The most charitable explanation for the no-fly-listing in the first place is that the DHS confused "Jamaah Islah Malaysia", a professional/meetup group, with "Jamaah Islamiyah Malaysia", a supposed terrorist organization, and is now furiously trying to conceal their incompetence in this case and how often they screw the pooch in general.
Rather like conflating the Tamil Tigers and the Lions Club.
This is probably what happened, and not some not very subtle (not to mention completely useless) scheme by the DHS as the title of the article seems to suggest.
I cannot speak for what process the DHS or the TSA use, but what is done in the industry to ensure the person they're transacting with is not on some blacklist (which is mandatory, as per OFAC regulations) is using fuzzy string matching algorithms. Usually it's some variant of measures like the Jaro-Winkler distance [1], which is commonly used to compare names, or phonetic algorithms like Soundex [2], which we know is used by the US government for the census.
Unfortunately, these algorithms tend to work reasonably well for western names but not so much for picking up the subtleties of other languages and cultures, like "islah" (which apparently means "reform") vs. "islam". It wouldn't surprise me if the the DHS simply relies on automatic discovery algorithms and does not have a team of sufficiently trained people with both the language skills on call to do manual checks.
There are two separate incidents involved here. What you've described is a plausible explanation for the original incident, in which Dr. Ibrahim was accused of supporting terrorists and then had her visa revoked.
It doesn't explain the subsequent incident where the government (apparently) placed her daughter on the no-fly list as well, and then went on to (apparently) lie about it in court.
I don't know the case well enough to comment on it, but my money would be the same explanation: badly coded automatic discovery systems. The DHS has been caring notoriously little about false positives and I wouldn't be surprised if some obscure rule got triggered because of her mother being on a blacklist for who-knows-what reason either related to her original ban to the lawsuit. The DHS must change because its mixture of incompetence, lack of transparency, and absence of supervision is a recipe disaster, but saying this particular case was made on purpose seems like sensationalist FUD to me. I could be wrong and it might be true, but I think everyone is jumping on conclusions way too fast.
There is no excuse to the government allegedly lying in court, but I have a hard time imagining anyone would do such a stupid move in their right mind. What could one hope to achieve by putting the daughter on the no-fly-list in the first place? That the key witness missing her flight would cause her testimony to be ignored? That stalling the process by a few days would tip the balance in their favor? That the consequences of the plot being discovered (which depended on the Malaysian airline keeping its mouth shut) do not considerably outweigh its benefits?
Also noteworthy is that this particular case is an appeal to a first decision back in in February 2012 that the DHS won, for reasons completely unrelated to Dr. Ibrahim being or not being able to board the flight: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1438741.html
A big problem with this is that the government does not specify how the matching is to be done, so everyone errs on the side of flagging people who clearly (to a human) do not match. It's just "here's a list, match it or anything similar." The worst product spec of all time.
The judge is William Alsup, who also handled the Google-Oracle case. This should be fun.
EDIT: Judge Alsup wasn’t willing to take any action today on unproven allegations or unverified documents. But he made clear that, “I am disturbed by this…. We’ll hear from her [Ms. Mustafa Kamal] when she gets here. If it turns out that the DHS has sabotaged a witness, that will go against the government’s case. I want a witness from Homeland Security who can testify to what has happened. You find a witness and get them here.”
I don't see anything absurd here. It's still not clear that cellphones are "safe".
>>Mobile phones are tested to ensure their emissions fall within FCC limits considered safe. The limits, however, fail to reflect the latest research or actual conditions under which mobile phones are used, liked being held in a pocket directly against the body while talking through an earpiece, according to a Government Accountability Office report.
The FCC last month agreed to consider revising its 17-year-old guidelines.
I'm glad the FCC at least were open to thinking about it. I treat my cellphone as a possible biohazard and keep it away from my body. It's almost always in my backpack; about a foot away from my body and I almost never make voice-calls; I'm all SMS. I put in less than 45mins/month on voice-calls.
Regardless, Alsup's decision in this case did not assume that there is no chance that cellphones cause cancer. He left himself open to that possibility. Hence more than reasonable.
Trying to argue with an alt-medicine fanatic using a .gov source is like citing Dawkins in a debate with a Bible thumper. They won't take the source seriously.
Ah, okay then. So then he left himself open to that possibility but he believes the possibility is still too small for SF to make a law over. That's a fair conclusion. I can understand that there's no need to alarm the general public until concrete evidence is brought to light.
Never thought I'd see the day when medical conspiracy theory website NaturalNews is linked to on Hacker News as proof of something. Sure, we can all expect links to it on Facebook from that one crazy aunt or uncle most people have but it's weird seeing it here.
Do you have a link to the study itself? That is a highly dubious source and the author doesn't appear to have the credentials to interpret such a study accurately and without bias.
