This was a few years back, but I don't recall if it was post-9/11 or not. It seems like even setting off a detector doesn't, alone, justify the extreme reaction the authorities took in the author's case.
Back in the 70s or 80s a group of friends in Britain were sentenced for participating in a terrorist act because they set off an explosive test. They spent years in prison before it was determined that it was a false positive caused by the coating of a popular brand of playing card.
That isn't what that line of interrogation was for. The TSA goons probably don't know anything about chemistry or how their machine works, they were simply trying to rattle him and get him to say something incriminating.
Specifically: when somebody says, several different ways, "why are you setting off my explosive detector?" what you do not want to say is "I don't know! I don't have any explosives!" Because it will elicit a response indicating that nobody was accusing you have of having explosives, why are you being so defensive, etc. etc.
"I can’t think of anything. What does it say is triggering the alarm?" I asked.
"I’m not going to tell you! It’s right here on my sheet, but I don’t have to tell you what it is!" he exclaimed, pointing at his clipboard.
This was post 9-11, I don't know how we didn't all get arrested.
Presuming that this was nitroglycerin, then in some sense it's not a false positive at all. It's a dessert wax and a floor topping! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin
What happens if you put a candle in one of these desserts and let it burn down to the food? (Or it tips over)
In earlier iterations of spam filters, it would simply prefix the subject with [SPAM], just as explosion detectors caught lots of things and they quickly dismissed them. As it got better it started moving them to a spam folder. Now it simply moves them directly to deleted. Of course the same thing happens with explosion detectors, where initially it picked up many similar compounds, and eventually started getting much more discrete, and the probability that it actually caught something of significance went from "not really" to "might actually be something real".
Traveling in 2013 is not the same as traveling in 2002. Traveling in New York City is not the same as traveling in Austrlia. All of these are factors that influence the probability that technology is a viable input, and the corresponding risk factors.
Unless you've got some hard data on false positives, I don't believe it for a minute. As far as I can tell the equipment's warning value has gone from "almost certainly not explosives" to "almost certainly not explosives."
That doesn't make the equipment useless (well, it might) but it'd be nifty if the people operating it understood its pretty obvious limitations. Remember why we're even having this conversation.
Because the TSA gained nothing wasting their time on this. There are the normal conspiratorial claims among the comments that someone triggered the "brown guy" button just to harass him (again, only someone who has never been near a large North American city could say such a thing), for what? What did the TSA, NYPD, FBI, and whoever else gain from this giant waste of time?
Something triggered on a molecule or taggant that they couldn't easily exclude, so they tried to help him assist them in excluding it. He couldn't, so they had to exhaust all avenues.
Unless they have countless agents and countless rooms, this isn't something they do with any regularity at all.
Putting aside the merit of the idea of that the government bidding process ends with purchase of the best product, it's worth noting that just like with the government agents, the manufacturer isn't actually liable to anyone who suffers when its machines produce a false positive. Insofar as the manufacturer has any incentive to improve in this regard, its incentive comes from the same people who are putting on this security theater.
> Because the TSA gained nothing wasting their time on this. [blah blah] What did the TSA, NYPD, FBI, and whoever else gain from this giant waste of time?
Not sure why you threw this in here but it's so wrong that it's kind of hard to know where to begin. First, the superficial and obvious: TSA and NYPD are paid overtime. They had MONEY to gain from this exercise. Their financial incentives are exactly opposed to those of the person they are detaining.
Less superficial, perhaps equally obvious: a bureaucracy does stuff because that's the stuff the bureaucracy does. It's a big, mindless machine whose prime directive is to continue to exist. Everyone understands that they need to be seen to be DOING SOMETHING, and there are plenty of true believers who think doing that something is the most important thing in the world. That's the reason for some much of the crud we deal with now.
You might have made the mistake of thinking we're dealing with fully rational actors here. Congratulations if you've never worked for a bureaucracy and you don't get any of this.
> Something triggered on a molecule or taggant that they couldn't easily exclude, so they tried to help him assist them in excluding it. He couldn't, so they had to exhaust all avenues.
Orwell would be proud.
There are people who actually want to blow up planes. There have been a number of attempts. These machines detect the things that are found in bombs.
There are a lot of examples of "security theater" (moreso in the private industry, it should be noted, like the ridiculously useless badges and disaffected employees at most office buildings), but explosives material detectors most certainly are not. One day we'll walk down a Total Recall type hall and it will know who we are and everything on or about us, but until then we have some inconveniences.
