized groups. For example, while rejection of Muslims may have spiked in post-9/11 America, rejection of atheists was higher. The possibility of same-sex marriage has widely been seen as a threat to a biblical definition of marriage, as Massachusetts, Hawaii, and California have tested the idea, and the debate over the ordination of openly gay clergy has become a central point of controversy within many churches. In our survey, however, concerns about atheists were stronger than concerns about homosexuals. Across subgroups in our sample, negative views of atheists are strong, the differences being largely a matter of degree
It does report Gallup polling data which suggests that almost 50% of the US would vote for an well-qualified atheist for President, and that percentage is the best it's ever been. But most Americans would rather have a homosexual president, and acceptance of a homosexual president or any other polled category has increased more rapidly than an atheist one.
> 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.
In terms of gender, though, it really depends on the area of life. Women have significant legal privileges regarding reproduction and family law above men, but these also necessarily cascade into negative implications economically (and, I interestingly, medically as well, as both our medical and economic models presume that women are only normal to the extent they approximate men).
Race is far more complicated, and most of the attempted solutions have largely served to dig the hole deeper. I would suggest however that the problems are those of cultural groups with disproportionate economic problems in an increasingly centralized society. This means the problems of race boil down to problems in four real categories borne by communities instead of individuals:
1. Agency: does the community have a real say in how their problems are addressed?
2. Property: is the land of the neighborhood owned by the people who live there?
3. Capital and Small Business: Can people in the community start businesses that the community can support? and
4. Pluralism: Is there widespread tolerance for cultural and ideological diversity in our society.
In terms of race we are sliding backwards on every one of these areas.
Religion, race, and politics can't be so easily separated because they are all things which go together with cultural differences.
Fun fact: California has bonkers anti-discrimination law which is extremely vague, and the ACLU has even run afoul with the Unruh act.
As to "significant legal privileges", I think they should be extended, and offered to men as well. For example, 6 months of parental leave time, subsidized by the state, with 1 month which can only be taken by the mother and 1 month which can only be taken by the father.
The ACLU case when when an on-duty officer in plainclothes decided to attend a public meeting, which had no restrictions, and where there was no requirement to identify oneself or one's occupation, right? I think ACLU staff attorney Lloyd was clearly in the wrong for ejecting the officer. I don't see how the law is "extremely vague" in this case, and agree with the court's opinion that the ACLU's defense was "strained", and if the circumstances were changed slightly would be easily seen as "shocking."
Why do you conclude, based on it's ambiguous? I think the local ACLU chapter was being stupid, arrogant, and stubborn. It happens. We're all human.
Personally, as an ex-long-haired man, it's nice to know that there are laws (in California at least) which would forbid people from discriminating against me solely because they don't like long hair on a man, which is one of the other Unruh decisions.
I can't speak towards your issues that "most of the attempted solutions have largely served to dig the hole deeper." I can only speak about specific issues, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which I assure you did not "largely serve to dig the hole deeper."
In general though, we have different enough view that I cannot have a good discussion on the 3 points that you raised. 1) What does "community" mean, and how is it different than "individuals"? 2) Land ownership is essential only when there are strong property rights. If there are weak ownership rights, such that renters can't easily be evicted and owners have strong obligations towards the renters, then ownership is not so important. 3) why is the specific term "business" elevated over "organizations"? Is it not also important that I be able to start a club or social movement, which members in the community can support?
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).
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.)
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.