James Fallows

James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book is China Airborne. More

James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His recent books Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009) are based on his writings for The Atlantic. His latest book is China Airborne. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.

Filtered by "terrorismsecurity" (Clear filter)

A Man Who Resisted the Security State

Thumbnail image for LivesOfOthers.jpg

I'm not referring to Edward Snowden (nor to the man* above) but instead to someone who resisted in a different, very quiet way, more than a decade ago. The account below comes from a person I have known for a long time, and it describes someone I also know. It's worth reading both for the observations in the first half and for the personal story in the second. This reader writes:
I've been thinking about the recent leak investigations.  I'm usually very sympathetic to my  dad's [ca. age 80] very liberal take on these sorts of things.  But I've been having a hard time getting too excited about it. To me, this is the inevitable result of the way that technology has developed

Sadly, the tech visionaries who predicted that the internet would be revolutionary were correct, but not in the way that they expected.  We all want to be able to seamlessly move our work and online lives from desktop to laptop to smartphone to ipads.  Tech companies have given us this, and in the process have created vast warehouses of our digital lives that are assumed to have great value and you can bet that there is a constant effort at these companies to figure out how to monetize this digital storehouse.  So the NSA is simply getting a copy of the information that already is being saved to be mined for possible profit.

The companies, like Obama, assure us that they strip out identifying information.  The companies, like Obama, are asking us to trust them.  To me, the only way to change this threat to our individual liberties would be to make it illegal for any collection of our digital footprints by anyone.  And I don't see this happening.

This brings to mind a story about XX [our mutual acquaintance] not long after 9/11.  He was head of the technical team at YY [one of the former Baby Bell companies] and he was getting pressured to set up digital taps based on secret government warrants shown to the company's executives by government representatives where the company could only look at the secret warrant, but not make a copy or take any notes.  XX was bothered by the fact that once YY set up these digital taps, they were never turned off.  He also was concerned that there was no way even to validate whether these requests even came from legitimate government representatives.   And yet he wanted to keep his job. 

So he told his bosses that he would be more than happy to have his team of engineers comply, but just needed to have the exact procedures written down so that they could keep accurate records because, "at YY, we are trained to document everything we do in writing very carefully to protect ourselves and the company." 

This didn't make the government or the YY executives happy, so they flew him out to headquarters in [city ZZ] and basically tried to strong arm him into just doing it without asking any questions.   He stuck to his "I am very happy to do this, but  just want to protect my team and the company and make sure that we set up the same procedures here that we have for everything else we do" mantra.  When he went back home he sent an email to company lawyers who had called him in laying out what his understanding of what they wanted him to do and how he should document the work.

And that's the last he heard and YY was one of the only phone companies that didn't comply with secret government digital tapping requests that came to light during the Bush presidency.  Sadly, it seems that there are very few people like XX out there, so there you go...
If we finally are beginning the security-state "debate" that is many years overdue, one crucial element to examine is the interaction among technological possibilities, institutional imperatives, and the pressure on individuals to say Yes or No. It is too much to expect everyone, or even most people, to do what this telecom-company employee did. Yet his quiet example should be noted.
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* The picture is of course from the wonderful German movie The Lives of Others. If you have seen it, you'll immediately understand why this image comes to mind. If you haven't seen it, please check it out soon.

UPDATE A reader writes in response to this message: 
..when everything is so secret, how can one be sure that one is following orders (even a Court order -- ever heard of forgeries?)  from legitimate authority?
   ("He also was concerned that there was no way even to validate whether these requests even came from legitimate government representatives. " -- from your latest post a few minutes ago)

I think that the danger of PRISM etc Is misuse of the data bases by people who are clearly operating _outside the law_... Snowden (for example and by his own claim) could have been using his data resources for insider trading...just go look into the email of the honchos at Morgan Stnley. They've made an information monoculture -- and you know how risky monocultures in agriculture.

Edward Snowden in Hong Kong

Three points:

1) I believe what I wrote two days ago: that the United States and the world have gained much more, in democratic accountability, than they have lost in any way with the revelation of these various NSA monitoring programs. That these programs are legal -- unlike the Nixon "Plumbers" operation, unlike various CIA assassination programs, unlike other objects of whistle-blower revelations over the years -- is the most important fact about them. They're being carried out in "our" name, ours as Americans, even though most of us have had no idea of what they entailed. The debate on the limits of the security-state is long overdue, and Edward Snowden has played an important role in hastening its onset.