And groan, good old Orwell makes a cliched showing. Yes, we all read 1984 in grade school. Pulling it out as a trope to anything the government does (even where entirely rational and related to an actual threat, and overwhelming painless and transparent) is boorish internet pundit behavior.
No, you don't get to label me that easily. (why do you want to?) I believe there is a differentiation to be made between good government and bad government. Security services CAN be made to work.
> And groan, good old Orwell makes a cliched showing. Yes, we all read 1984 in grade school.
I was responding to a specific statement of yours which was pretty spectacularly stupid. I'm not saying YOU are stupid, and I think maybe you can get a handle on why it's so creepy and classically Orwellian. Let's examine it:
> Something triggered on a molecule or taggant that they couldn't easily exclude, so they tried to help him assist them in excluding it. He couldn't, so they had to exhaust all avenues.
"They tried to help him assist them in excluding it." They tried to help him assist them. Are you getting it yet? They were just trying to help him! Against his will they detained him and tried to compel him to do something, but they were just trying to help. To help HIM! To help him ASSIST them, why wouldn't he want to assist them? It'd be awfully suspicious if he didn't want to assist them. Every good person likes to help and to assist, am I right?
They tried to force him to solve a problem that they created with their own machine and they weren't going to let him go about his business until he did it. For his own good. In what sense is your take on that - the wording, at least - not Orwellian?
> Pulling it out as a trope to anything the government does (even where entirely rational and related to an actual threat, and overwhelming painless and transparent) is boorish internet pundit behavior.
Since there wasn't an actual threat, and the process wasn't painless, and since I certainly wouldn't and haven't "pulled it out as a trope to anything the government does" it's hard to understand what the heck you're talking about.
Employment, pensions, and control.
edit: there might have been a similar setup at Orly in France in 1997, come to think of it. The striking thing there was the soldiers with rifles (just 3 of them, but walking around) and the way they searched one of my grandmother's bags when the x-ray showed something that looked like a grenade. (it was glass in a weird shape) They were friendly and had a sense of humor about it, and it didn't slow us down, which all made a big difference.
The Republicans, who controlled Congress, said that the big threat was from nukes from unfriendly states (later dubbed 'the axis of evil') didn't permit the funding and instead increased 'Star Wars' funding (anti-missile tech).
We don't have to have direct knowledge of the impossibly specific situation you've constructed. The FBI agent flat out said that it was about his race when he said "a person of your… background".
And explosive detectors are not really there to find bombs. They are there to reduce manual searches. If they just wanted to find bombs, they could just search everyone. Since that is impractical on multiple counts, the explosive detector is valuable because it narrows down the space. Once you have taken the person aside, searched them, searched their stuff, and come up with no additional evidence ("brown" isn't evidence), it's time to let them go.
Finally, this isn't just about racism, but is also about the TSA and the cops being dangerously incompetent bullies. Instead of being polite and decent, they were rude and intimidating. Someone being reluctant and apprehensive under those circumstances is not strong evidence of wrongdoing.
And when they questioned him about the chemicals he had handled, they wouldn't even tell him what they had found. That's the kind of "withholding information" tactic you would use if you were playing the role of a detective without actually having any idea how to investigate. What purpose does it serve? If he were a terrorist, he'd know what chemicals were in his explosives. The only situation where that information is actually a secret is the one where the suspect is innocent.
In other words, they repeatedly created situations that either made guilt indistinguishable from innocence, or where they'd distinguish them inversely. This is, to put it mildly, "poor form".
Offering hints as to how a person they do not trust would dissuade their suspicions is a way to guarantee that everyone dissuades their suspicions. It is an information-theoretically invalid way of pursuing an investigation of anything.
Ordinary people know basically nothing about explosives, or what everyday compounds might be explosives. At best they might say "Oh, I did some gardening, so I handled some fertilizer", or "I was at a shooting range yesterday". They might remember a chemical they had read off the label of something they used recently, if it's common enough, so if you told them what you found, they could tell you where they saw it.
Terrorists, on the other hand, are likely to know all about common chemicals that can be used in explosives. If you tell them what you found, you aren't giving them any new information, and they can just tell you it came from whatever they got it from (and claim they were using it innocently).
So giving a satisfactory answer should actually be evidence of the person being a terrorist. Of course, if a TSA agent were smart enough to realize that, a smart terrorist might pick up on that, and say "I don't know, I used some bug spray this morning?"
