IMO there’s an awful lot of stuff we can carry on that could be used as a weapon. You don’t even need to be particularly creative to consider what those things might be.
The TSA and all their searches are, I think, mainly to deter the amateurs.
@VeryHappy I agree. The bulk of what they do is just window dressing for the uneducated populous by the government to show they are being tough on terror. A determined human is a hard thing to stop.
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Here’s the absurdity of the TSA rules. I cannot take hiking poles on the plane as a carry-on. Yet if I say I need them for mobility, I can take the same hiking poles on. ( Not that they’d be much of a weapon. They are very lightweight and wouldn’t make much of a club.)
@droppedit The son of my kids’ pediatrician is also named Muhammad. He gets stopped and harassed pretty much every time he flies since 9/11. He has an MSEE and a secret clearance working on defense electronics, born and raised near Seattle. It has gotten bad enough that he asked his company not to send him on travel unless it is really necessary, and even then he takes an earlier flight than the rest of the engineers. It happened to my French/Egyptian sister-in-law last time she visited. She has a PhD in Environmental Engineering and would be in the running for “least likely to harm another person”. You need some Muslim friends willing to be honest with you about what is happening. It is not “only one story.” The CBP will never talk about it.
You can see that, on occasion, a white Christian person gets questioned or detained, but there is always a reason, sometimes bogus. Once you are on the no-fly list or the extra-inspection list, there is no getting off.
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you’re already known by your Muslim friends for having an automatic inclination to believing the authorities/giving them the benefit of the doubt, many may not be inclined to reveal their experiences to you because the last thing they need is someone who is not only unsympathetic, but may also implicitly call their honesty/intrgrity into question by casting doubts on their lived experiences.
This is something far too many victims of law enforcement/CBP high-handedness have had to deal with, especially those from marginalized groups who tend to be subjected to higher frequency/severity of such high handedness.
My actual quote was “Only one story about this” … as in, about this incident. Quit making up stuff.
@Magnetron My son was on the do not fly list when he was very small and it was clearly a mistake. We wrote a letter to the TSA and noted his passport number, birthdate, etc. We never received a response but it does not seem that he is still on the DNF list.
My family has traveled extensively and as I mentioned earlier we have been stopped many times and this was way before the current President was elected. Sometimes they were very polite, sometimes not so much. Generally speaking though, it was typically handled relatively quickly and I did not mind them asking questions as we have traveled to countries that I can understand the raised interest.
Your son was an obvious mistake.
I kind of wonder what the pediatrician’s son had done to get on the list. Since it happens to him still I would guess it was for visiting Africa to see relatives or some other trigger. He does have a fairly common last name that, combined with Muhammad as his first name, would intersect 100s of similarly named Muslims. The list is secret, as is the reason for stopping people, so he will never find out.
My family got the extra scrutiny once when we missed a connection in Cleveland and had to be rebooked. 100% of the other people in the line were Middle Eastern and Pakistani-looking men. They interspersed us in the line to try to make it look less obvious.
@partyof5 don’t wear your hair in a bun or French twist either…you may have to take it out:(
[quote]
The Daily Mail (which often has better US coverage than the local rags) had a story about a guy who got into a fender bender, and was found to be an illegal immigrant (yes, he was driving without a license unless there are states that allow that now, NY was mulling it), and they immediately took him in for deportation.[/quote
What are they supposed to do? The authorities have a person who is here illegally, who has now committed a crime (driving without a licenses and without insurance). Should they just let him go? How to they process the individual? If YOU were driving without a license, you’d be detained until you could prove who you were, that you had insurance, that you’d pay restitution to the other driver.
Here’s another interesting story. Apparently we can all be detained and asked for ID when deplaning local flights too. I wonder what would happen to anyone refusing to show ID? Is this even legal? It smacks of stop and frisk, or unreasonable search and seizure.
