Man Put On "No-Fly List" While In Air To NYC 300
An unnamed man flying from Nigeria to New York City found out he was added to a no-fly list somewhere above the Atlantic Ocean, when the plane stopped to refuel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Officials won't say what he did or why he was added to the list after he had already boarded a flight. He was not immediately charged with a crime and Customs and Border Protection will only say that he is a "potential person of interest." From the article: "The man, a citizen of Gambia, was not on the no-fly list when he boarded the aircraft in Dakar, Senegal, said a US official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly."
And people wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
My bet... (Score:2, Insightful)
- coming from a county known to have a large islamic population
- being non-white
- having " al" or "bin" somewhere in his name
But rest assured, we're being protected from something, somewhere, for some reason!
Just more evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be if your actual goal was to capture terrorists, convince them to talk, capture more terrorists, etc. If on the other hand your goal is to harass people who are a color or religion you don't like, then they're very very effective. And the best part is that through these petty annoyances you convince more of them that the US is in fact the great evil that should be wiped off the face of the earth, making sure that no matter how many bad guys you capture you're never going to be out of a job.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the main point of the no-fly list is to prevent suicide bombings, combined with the fact that it's hard to arrest a corpse, I think the preventative method is a better choice.
Except for the fact that the percentage of suicide bombers vs the number of passenger miles flown is so ridiculously small it shouldn't warrant such a heavy handed response. Even if we removed all the security from airports there probably wouldn't be that many more incidents if any. Also within minutes of the 9/11 attacks when people realized that hi-jackers weren't taking planes for joy rides to Cuba anymore; the passengers of planes started to keep an eye out for suspicious behavior and started reacting to threats. Starting with Flight 93 planes have already secured themselves; had the Flight 93 passengers realized sooner what the cooks with box cutters were doing they may have even been able to safely land their plane.
Re:And people wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather have neither.
People seem to forget that THAT is also an option.
Re:Quick Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And people wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be surprised if security theater accounts form more than 0.5% of the decrease in domestic air travel. People just don't care. Air travel is down domestically because prices are up and theres a recession. Nothing more, nothing less.
Now tourism may have suffered because the US is perceived (accurately?) to have become less friendly for foreigners - but the airport rigmarole is only tangentially related to even that.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. Everytime we have an underwear-bomber, we need a useless knee-jerk reaction to make people feel safe.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not the OP, but I'd like to respond.
That remark alone shows your ignorance. There is no "right to travel (by air)
Not to split hairs here. But there is no right to FLY a plane. Just as there is no right to DRIVE a car.
I find it rather interesting its reached the point where you are justifying that someone should be denied the 'priviledge' of riding in one too. Do you support depriving someone the "priviledge" of being a *passenger* on a car or bus or boat (including ferries) too?
It is a privilege for those who meet certain conditions.
And those conditions are what exactly? As it stands right now, you can't be on a plane if you have brownish skin and a name vaguely similiar to a guy who the FBI thinks might have known someone who attended an event suspected of being a terrorist recruiting event... whether this other person completely unrelated to you actually even joined, assuming it was actually a terrorist recruiting event.
If they cannot meet those conditions and, perhaps, more, then they cannot get on a plane.
An e woods recently ran a red light. That's dangerous and could kill someone. As a result I think anyone named 'e woods' 'e. woods' 'ed woods' 'ed wood' should be prohibited from driving a car. Further, I think anyone by this name should also be prohibited from RIDING in a car... they might overpower the driver and kill someone.
I guess you don't meet the conditions to get in a car anymore. Never mind a plane.
Don't complain to me though, you don't have a right to be a car. Its just a privilege. One you don't meet the conditions for.
Sucks to be you.
Re:And people wonder... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
"Except for the fact that the percentage of suicide bombers vs the number of passenger miles flown is so ridiculously small it shouldn't warrant such a heavy handed response. Even if we removed all the security from airports there probably wouldn't be that many more incidents if any"
I disagree with your assessment. Hijackings to Cuba were in the vogue until security made them pretty much pointless. Suicide bombers don't actually want to anywhere but heaven, so any destination for the plane is both irrelevant and moot, though you could make the point that U.S. bound planes would be more popular than others.
Actually, try leaving your front door open at home, and announcing that fact down at the local coffee shop. repeatedly. See how that lack of security works for ya. Haven't seen anyone scratching at your door lately, have you? Must not be any real problem.
And suicide bombers are at least as motivated as your local meth head getting a cuppa at Starbucks.
What should they have done? (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting aside for the moment the question of whether or not the "no-fly" lists serve a legitimate purpose (they don't), what should they have done? If information indicating a particular person may be dangerous comes in while someone is already in transit, should they have just said "Damn, if we had been a little quicker we wouldn't let you in, but you beat the buzzer. We suspect you're a terrorist, but since you had already left you can come in this time. But next time, forget it!"
