Arabic flashcards land student in U.S. detention

Arabic flashcards land student in U.S. detention

www.reuters.com

Airport security guards in Philadelphia didn't know what a young man was studying, but it didn't look good to them. The 22-year-old college student contends he was detained for about four hours. They asked him many questions about the strange notations he'd made. Now the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of that student, Nick George. The suspicious notes were language flash cards. He was studying Arabic.

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Appropriate vigilance on the part of the TSA and the FBI or inappropriate profiling? This kid is a perfect alphabet soup agency candidate and says himself that he plans on taking the Foreign Service exam after graduation. Will this change his career plans? Not sure if I would have been able to handle myself as calmly and professionally as he did if I were in the same situation, but then again - I'm not CIA candidate material. I may have to start carrying some flash cards with me when I travel though.





www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Sadly, I am unsurprised. Sure, it is is great that our all-seeing securities at the airports can read a notecard. I feel proud of them for beeing so alert. However, what they did with the knowledge was just stupid.
1. Was there any chance at all that these notecards said "bomb", "explosive" etc... or were themselves explosive?
2. Why would a terrorist who understands and speaks arabic (clearly what they expect) need to review their own language?
This is a bittersweet story. Oh well, at least they're paying attention

reply to post by Tripnman


What a ridiculous reaction.

Clearly we are not safe when we have idiots like these incapable of discerning real threats.

I fully expect to read the next story how another passenger was able to sail through security with several bombs strapped to his back while everyone else was obsessing over the funny flashcards this guy carried.

Morons.

From Philly.com

TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis said behavioral-detection officers had selected the student for screening even before the flash cards were discovered. Those officers are trained to look for "involuntary physical and physiological reactions that people exhibit in response to a fear of being discovered," she said.

Yikes! So the TSA, the mall security guards of the LEO world, are now properly trained to do psych profiles based strictly on body language? Scary, better keep your game face on in the airport.

I also like the bit about being flagged because his hair had been cut and that's a sign of radicalism. Good thing he didn't fly into North Carolina, or he would have had to cough up the $2000 fine for being an unregistered subversive.

What I found more ridiculous than the language flashcards, was the police response:

A police official, meanwhile, was quoted as saying it was George's ID in Arabic that caught their attention - from his Jordanian studies - and police were suspicious that the student's hair was shorter that day than it was in his Pennsylvania driver's license photo. "That," Lt. Louis Liberati said, is "an indication sometimes that somebody may have gone through a radicalization."

www.philly.com...

So now a haircut is a sign of possible radicalization? How the hell do these people ever get into positions of authority and power over the rest of us?

I usually keep my hair short and, when traveling to spend time with my brother in the US or visiting our west coast headquarters on team meetings, which is invariably a lot warmer than back home in the UK, I'll get the clippers out for a #1 cut - shorter than my passport photo. So now I may be profiled as having been radicalized since my photo was taken?

It's laughable, you REALLY couldn't make this stuff up.

I'm sure there's a smart (lazy) guy or two in the TSA, but lets face it, most of these people are security guard caliber type folks. They might be able to make out Arabic writing, but they don't' have the ability to put things together on the fly such as this.

The same reason they stop the wrong people is what will allow the bad guys to get away.

We're just lucky as hell that there are not allot of people willing and capable of doing anything to harm us most of the time.

This why I carry online flashcards that I can access from device