“Federal agents ask domestic flight passengers to show IDs in search for immigrant ordered deported”
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They have been given free reign to do this to anyone they want, no explanation, no retribution, with no oversight with anyone but themselves.
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True, but it seems like the flight crew also has a lot of unquestioned power as well. Several years ago, when it took longer to “power off” your laptop, we had a very strange experience. During the flight, H and I had been happily chatting with a flight attendant. We were seated in the back as she was. She was very friendly, told us all about herself, her family/kids, etc. I still remember her name. When it came time to land and we were all told to turn off our computers, H started to power off his laptop. Again, this was several years ago when doing so could take a few minutes. She briskly and rudely confronted my H about his laptop. H politely told her that he immediately started shutting off his laptop when told. She wouldn’t back down, and got quite huffy. If this had been at the beginning of the flight, she probably would have ordered H off the plane…and there wouldn’t have been any sort of negotiation or anything at that point. What they say goes.
" I wonder what would happen to anyone refusing to show ID? Is this even legal? It smacks of stop and frisk, or unreasonable search and seizure."
Go to ACLU (I posted a link previously) and read up on your rights. You have a right to a lawyer. I personally would ask questions before agreeing to show ID but I tend to be one who questions authority regularly. 
TSA/CBP screening is more effective than some people give it credit for. I’ve had the metal detector go off from my shirt cufflinks, so I assume it would be sensitive enough to pick up on a knife.
I’m not as confident as you based on personal experiences. French personnel had no issue picking up on an item a family member accidentally brought on board a flight to France when we had to go through a security check for a connecting flight through CDG.
I also know someone who stubbornly refuses to abide by the 3 ounce rule for toiletries and just doesn’t have problems at all.
Last time, I went through security, the scanner picked up on the toothpaste in my backpack being too large.
FYI, the Daily Mail is considered by most British friends I know as little better than the right-leaning sensationalistic outrage tabloids here in the states such as the NY Post.
None of them would rely on it as a credible news source beyond seeing the British far right perspective du jour.
@roethlisburger:
Read up on when they do tests of TSA checkpoints and what the results are, the things they managed to get on board, it is pretty sobering. With TSA it also depends on the airport and the screeners, some airports routinely do well, others are pretty dismal.
If you really want to sober up, tough, go to the TSA’s own website and take a look at the gallery of items they have confiscated from people trying to take on a plane, it is just amazing the kind of stupid stuff people try to take on.
“What are they supposed to do? The authorities have a person who is here illegally, who has now committed a crime (driving without a licenses and without insurance). Should they just let him go? How to they process the individual? If YOU were driving without a license, you’d be detained until you could prove who you were, that you had insurance, that you’d pay restitution to the other driver.”
My experience is they don’t detain the other person when stuff like this happens, but that is another story. My point was that in the current sweep they claim they are going after major criminals, people who have committed felonies like murder and assault and so forth, that there isn’t a widespread roundup of people like this, that’s all. A fender bender and driving without a license and insurance is not a felony as far as I know. In the past the cops likely would have cited the guy for driving without a license and insurance and let him go and likely you would never see the guy again (I know,something like this happened to my wife, guy in a truck hooked the bumper off our car, the insurance thing he had was invalid, clearly had expired, and the cop basically let the guy go, our insurance paid for the damage, never found the guy). I was just pointing out claims that they are going after violent felons and the like isn’t true, they are basically detaining anyone they find here illegally if they have contact with law enforcement no matter how minor the incident. The other part of the problem with this is this is going to lead to open season on these people, because others will know they will be afraid to go to the cops, and employers like landscapers and construction companies who rely on generally undocumented aliens as day laborers will likely routinely rip them off, knowing they won’t complain for fear of being deported (and of course, not going after the employers in these cases, which is typical, employing someone without papers is a pretty serious crime, but nowhere do you hear anyone talking about cracking down on the employers…and employers are gonna love this because as I noted, they now can rip these poor people off and get away with it)