Most terrorists don't actually seem to be smart, but in the case that you were evaluating the evidence correctly, you'd have to downgrade its strength on that basis (even more so once you factor in the non-terrorist chemistry geeks, who are probably orders of magnitude more common than terrorists, and less likely to consider that you might take a plausible answer as evidence against them).
In short "what have you handled recently that might have lead to you having explosive residue on you?" is a pointless question, whether you tell them what you found or not.
As a side note, it's overly simplistic to say that "giving hints" is invalid in general, because the definition of "giving hints" is vague. Should they just ask "Why did our screen flash red?" instead of telling you it was the explosive detector? Should they be even more vague and ask "Why are we interrogating you?" Getting useful information from someone requires that you communicate specifically. So if the line of inquiry were useful at all (and if it is even meaningful to reason about such a hypothetical), it would be more useful to ask about the specific substance.
Instead we have people saying "I am white and I set one off in 2003 in Australia and they let me through, therefore that demonstrates that this is racism" (ignore every case where non-whites got a couple of quick questions and went through).
And how utterly provincial are so many people on here? What backwaters do they live in? Go to JFK or Newark and tell me that they pick on non-whites, and I'll tell you that they must have hundreds of thousands of employees working around the clock to manage that.
Further what an FBI agent purportedly said during the conversational stage is utterly irrelevant. We don't know what explosive material the sensor detected, but by the response it seems likely that it was rare.
Finally, this isn't just about racism
Indeed, it isn't, even though the overwhelming majority of comments, and the title itself, portends racism. In another comment someone criticizes me for apparently claiming that their treatment is reasonable. Yet never did I say their treatment was reasonable. Who would?
they wouldn't even tell him what they had found
Because they believe in the flawed concept of security through obscurity. They likely imagine that giving that information away shows their hand.
You are correct that anecdotal reports of white people not being harassed after setting off the detectors is not particularly strong evidence.
> Go to JFK or Newark and tell me that they pick on non-whites, and I'll tell you that they must have hundreds of thousands of employees working around the clock to manage that.
Racism is not a matter of "white or non-white". The "blows up planes" stereotype is specific to people who look "Arab". And of course they're not harassing everyone who fits their stereotype; the explosive detector surely did play a role (and people suggesting that it was intentionally triggered are being silly). It's just that your estimate of that being "95% of this story" is grotesquely optimistic.
>Further what an FBI agent purportedly said during the conversational stage is utterly irrelevant.
Perhaps the FBI agent didn't have a sense of the situation before he arrived. I would guess, given his position and the fact that he seemed to be the most competent and perceptive person the author dealt with, that his assessment is as reliable as we can expect to get. It certainly isn't irrelevant. That it was said in conversation is not very relevant. Are you suggesting that he made that comment inaccurately to reassure the author? "You have to understand, we're just very racist"?
As for various things that other commenters have said, I'm not sure what response you want from me. I didn't say them. I'm sorry people can't read?
> Because they believe in the flawed concept of security through obscurity
No, it's rather common sense actually.
If a suspect wanted to blow something up, he would never admit he has the chemicals he has with him (because he wouldn't be sure that the cops have actually detected that chemical, and not made some other mistake that will let him go through).
But if the cops tell him what they've found, then he'll know he's screwed, and will try to make up an excuse.
On the other hand, if he admits what the chemical is himself (probably with a proper excuse), chances are that he's probably innocent, and they'd let him go.
So, telling him what he's being accused of having actually makes it harder for him to get himself out of the mess plausibly.
But if the terrorist hasn't thought this far ahead, then his excuse is probably not going to be very good. Tell a person exactly what you found, and you might catch the terrorist off guard and be able to tell that they're lying from the weird excuse, while a normal person will either say "I don't know where that would have come from", or would actually have a plausible excuse.
It's still not a very useful question even in that latter case, but it's marginally more useful if you actually name the chemical.
If the guy is an adversary, you can't rely on him to bring that fact to your attention. If the guy isn't an adversary, his failure to identify it is (by definition) innocent in nature. In neither sense does harassing the guy about it make sense.
"You told the border guard you're entering the country to work." "What? No! I never said that! I'm entering to marry my fiancé!"
"I'm here because of the MBA conference." "NBA? We didn't know there was a basketball event in this building."
Yeah, I've seen it a number of times.
They weren't upset. They were manipulating the author. They weren't stupid. They already had agents heading to the apartment to investigate.
When it turned out that he had identified it, the person who had hoped that now had egg on his face. (I wouldn't be surprised if in another room they had figured this out as proof so that they could get him.)