Another vague classification (Score:3, Insightful)
First we had a "suspect." Then there was a "person of interest." Now we have a "potential person of interest." Where does it end?
Let me propose...
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about this for 10 seconds. If you had evidence that someone was going to blow up an airplane then you should arrest the fucker. Just as if you had evidence that someone was going to rob a bank you'd arrest him.
If you have NO evidence that someone was going to commit a crime then you shouldn't do shit and just let him on his way.
The no fly list says "we have no evidence regarding you, so you're not a threat in the eyes of the LAW, but we're going to restrict your freedom anyway." It's shit like this, the removal of our freedom for no reason, that seriously warrants armed rebellion against the government.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
The government can only deny us this right if they have a power to do so, granted to the government by the people, by means of the Constitution. I am not presently able to find the section of the Constitution that gives the government the power to deny the people the right to travel by any particular means.
Note that the right to air travel does not compel any other party to help me to exercise this right. I can't demand that United give me a ticket; the right simply guarantees that I can negotiate a contract with United to pay them to transport me, or to purchase (or build) and fly my own plane. If the government wants to deny me that right, they have to have a specific power to do so. The government does not have the power to arbitrarily deny rights just because it suits their purposes to do so. That is a key difference between the US government and most governments of the past (and even many of the present).
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, and then we can force all americans to convert to Muslim religions and eliminate democracy. There will ALWAYS be reasons to terrorize us.
Ya know, I disagree pretty strongly with many policies of the US government. Yet that never inspires me to blow stuff up. That's probably because the violence the government engages in overseas never directly touches my life. Persuasion and political activism are much more appealing than terrorism to most people, when there is no violence to incite them to reciprocal violence.
However, I suspect I would feel an awful, awful lot more malicious & violent if an American bombing raid had blown up my family. Maybe if we stopped squandering our national wealth and moral authority -- if we still have any of either left -- on wars of aggression, then folks in other countries wouldn't feel so motivated to attack us.
Re:Quick Question (Score:3, Insightful)
No, they put Buster in the raft, and dropped him from the helicopter (at 2k feet, IIRC). The raft see-sawed back and forth, but stayed upright (keeping him in it) and slowed his fall.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Morons even made it illegal to be in the country illegally.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Delaying the innocent is annoying, but not a sign of failure.
Not preventing an known suspect who then does cause harm, that would be a failure.
This is the dilemma we face. If we succeed in keeping bad guys off the planes, we will not know how many gave up at security checkpoints and went home. We'll know if it fails, though.
And Senators could learn a lot by having to deal with what *we* deal with
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
And we now have security. The locked and reinforced doors to the cabin. That's what would have completely prevented 9/11, and with that the only thing we realistically need is explosive/bioweapon sniffing.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
I choose neither.
Lightning has killed more folks in the past 50 years than terrorism in the USA.
You are hundreds of times more likely to die in your car on the way to the airport than in an airline related terrorist attack.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)
And far bigger than either of those are conditions related to diet: heart disease and diabetes in particular. If we were serious about saving American lives, Ronald McDonald would be the first on the no-fly list.
Re:And people wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Since it has substantially increased door-to-door travel times when their is commercial air travel anywhere in the process, and since travel time is the big selling point of air travel over other forms of travel, I suspect its a much bigger factor than that, particular for shorter flights.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:4, Insightful)
So, if I'm understanding your premise, the mysterious conspiracy which destroyed the Twin Towers through some method other than the goddamned 767's full of jet fuel that struck them also decided to destroy the WTC 7 building across the street despite it not being hit directly by anything for... what purpose exactly? Did they just have some extra explosives left over and didn't know what else to do with them?
I also like how you refer the conclusions of pretty much every structural engineer who examined the events as "spin". Because of course the building couldn't have fallen due to damage and uncontrolled fires from two of the largest skyscrapers in the world collapsing right next to it - that's what they *want* you to think!
I'm not saying some elements of the government and intelligence services didn't take advantage of the events for their own goals afterwards, or couldn't have theoretically been involved in letting them happen in the first place (however unlikely), but if you can't accept that just maybe being hit by giant metal tubes full of liquid specifically designed for combustion in full view of hundreds of witnesses might be a reason for the structural collapse of some buildings, there's not much point in attempting to hold a rational conversation with you.
Also, random videos on youtube are not generally a particularly reliable source of information.
Re:No fly list is a dumb idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Being on a no-fly list is not the same as being forbidden from entering the country. Many of these people are already in the country; many are US citizens. This is just some weird system that doesn't fit into our normal legal framework. This is just one of those feel-good things. People want to know that someone's doing something about dangerous people on airplanes, because airplanes were targets in the past. It's also easy to do this for planes since there's a tight funnel to get on them. You could not easily implement a no-drive list for the roads in front of federal buildings.