>Lloyd Burrell is the author of a new ebook entitled "How To Beat Electrical Sensitivity" which offers a solution to the growing number of people whose health is being compromised by exposure to wireless and similar technologies, see www.electricsense.com/3-free-chapters.html
>Since falling prey to a violent reaction to his cell phone in 2002 he has spent the last 10 years researching the effects of electromagnetic fields (EMFs) on health. He now offers a complete solution on how to live a healthy life in our increasingly electromagnetic world.
dubfan, what you said might just be the biggest understatement I've heard all year.
"Electrical sensitivity" is the realm of quacks and the mentally ill, so I'm pretty unconvinced when someone who believes in that starts talking about the EM risks of cell phones.
it is impossible to prove that something is safe, you can only prove that something is harmful and thus far there isn't any credible evidence that cell phones are harmful.
If a large enough population is using X for a long time and it's mortality is not distinguishable from those not using X, then that is proof that using X doesn't kill you.
Of course, that takes decades, and can't be proved before X is widely used - but it allows us to reason about the [lack of] deadliness of various wierd cultural habits, diets, etc.
Huh? No. First of all, most of "the economy" doesn't know anything about anything unless they're informed. So they're implementing a new testing process to better inform them.
Let me remind you of a similar situation - 50 years ago, it wasn't common knowledge that smoking was harmful. Many people smoked. Then, overwhelming evidence showed that it was harmful. Then, there were widespread campaigns telling people just that. Today, not as many people smoke, and not to the same degree. Success! Should we have given up on teaching people sense?
Second, what makes you think - assuming that cell phone emissions are indeed significant enough to be harmful - we can't have tech that works as it does now, but is less harmful?
I believe the comparison you're looking for is radium - people used it for quite a long time, not knowing the long term effects. Heroin works, too - smoking doesn't because people have been smoking stuff for thousands of years...
I'm not certain your example of Tobacco is a success. My point stands, that Cell phones are needed by the economy so we'll have cellphones. Tobacco sales were needed by the economy and now they're not. Also, your idea that Tobacco fell out of market acceptance because of the health risks, widespread campaigns is wrong.
Your point doesn't stand. You implied that society needs cellphones, therefore there can be no ban on them. No one's calling to ban all cellphones. The suggestion is to reevaluate safety criteria, and disallow phones above that threshold.
Seems maybe you're right on one point, it seems plain education seems to be less successful. It's only a contributing factor whereas taxing and banning are the main factors in getting adults to stop smoking:
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/why-smoking-rates-a...
This is even funnier though, since it suggests that the approach of taxing and banning nonconforming cell phones would work, which is the opposite of what you're suggesting.
I never said taxing and banning wouldn't work. What I said is that taxing and banning will never happen because of health impact. It won't change until the health impact has a significant economic impact.
So we should all just give up? Economy is pretty dependent on gasoline/oil too; but I'm glad people are looking into finding better sources of energy. We know gasoline burning & the process of obtaining oil is not good for humanity for a big list of reasons. _If_ it's found cellphones can be harmful, hopefully we begin researching how to make safer versions. Personally, I think there's been enough studies on it to make it at least plausible and I choose to error on the side of caution.
Say, have you heard about the microwave background radiation? You are being exposed to radiation in all microwave frequencies from all directions right now from the fusion of nuclear isotopes at the start of time, also, would you like to buy this giant Faraday cage.
Why would you argue that to be a number of any significant size?
There seems to be three possibilities here:
A:you believe that killing randomly selected people will prevent more deaths than it causes.
B:you believe that killing a people does.
C:You believe that more people have died of brain cancer from cell phones than have been saved by them
(in which case, statistics would be nice maybe? I might not look at your responce, so maybe not worth it to you.)
D:
Some other interpretation of what you said that I haven't thought of.
A seems absurd, B seems absurd and possibly problematic, C seems false, but less obviously, D is essentially "other".
Is your claim that em radiation from cell phones (for signal purposes) can alter DNA molecules,
Or is your claim that it can e.g. Allow mutant cells to grow or some such ( make it more likely for the cancer to spread and such, instead of being destroyed by the immune system (accuracy?))?
The DHS lawyers obviously thought they had threatened the airlines enough that they wouldn't turn the documentation over to her. Sounds like witness intimidation and tampering with evidence. At least that's what it would be if I did it.
IANAL and also my memory on this point is rather fuzzy, but I believe it may also be the case that under such circumstances, the lawyer who has made such a false and defamatory statement is subject to civil lawsuit for libel/slander.
Lying to a judge is an incredibly serious offense for an "officer of the court" like a prosecutor or defense attorney in the course of a trial.
That's potential disbarment territory afaik.
Prenda Law is another example of lawyers getting a little too clever and running up against a judge who is as sharp as a razor and not keen on legal fraud.
It's especially damning since it seems their main defense is that the plaintiff can't even prove that DHS is the reason she's unable to fly. They keep saying "well for all we know she just didn't show up for the flight - and we won't confirm or deny if she's on the list". Since they did confirm that the witness wasn't on the list, and she may be able to provide evidence that she is, that really should blow up in their face.
I hope this story continues to be covered, I am very curious to see what the truth of this matter is. If the witness was truly put on the no-fly list it is hard to imagine how her testimony could have been more damaging than the action of putting her on the list to prevent it. That move would be insane, even for DHS.