I often go until late afternoon or longer without realizing I haven't had any water to drink. This really doesn't seem that bad. The OP's claim that his mouth was like sandpaper because he hadn't had water for a few hours reads like hyperbole to me.
N.B.: I'm not pulling out a strawman, or claiming you agree in any way with what Rumsfeld did. I'm just pointing out that your logic could, and actually does, lead to such inhumane practices. So don't be too hasty to dismiss stuff like this just based on your personal experience and preferences. I'd personally die without drinking ample amount of water (not an illness; just habit, and it would make me really, really nervous and angry if you denied me water).
There is very little consideration in this thread for the shittiness and stressfulness of the TSA jobs, especially when faced with passengers who refuse the scan and set off the bomb detectors. If you want to argue that TSA should employ highly skilled workers and pay them better, I'm all for that. But given that's not the case, workers being incompetent and rude to people who set off bomb detectors, and holding them too long, doesn't seem like human rights violation to me. It's just a crappy and annoying and stressful situation.
Cops have dogs trained to give false positives on signal and we are constantly spied on and lied to by our own intelligence agencies.
So please don't tell me this idea is far fetched, I think it's very plausible.
It would be damn hard to prove the last, but what is relatively easy to demonstrate is that dogs do give false signals that correspond to certain biases of the owners. Regardless of whether the last is true or not, the way we view detector dogs needs to be revisited in light of these clear biases. As it is, detector dogs seem to be barely better than dosing rods.
When working security, agents can sense something is wrong but not have it articulable enough in legal terms to act on. When the suspect says "why are you searching me?" it's a lot easier on everyone to say "the detector beeped, you heard it" than "I've got an uneasy feeling about you". (Not legal, not warranted, just easier.)
The only reason to keep screening him over and over is if the detector really did find something, otherwise they are just wasting their own time because of a nebulous feeling.
Why make this person crack.
I've never been in the US, but when I travel (Europe, MENA), I am always chosen by airport security, even in my own country when leaving, for an additional search (less annoying than a TSA patdown I read of, but still), and when I asked recently why is it always me, a guy answered I was randomly selected by the gate. Got to start buying lottery tickets.
Indeed, the narrative of this very story seemed to be overwhelmingly focused on figuring out why he was setting off the explosives detectors. They repeatedly went through his belongings and tried to figure out if he was indeed in the business of making explosions. They almost certainly used a secret warrant to go into his apartment to, again, see if there was an explosives lab there. They really thought they had something when the explosives detector found something it didn't like, and there is no rational reason they would do this just because someone was Muslim (again, Muslims make hundreds of millions of flights in the US -- do people seriously think this is what they go through?)
The only way to keep a secret for long periods is that few know about it.
Not that I believe that there's a secret button.
Interestingly enough, most classified information doesn't get leaked the same way that Snowden leaked his documents. It's mostly due to carelessness. The best example of this is deployment schedules. One of my coworkers was scheduled to go on a Marine Expeditionary Unit (ship that goes around the Pacific just in case something happens). The date of departure was classified. Someone told his wife, who told all of her friends on Facebook. Oops.
Trying to keep a "detain"-button secret, having it manned by thousands of people that only have a high school diploma OR a year of work experience in security/aviation/screening, doesn't sound easy (those are by the way the education requirements for a TSO according to usajobs.gov). Since a leak could stem from a minor overstep of their contract (ohh, I told a buddy about it, big deal right?), and there are frequent policy violations by agents, it does look grim for the existence of such a button.
I heard of them kicking the machines to make them go off though, so there's a "button", and it's public knowledge that they will use it if they want a pat down.
That exact thought crossed my mind afterwards.
In the end, they never showed me any evidence that the machine had actually detected any explosive. Nor did they figure out what could have caused the "false positive".
Maybe they did detect something, but then what's equally surprising is the thought that they would then just let someone go after they have walked into JFK with explosives on their body.
What does the TSA agent get out of needlessly fucking with some random person?
Also I can imagine a number of rationalizations and psychological mechanisms that can explain how working for this kind of organization affects people - the Stanford Prison Experiment etc.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3025
Not that I don't broadly agree.
I remember that when I was reading Zimbardo's book I was most touched when he was describing how he himself was under the influence of the experiment and his empathy to "subjects" deteriorated. Only after his girlfriend expressed her concerns he realized that something went horribly wrong. We are influenced by the context, behaviour of others, interpretation of the situation etc. way more than we would like to believe and I can easily imagine that if I were one of those TSA agents I could behave in a way that I now find despicable. That's why I think we really need to be aware of those things despite the fact that they might not be conclusively proven as a 'part of human nature'.
