“If you travel enough, at some point you are likely to be stopped. I’ve been stopped in quite a few airports all over the world; my children have been stopped separately as well, even when they were minors and even when they were minors travelling alone. It is a cost of travelling these days; inconvenient but still worth it to enjoy modern travel in my opinion.”
However, racial profiling DOES happen. As a family with members of different races/ethnicities, we can travel together and be treated VERY differently - repeatedly, constantly. It becomes quite apparent how things work.
"Passengers traveling to the United States from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries will be prohibited from bringing laptops, tablets and other portable electronic devices on board with them when they fly, according to new rules set to take effect Tuesday.
Fliers can still travel with these items, but they must be packed in their checked baggage on U.S.-bound flights from airports across eight countries including busy transit hubs in Istanbul, Dubai and Doha, Qatar."
and me and my blond-haired, blue eyed children must meet some profile, because we are stopped quite frequently, tho we all look Norwegian. In one period after 9/11, I was stopped on 8 separate occasions that year. Yes, we should all ensure that government officials use proper criteria for stopping travelers, and the courts have repeatedly reviewed those criteria for evidence of racial profiling. In the case cited which OP complains of, the government officials did use proper criteria-sharing a name with a wanted criminal is going to be a problem almost anywhere, anytime.
7 times at domestic TSA, once re-entering the country. Really, it is and was a small inconvenience in the larger scheme of life for me. Like a prior poster, I’ve acquired global entry/known traveler and that has improved things somewhat. I don’t regard it as a big problem,like a flat tire.
and shoes coming off is a breeze compared to some of the things I’ve had to do on planes, like changing a diaper in those tiny bathrooms. now that is challenging!
“Fliers can still travel with these items, but they must be packed in their checked baggage on U.S.-bound flights from airports across eight countries including busy transit hubs in Istanbul, Dubai and Doha, Qatar.”
IN the US, packing lithium batteries in the checked baggage is a no-no, but if you are flying from those airports into the US, it is required?! What a load.
Thanks for the clarification. We have a couple of different topics going.
My husband gets stopped about 60% of the time when reentering the country- added for clarity for what I had posted earlier. It makes us tense as we get off the plane and frightened the kids when they were young.
I consider the TSA head and knee on me thing to be an annoyance but I feel what they are doing with the super enhanced patdowns is a bridge too far. No one should have their junk touched because of an “anomaly”. Surgical patients, people with catheters, trans people,bladder pads, etc are could get that every time.
I have global entry but go through regular security when traveling with people who don’t have it.
I think my kids were probably nervous when stopped by foreign authorities when they were travelling alone (one as a teen,one as a preteen), but they claim they stayed calm. Lots of things can happen when travelling-purses get stolen, flights get cancelled, plans get changed abruptly without our control. Patience and politeness are the most important things I bring on any trip.
I’ve had extra screening a couple of times, but I’ve never been detained for 90 minutes as the guy in the story was. Even so, I suspect it wouldn’t have been a story if they had treated him with more respect and hadn’t lied to him. My reading of the story is that he was sent on his way when a new staffer who wasn’t an idiot took over the review.
All this screening may seem trivial (especially to those of us who are white, native-born Americans named Fred Jones or Mary Smith), but taken together, I think they corrode our belief in our own liberty. It’s like wanting to breathalyze all the kids entering the prom. It begins to seem normal.
interesting how the article you linked (dated 12/5/16) conveniently “forgot” the Orlando nightclub shooting on 6/12/16, in which Omar Mateen killed 49 people. “In a call to 9-1-1 during the shooting, Mateen identified himself as “Mujahideen”, “Islamic Soldier”, and “Soldier of God”; and pledged his allegiance multiple times to the militant jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”
So Mateen by himself killed more than all the white supremacists in 15 years.
also the “26 deaths caused by Muslim radicals in the same period” referenced in the article is also wrong. Fort Hood, San Bernardino and the Boston Marathon accounted for 30 deaths by themselves, plus many more mutilations and severe injuries. these three incidents alone were major news events and accurate information on casualties can be confirmed in a few seconds. it’s almost like the article had a specific narrative it wanted to push and did not want to bother with easily verifiable facts, so the author just made up some numbers and hoped no one would check.
but the big question is, why does the article arbitrarily pick a time frame of 15 years? because if the author chose a time frame of 15 years and 3 months, it completely destroys his false narrative. in that case the correct total of 90 deaths gets added to the 3000+ deaths of 9/11/11.
not to mention that around the world you have no white supremacist equivalent of ISIS
or Boko Haram
or Al-Qaeda
or Charlie Hebdo
or Berlin Christmas market truck attack
or Nice France truck attack
or November 2015 Paris attacks
or Kenya Christian university students massacred 4/2/15
etc etc etc
so yes, we need to root out the Dylan Roofs and Timothy McVeighs and snuff out their wicked plans before they execute them. and if they kill American citizens according to their twisted philosophy … well, execute them. but let’s abandon this ridiculous fantasy of “oh, Islamic extremism isn’t really that much of a problem … in fact the REAL threat is those white supremacists.” the facts simply do not support that notion.
I am a little confused about the new ban on electronics for airlines flying into the U.S. from certain countries. U.S. officials say it is a response to concerns that terrorist groups may target planes by smuggling explosive devices in consumer goods. But if there is an explosive in a device what difference does it make if the passenger has it in the cabin or the device explodes in the cargo hold?
Looks like the terrorist groups (all types and motivations) have won Americans’ hearts and minds in fear and hatred. Terrorism seems to be feared far out of proportion to the actual deaths caused. Even two decades of terrorism deaths in the US comes nowhere close to 15,000 total homicides per year, which itself is far lower than 35,000 deaths from motor vehicle crashes per year. Yet many people fear terrorism the most, other crime next, and motor vehicles the least. The disregard of motor vehicle crash risk is shown by careless driving, not using the seat belts, not being careful when crossing the street as a pedestrian, etc…
Well, I’d like to suggest less obsession with security, but it’s awfully hard to go back. That’s what’s so insidious. So at least, I’d like to say no more without some really good proof that it’s absolutely necessary. You can always make things safer (or at least, appear safer), and if it’s your job to do so, you will keep looking for more rules and restrictions. The rest of us have to resist it if it’s corroding our liberty, as I think it is. I don’t want to go through a metal detector at the mall, the movie theater, McDonald’s, etc. etc.
As a society we’ve become much more risk-averse. Maybe due to advancements in medicine, technology, smaller families-for many reasons, we’ve become less accepting of early deaths and injuries than we used to be, and the security procedures just reflect that. Maybe our chances of death without airport screening only go up 5%; some are willing to take that increased risk, some aren’t. I’m sure it is very hard to calculate the costs vs. benefits of any procedure. Many urban schools now require metal detectors for students, every day. Apparently, the administrators (and at least some parents) believe that without that screening, students might bring weapons and harm other students. I suppose they have some basis for that decision. Should tens of thousands of students be inconvenienced every day, so that maybe one (or more) is saved in the future? Parents and students may differ in how they analyze that tradeoff.