Being investigated, even held for a short period of time while doing so, doesn’t mean the person did anything wrong. They could have simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, drove the same car as a criminal in the same area, or followed a pattern that triggered a legitimate alert even if what they did was completely innocent. That has always been the case, and in principle that should continue. It’s inconvenient, annoying, and even insulting to the person stopped, but as long as it is done without malice and with proper justification, and completed in a reasonable amount of time I don’t think there’s anything immoral, illegal, or part of the downslide of America Freedom involved.
It clearly can be abused and that may be happening here. I don’t know. But I haven’t seen anything presented here that would lead me to believe so. I don’t know the history of HS and aviation - is there a pattern beyond the two incidents mentioned? If so, it’s possible that HS is overzealous in their enforcement and it should be looked at closer. But I’d need to see something a little more egregious than what was presented here to take that step.
If I was driving near the scene of a crime in the same make and model car of the suspect, and I resembled the suspect, I would expect to be stopped by the cops and investigated long enough for them to determine it wasn’t me. It would be scary and inconvenient, and I would hope they would explain the reason behind it to me. I understand that in some situations they might not be able to do so, and that would suck, but it’s not the erosion of my freedoms.
If they stopped me because I was Driving While Black then that’s a whole different story. That is an abuse of the system and I would push for change.
If a SWAT team detained me for two hours, I would expect a little more of an explanation, or at least a sincere apology. If I don’t get either, I don’t think my rights would have been violated; I would think that the cops were assholes.
It takes just a few minutes to run plates and ID. I’d be pretty pissed about being held for two hours. That’s not an insignificant amount of money at the rate I bill. What did it take two hours to find out?
That’s from the article about this incident. It also mentions the photo of the SWAT team was NOT from this incident. It does show a photo of the pilot also. He has a long beard. Like Bin Ladin had. Also like many ultra-orthodox Jews have. Frankly, I don’t think Mr Silverstein is an Islamic Terrorist.
In the software industry, we’d call that a “false positive” resulting from having too loose a filter on our search. The idea is to set your search criteria strict enough that false positives don’t seep in. With that in mind, you may miss the odd smuggler, but you also won’t run into situations like this.
But as usual no one ever listens to us programmers :mad:
I think my main point stands regardless of his possible level of “suspicion”; we can assume there was no serious investigative work going on here given the time frame and response escalation – someone noticed something (hell, may have been software at work. Wouldn’t surprise me) and then you have a group of men rapidly descending on a citizen whose only crime was fitting a profile they refused to describe in any detail.
I would go so far as to suggest that if a deputy had met him at the airport and asked him a few polite questions so as to get a better idea of his intent, and whether he came off as being shady, everyone would have left a whole lot happier. You’d have one mildly spooked pilot at worst, and a boatload of time and money saved on the gov’t side.
I’d like to think various agencies were looking for someone in particular and this was a simple case of mistaken identity, but I’m not getting that vibe, especially with the “profile” explanation that kept popping up.
A few weeks ago, I delivered a plane from the PNW to Texas. Along the way the transponder began acting up and eventually Mode C failed.
Rather than spend extra days awaiting repairs, I elected to continue the flight by either restricting myself to acceptable airspace or getting advance waivers to enter class Bravo. The plane wasn’t turbo-charged so I chose a far southern route to avoid the higher peaks and leave a comfortable altitude buffer beneath me.
I alerted customs to my plight since I would be traversing close to the Mexican border, but they said no dice. Their policy is to get very curious about any aircraft along the border with a “malfunctioning” transponder. Even if that airplane is on flight following, a flight plan, and has alerted them in advance of the flight. Even if there are no stops at the border, and no evidence of either a landing or a crossing. And even if the entire flight remains on a victor airway. They informed me that as long as I remained north of a particular point, I would be of no interest to them. If I strayed any more south, he assured me, I would probably be intercepted.
I’m old enough and smart enough not to argue with bureaucrats, so I did as requested. I was really tempted to ask them how many drug dealers called them in advance and identified themselves both thru N number and name. Or ask them if the drug dealers knew than simply flying north of X was OK, with or without a transponder?