Our government has a long history of abusing its power to prevent evidence from being admitted in court. In fact, the "State's Secrets" privilege granted to the executive branch was based on exactly that. The case that established the precedent is Reynolds vs. US Navy (definitely Reynolds not sure about Navy). I was finally declassified a couple of years ago and it came out that there were no secrets to be kept from the court other than government was at fault.
I'm not sure what's going on with my previous post. There is ambiguity in what was declassified. It's not clear if the commenter's own history was declassified, or if the aforementioned court case was declassified. My comment was a request for clarification.
The reaction you are getting is because you appeared to be making a trivial grammar correction in a heavy-handed way. Others presumed that the word was definitely intended as 'it' and that the correction did not merit mention.
Supposing I was making a grammatical comment, what would be a less heavy-handed way of phrasing it?
I italicized the word "it" for the purpose of identifying that word as the part that changed. Is the italicization being interpreted as derogatory vocal stress?
I thought about it before my first response, and I'm not sure there is a good way. Anything that comes off as correcting grammar is difficult to do politely, especially in a mixed group of native and non-native speakers.
I think most people (including me) didn't consider the 'I was declassified' interpretation because there was little else in the parent to suggest it, and because the phrasing was odd. Usually it is information that is declassified rather than individuals.
But if one was to ask for clarification, I think your second comment would be a good pattern: "I'm genuinely confused: did you mean X or Y?" Putting the burden on yourself as reader often comes off better than implying that the writer made a mistake, even if the real problem is that writer made a mistake.
(This isn't to mean that you shouldn't ever bluntly correct writers when they are wrong, just that in the absence of a pre-existing relationship it often doesn't go over well with the writer)
I think I've heard people refer to themselves as being declassified as a shorthand for their career and projects being declassified, thus I wasn't sure how to interpret the original statement.
The government lawyers should face disbarment for lying to the judge about the DHS's actions. These aren't prosecutors, they don't have immunity and they have professional duties that _absolutely_ do not involve lying.
It's not. The lawyer who made the statement is Paul Freeborne. He's not outside counsel, he's a DOJ employee. His salary is unlikely to be surprising to, say, a Silicon Valley programmer. If he's been around a while, he's probably somewhere between $100-150k with locality adjustments.
He'd be doing much better in the private sector, even as an associate in a law firm.
'Other airlines receiving similar instructions have acquiesced to DHS orders to keep the instructions from the DHS, and the reasons for the airlines’ actions, secret from the would-be travelers whose rights are affected. '
It's pretty scary that this is such a common occurrence with government orders.
Isn't this what stops a lot of suits against broad surveillence-type actity - that since court proceedings are public the suit is rejected because it would reveal classified information?
You are being held liable for a crime you did not commit and you don't even know what it is. Doesn't this perfectly fit the description of a Kafkaesque crime?
Not only did they not commit the crime; the crime hasn't even happened yet! Held liable for being the sort of person that might commit some sort of crime, maybe.
At this point, the DHS appears to be merely an antagonistic bully, and the only "security" it offers is in the form of high-paying jobs to mid-level government hacks. It should be done away with along with the TSA and the NSA.
I'd like to point out they all were created to serve some useful purpose. The fact they are doing a lot more of the wrong things and too little of the right ones points to lack of proper oversight and management, not to an inherent design flaw.
Oh that is just stellar. I don't think the DHS did it on purpose though as it is too damaging to their case. But it exemplifies the challenges of such a list perfectly.
Not anymore. Deposit a few checks into your bank account that are just under $10k, and you've committed a felony for structuring your deposits. It should be "intent," but that's too hard to prove.
I got my example from popehat and there is a nice long blog post on there about how the laws are greatly moving away from "intent" and it is a dangerous thing.
While it's a great case to bring attention to this kind of abuse, it seems very likely the DHS will just say "Due to a classified terrorist threat..." blah, blah, it's all kosher.
No, the "allegedly" is that they did it deliberately. They definitely put this woman on the No-Fly list; she's demonstrably on it. The question and concern is over whether they did it in order to hinder her testifying in this case.
No, whether or not she is actually on the no-fly list is not considered fact yet. It is possible she could have lied and faked a document. I do not think she did that, and it appears nor does the judge, but the judge wants more evidence to support the claim. From the article:
But Judge Alsup noted that the document with the DHS instructions to the airline was not supported by any sworn testimony or evidence of its authenticity. “You have to have a sworn record before I can do something dramatic.” Judge Alsup said he would consider the document if and when Ms. Mustafa Kamal arrives in San Francisco and can testify as to its authenticity.
...
Judge Alsup wasn’t willing to take any action today on unproven allegations or unverified documents. But he made clear that, “I am disturbed by this…. We’ll hear from her [Ms. Mustafa Kamal] when she gets here. If it turns out that the DHS has sabotaged a witness, that will go against the government’s case. I want a witness from Homeland Security who can testify to what has happened. You find a witness and get them here.”
Rather like conflating the Tamil Tigers and the Lions Club.