2) Among the strongest arguments against a surveillance state is that it depends on the subjective judgment of its millions of employees (a) to be applied without over-reach or abuse, or (b) to exist at all. One 29-year-old has just demonstrated the second point. Edward Snowden didn't like the way the system worked, and so he has effectively blown it up. The bigger problem may be with the first point, option (a) -- people who think there should be more intrusiveness  or prying. The Founders' fundamental concern, often distilled as "If men were angels...", was to avoid giving anyone powers that, in the wrong hands, could be abused. The surveillance state is giving too many people too much power -- either to destroy its workings, as Snowden has tried to do, or to abuse and extend them.

3) I am sorry that Snowden chose Hong Kong as his point of refuge. To be clear: I love Hong Kong. My own brother lived there for many years; I like everything about its verve of life and energy; I admire the determination of its press, judicial institutions, and civil society to maintain their independence after the transfer from British control to that of the People's Republic of China. As shown by these amazing headlines last week in the South China Morning Post (sent by a friend) on the 24th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square crackdown:

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And:

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But here is the reality. Hong Kong is not a sovereign country. It is part of China -- a country that by the libertarian standards Edward Snowden says he cares about is worse, not better, than the United States. China has even more surveillance of its citizens (it has gone very far toward ensuring that it knows the real identity of everyone using the internet); its press is thoroughly government-controlled; it has no legal theory of protection for free speech; and it doesn't even have national elections. Hong Kong lives a time-limited separate existence, under the "one country, two systems" principle, but in a pinch, it is part of China

I don't know all the choices Snowden had about his place of refuge. Maybe he thought this was his only real option. But if Snowden thinks, as some of his comments seem to suggest, that he has found a bastion of freer speech, then he is ill-informed; and if he knowingly chose to make his case from China he is playing a more complicated game.

And one more point: I have friends who work at Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden's employer at the time he (apparently) decided to leak the PRISM info. I am sure they disagree with my claim that the leaks have done more good than harm. I am sorry for the damage to their firm, which is another reminder of the danger and folly of creating systems that can be upended by one dissenting voice.

'I Cannot Figure Out Why This Was Classified to Begin With'

Blog_Ellsberg.jpgToday this note came in from a reader in Florida, about the revelations of NSA phone-surveillance programs:
In general, I'm partial to ACLU and EFF arguments about privacy and civil liberties in the digital age. But I'm also a pragmatist about national security, and the reality that there are foreign and domestic terrorists who will kill many innocent citizens if they can...

Now the security damage from these leaks becomes a bit clearer for me. Prior to these revelations, I doubt that Al-Qaeda or domestic terrorist groups (e.g., Aryan Brotherhood) could figure out how they were routinely identified and compromised. They probably assumed an informant betrayed them, or they simply assumed that they were exposed by bad luck. But now, the smarter (therefore more dangerous) terrorists know that their cell phone patterns and networks are likely the problem.

What to do if you're a terrorist? If it were me, I'd have everyone in my network throw away their cell phone periodically, purchase a new prepaid phone with cash, and distribute new phone numbers via secure means. Maybe I would use clandestine meetings. Or pay phones. Or dead drops. The point is, a very valuable (and top secret) intelligence collection tool has been compromised.
I wrote back to the reader saying, more politely, Are you kidding? Terrorist or criminal groups would not have to wait for the PRISM revelations to guess that cell phone traffic might give them away. All they would have to do is watch any American movie or TV show produced since about 1985. Half the action in the first few seasons of The Wire involved "burner phones"; think of 24, Breaking Bad, or any other depiction of groups trying to operate outside the authorities' view. Everything now known about Osama bin Laden's final off-the-grid years suggests his scrupulous awareness of the perils of leaving an electronic trail.

My point is not that crime drama is a perfect representation of reality, nor to set this reader up as a straw man, since he's provided a long stream of otherwise-astute observations. Rather I'm using his message to highlight one of the most striking aspects of the PRISM revelations: the unusual risk/reward balance in this latest large-scale leak.

The ethics of disclosing classified information can sometimes be a very close call. I don't mean for the government-employee leaker. Those who signed a pledge to protect information are at best breaking their word, and at worst breaking the law and perhaps putting people in danger, when they divulge secrets, even when they believe they are serving a higher cause. I am talking instead about the ethics of the reporter or publisher who receives the leaked info, and the public that absorbs it. If a news story reveals that a certain detail came from inside the North Korean leadership, to choose a recent example -- or from an al Qaeda confidante, or an Iranian scientist -- that disclosure might dry up future information, alert the other group to the presence of a mole, or put that source in mortal danger. Disclosure may still be worth it, but it's not an easy call -- especially when the the very details that would endanger sources would make no difference to most ordinary readers.