But I’m old enough to know better.
I’m with Johnny. I’m more worried about DHS than the drug dealers.
Back before 911, I used to fly for business a couple of times a year. Every. Goddamned. Time. my luggage could get an extra look and even the old swab test. Finally one day, after getting this treatment for a little puddle jumper from Minneapolis to a podunk town in South Dakota, I got angry and asked why I ALONE was being singled out.
“You fit the profile”
Yeah, what profile? White guy in his 30’s with a beard? (probably)
When I asked, the guy immediately changed his story and claimed it was “just random”. Oh bullshit. The first answer was true. I was being profiled and scrutinized every motherfucking time I flew.
For the record, I have not once ever hijacked a plane or smuggled anything on a flight.
I agree wholeheartedly. Please don’t try to speak for everyone Chessic Sense because you don’t. I agree with kayT and JohnnyLA on this one. It doesn’t matter how bad or not the actual incident was. We are switching to a default position of ‘national safety’ being the primary concern rather than individual rights or freedom and that is an extremely dangerous position in my view. We are allowing the government to do these types of stops or ‘investigations’ basically at will and declaring that everything is fine as long as no one gets beaten or imprisoned for longer than a few days.
I don’t think the military and law enforcement are bad people in general. My younger brother is a Coast Guard Officer who works on the team that specializes in taking over suspicious vessels by force commando style. That may be needed sometimes but, more often, just having the tools available and the permission to use them at will for little to no reason causes improper searches like these. Most people like to take any chance to play with the tools they equipped with.
I am not sure of the real solution other than voting for people that value individual freedom like this country was founded on. A more practical solution may be to levy financial fines against against any government agency at any level that conducts an improper search and give it to the individual(s) affected. I am not sure that would work though because it would probably lead to evidence planting and additional law enforcement corruption. That is a sad state of national affairs when those are your options.
Y’know, I wouldn’t assume that at all. In the branches of Gov I’ve worked with, some of the people work with a fixed budget. There is enough money to plant X number of trees, or X number of traffic lights, or X number of medical reviews, or to buy X computers, or X cars, or whatever.
My default guess would be that they have enough resources to stop X planes every week/month, and if no good targets turn up, they stop someone at random.
It’s scary when conservatives agree with me. It’s funny that when the last President ignored the 4th Amendment, they thought it was good; and under the current administration, they think it’s horrible. Me? I objected to it then, and I object to it now. Yes, intelligence gathering is important to security; but not at the expense of our Civil Rights.
I just thought of a WAG theory why he might have “fit the profile”.
One might suppose that a lengthy cross-country flight would tend to originate (and terminate) at a larger airport, rather than going from some tiny backwater airport in California to another tiny airport in Oklahoma. Furthermore, his flight originated in Calaveras County, in the Sierra foothills. Isn’t that an established clandestine pot-growing region? That would be my guess, why they were interested in him.
Please don’t presume to speak for me.
I, for one, believe our societal values say that we will not be detained at all by police without a good reason, and that the reason for our detention must be given to us. Yes, I run the risk every time I drive of being mistaken for a bank robber if a bank robber uses a car that looks like mine. Yes, I might get pulled over for that. But when I ask why I am being detained, they need to say that my car matches the description of one seen fleeing a bank robbery. So that I or my lawyer can check if that is actually true.
“Your behavior matched a profile that we can’t tell you about because of Security reasons” is not an answer in keeping with our societal values, because there is no way for a common citizen to distinguish that from “Because I felt like it, and I have more power than you, suck it up”.
Johnny, is it true that a lot of General Aviation takes place between smaller airports out of necessity? I remember when Pearson International in Toronto banned general aviation; forcing it all to Toronto Island or Buttonville. Oh, GA flights could fly through Pearson airspace; they just couldn’t take off or land there (barring emergencies, of course). I’m sure the same thing has happened at Sea-Tac, LAX, ORD, JFK, and similar.
Can you comment on how GA is increasingly required to use smaller airports? I don’t think that “smaller airports” necessarily equates to “requires a special search and inspection,” but perhaps you can explain it for those who may be unfamiliar with the idea of “General Aviation.”