EDIT: also let me mention another IMO super-interesting book about this subject: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm. One of the best books I've ever red.
Apart from those two times, I've been the focus of TSA attention for more than a few seconds on exactly two other occasions. One was when the x-ray tech was confused by the small flatbed scanner in my carryon, and the other was the day I had to fly with expired ID.
Again, neither occasion took more than about five minutes, and again, they asked me no questions not directly related to the screening process itself.
Also, about half the time I travel on one-way tickets, often between points that my ID does not reflect an address for. I've travelled while tired, I've travelled while stressed/nervous, I've travelled with my hair and beard at every conceivable length/combination, including long beard, short hair, and a completely shaved head.
But I'm white and have a completely Anglo name.
I'm surprised and embarrassed by how representatives of my country treated him. I'm embarrassed by their cultural ignorance. There should at least be some better training.
However, this should be a technology discussion and I completely agree with your comment. The question is about the machine, how often it provides a false positive, and how likely it is for someone to come in contact with a legal and common chemical that can set it off. In short: what have we sacrificed for this measure of safety, and does it really provide the advertised benefits?
If we have decently calibrated explosion detectors, then in the unlikely event that they do go off, I for one want that individual questioned very thoroughly, ethnicity and religion aside.
The title of the article should be: "Don't fly after handling Permethrin."
Second, we don't know if there was a false positive. Maybe some cleaner or the bed bug spray do have legitimate bomb-making uses. There's a lot of conjecture in the story and even more in this comment thread.
With bed bug spray you can set up a decent fire, maybe even blast an apartment, cf. my other comment. This is why it's not easy to buy it and that's why you should read the manual. Lovely to hear how many people use highly flammable chemicals without reading the manual.
Really, there are a ton of false-positive substances that we use every day. We need to realize that a false positive can happen to anyone, regardless of their background or morals, and we should treat suspects (for lack of a better word) with respect.
I am a white male that routinely opts-out of the scanners. I've had many many pat downs. One time my bag registered a false positive and I was also subjected to the "enhanced pat-down".
My experience was totally different from OP's. The TSA officers went out of their way to reassure me that false positives are not uncommon, that there was nothing to be afraid of, etc etc. They asked me a few simple questions, but it felt more like they were making conversation to keep the atmosphere relaxed, rather than interrogating me.
I don't recall if further tests of my bags or clothes indicated explosives, but I was let out of the screening room after ~20 minutes.
I strongly suspect that the respectful treatment I repeatedly receive during my TSA interactions are due to (mostly racial) profiling, and luck.
The tests they use are intentionally cheap and fast. Accuracy is not the primary criteria.
For white people you get an extra 30 second pat down. For brown people you get detained and interrogated all day.
Like drug dogs, false positives may be considered a bonus by the security apparatus because it allows the apparatus to work against the discriminated-against class and blame it on something else, as you have just done.
Everything would move much slower if you had to wait 5 minutes in an 'expensive and slow' device.
I'm starting to worry about the plane ride on Sunday. I've been handling concentrated ammonia (25%) lately.
False positives are fairly common, but usually easily explained -- e.g., "I was target shooting yesterday, there must be some gunpowder on my clothes". A false positive which the individual involved is unable -- or unwilling -- to explain is far less common.
As explained in other comments, nitroglycerin is found in things as bizarre as desserts.
Unless someone happens to be incredibly knowledgeable about how to make explosives out of common household supplies, it's hard to expect them to say, eg. "Oh, that's because I happened to eat dessert last night and forgot to wash my hands."
(In fact, if somebody does know that, that may be cause for all the more suspicion!)
So, apparently that's how it goes when a white male sets the thing off.
What set off the explosives detector? She had no idea, as that had never happened before to her. The only different thing she had touched hours before was the wipes they gave her during the flight to clean her hands before a meal.
How is this a reasonable assumption? When the probability of it legitimately going off is so low, most times it actually goes off are probably just false positives.
> being Hindi
"Hindi" is a language, and "Hindu" is the religion.
If you want to see a major part of why the TSA is still molesting, you don't have to go searching for mythical sheeple in far away states - just look at a third of the comments in this thread.
Also, I had a tinfoil covered basement once. It was pretty sweet.
I need to rewatch "Conspiracy Theory." I loved how his apartment was rigged.
So it does sound like being brown-skinned had something to do with the ordeal.
The detained here has no benefit of counsel, no ability to see the evidence put against them, no presumption of innocence, and so forth. And we can see within this one little example a microcosm of why all of those things are necessary and what happens when they are absent.
No matter how you cut it this individual was effectively punished, the fact that there are almost no safeguards to prevent such abuses of power today should be chilling to everyone.
"Setting off an explosion detector" is not the most important part of this. Imagine the detector as a human being instead (explosives detectors are just as fallible) making an accusation against someone. An accusation is not a conviction. Just because someone cries murder, or rape, or terrorist, even if it's a piece of equipment doing that, we shouldn't jump to conclusions and rip away every right and protection that people have in this country. Except it seems that we are doing just that and to some degree a lot of people are OK with it.
This was a flight to return home, so I didn't ask to leave the airport, but they did give me the option of going through the porno-scanner or staying grounded. I understand that the TSA at least claims that the scanner doesn't actually involve showing anybody an image beyond a diagram (not that I'm shy anyway), and it's nowhere near as risky as the backscatter, so I went for it this one time and I was on my way.
A supervisor was called in, he double checked his ID, found out my friend was using some chemicals the day before (working on his apartment). Waved him through right after.
The explanation may be the thing that got him through but it could also be the fact that they told him what chemical he set off and the fact that he's white as hell.
I do not recall if it was during Ramadan.
I did get pulled into a separate area, and treated like criminal. Two agents stood by me the entire time while another one gave me another pat down. They opened up my backpack and rifled through everything (which was, I think, the most offensive part of everything), and meticulously swabbed and tested each area of my backpack.
I did receive similar questions "Where are you going," "Why are you here," "Why would your bag be setting off our alarm?" etc..
After a few more searches, a few more scans, and a lot more questions they finally let me go through security. Whole process probably took about 20 minutes -- twenty terrifying minutes -- but in the end, it was relatively painless compared to OPs.
I don't think his treatment was in any way justified by setting off an explosive materials detector.
He set it off multiple times. It is likely you didn't. He could not provide current id, anything that showed his current address, anything to prove any part of his story, etc.
Any attempt to prove any part of his story was met with no available info. His answers were plausible, but again, there was simply nothing concrete he could provide to explain anything.
I can understand the amount of questioning and length of time he was put through. I cannot understand the denial of water/etc.
The thing is, at every turn there was just a coincidental reason something happened to turn out that way. If you don't think this looks highly suspicious on someone whose hands and bag seems to keep setting off explosive detectors, i don't know what to tell you.
If they aren't supposed to target the people with odd stories who set off explosive detectors, who exactly are they supposed to be targeting?
- "My name is ___" (ID)
- "Until two days ago I lived at NYU" (NYU ID)
- "Previously, I lived at $address" (ID)
Thousands of people in the U.S. fly without business cards or ID listing their current addresses. University students are just one obvious example. This simply isn't uncommon. If you want to target that, you might as well target retirees or snowbirds. Of course, you wouldn't, since you profile based on demographics, ethnicity, etc, in addition to merely not having a current piece of ID or a work phone number.
Explosive detector results, sure. So determine it was a false positive and let them go. It doesn't take 3.5 hours to verify a person and their bag don't have any actual explosives on them. The amount of questioning was not warranted.
I think there's been too errors: His ethnicity made him endure more interrogation and your ethnicity allowed you to endure less.
I think the next threat to airport security is as likely to be perpetrated by someone who doesn't fit the ethnic profile. Everyone in law enforcement really wants there to be a profile, but looking for one will only lead to the wrong conclusion and costly mistakes.
given the fact that he did not have any explosives or was planning anything nefarious, this whole story shouldn't have happened (in any free and/or sane country) because other tests and checks should have quickly revealed his innocence.
and from what I get, they did so, but chose to detain and harass him, and break into his house (ffs!) regardless, possibly because religion/race/background/non-WASP-ness
The fact is that they allowed him to fly afterwards. Overall it's not so horrible.
Assuming the thing about the photo isn't true, of course.
If you detained and questioned an innocent man and ruined his day costing him a weeks wages for some, wouldn't you do SOMETHING to make up for it?
A decent person would, a bureaucratic organization that is not held accountable sure wont.
Yes, they talked about Ramadan and his situation, and where the parking lot is around his house, and none of this should be surprising to anyone. They're using conversation to try to determine whether he's lying, gaps in his story, nervousness, and so on. Any single person they talk to will get a conversation that is individualized to the person. Reading too much into it may be misleading.
This isn't intended to defend the TSA (universally reviled), or any of the other agencies, but repeatedly setting off an explosion detector is 95% of this story. The rest is just surrounding decorations.