But when it comes to PRISM? At face value, it seems to be one of the most clearly beneficial "security violations" in years. Why?
  • On the plus side, for the general public it is of very significant value to know (rather than suspect) that such a program has been underway. President Obama says that he is "happy to debate" the tradeoff between security and privacy. The truth is that we probably wouldn't be having any such debate, and we certainly couldn't have a fully informed debate, if this program (and others) remained classified. The greatest harm done by the 9/11 attacks was setting the US on a ratchet-track toward "preventive" wars overseas and security-state distortions at home. In withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama has partially redressed the overseas aspect of that equation. (On the other hand: drones.) These leaks, which he denounces, may constitute our hope for redressing the domestic part.

  • And on the minus side, what about the harm of the PRISM revelations? Again at face value, it seems minimal. American citizens have learned that all their communications may have been intercepted. Any consequential terrorist or criminal group worth worrying about must have assumed this all along.
This brings me to Fred Kaplan's interview just now, in Slate, with Brian Jenkins, of RAND. Jenkins is an expert in terrorism whom I have known for decades and have often quoted in our pages -- for instance seven years ago, in my "Declaring Victory" article. Now he tells Fred Kaplan that he worries about the implications of the security-state infrastructure the U.S. has erected. For context: Jenkins was a Special Forces combat veteran in Vietnam and is not a reflexive dove. All of his comments are worth reading, but this about the PRISM revelations really struck me:
"I cannot figure out why this was classified to begin with. It should have been in the public domain all along. The fact is, terrorists know we're watching their communications. Well, some of them, it seems, are idiots, but if they were all idiots, we wouldn't need a program like this. The sophisticated ones, the ones we're worried about, they know this. There are debates we can have in public without really giving away sensitive collection secrets. It's a risk, but these are issues that affect all of us and our way of life."
There is a lot more to learn about this program, its reach into public life, its alleged or real benefits, and the possible consequences of its revelation. But at face value, I feel about this news the way I did when the Pentagon Papers were unveiled many decades ago. The public has learned something important about policies carried out in its name, at what seems -- for now -- a modest cost to vulnerable individuals or national safety as a whole.

Annals of the Security State: Hypotheses

Thumbnail image for 130523searches.jpgI'm going to wait a little while before putting up more first-hand accounts from people who have been subjected to stop-and-frisk in the skies. In a sense -- perhaps like normal stop-and-frisk -- the stories are all the same. In the aviation cases, pilots who have carefully followed all known rules:
  • find themselves surrounded by armed DHS/FBI/DEA/local-police forces when they land at out-of-the-way airports;
  • are detained for between two and four hours while dog-equipped teams inspect all their luggage and every part of the plane;
  • in many of the cases I've recounted the pilots are taken from the plane at gunpoint, as in the photo; and
  • eventually they're let go. The troops are looking for drugs, or terrorists, or something else, but whatever they have in mind, they haven't found it on these planes.
For now, a few attempts at interpretation. Yes, before you ask, I have queries out to my contacts at the DHS and the FAA. Here we go, starting with a short theory from a reader:
The worst thing is, like the person who complained about the Google SMS search decision, people feel like there is nothing we can do about the loss of liberties" "I know this is a useless cry into the void."
 
But what upsets me most, personally, is when I hear of these "wars" and recall Ronald Reagan's famous statement "We declared war on poverty, and poverty won."
 
How come the poverty war gets to end, but the wars on terror and drugs are interminable?
A longer and more intricate speculation, from someone who is head of a software company:
I wonder if, in your Annals Of The Security State, you've stumbled into someone's intelligence operation.  Here's what strikes me:

a) We have a series of remarkably similar incidents in which private pilots are suspected of smuggling something -- drugs, money, or people.

b) None of the people involved seem very likely to actually be drug smugglers.  Indeed, they're all the sort of people whom police agencies tend to work hard to avoid annoying, because they're often in a position to return the favor through influential friends or through their attorneys.

c) None of the people involved, however, are celebrities, and none of the planes are corporate. In other words, none of the planes carried someone whose brief detention would in itself be news.  That might be notable because the rich and famous are overrepresented in the ranks of private aviation. 

d) These detentions were costly and inconvenient to law enforcement agencies. You've got representatives of three agencies, a couple of airport managers, and local police tied up for hours. At the end of the day, you've got an angry pilot and no evidence. Someone has a lot of grousing during the long drive home.

e) In the most recent report, either FlightAware was wrong, or your correspondent lied to you about something you could very likely check and which your readers at the FAA certainly could check. And, if he was lying, he's called attention to his own criminal act for which he'd otherwise escaped scrutiny.

These incidents appear at first to resemble TSA nuisances, but I expect something else is happening. Specifically, someone is mounting a disinformation campaign against an inter-agency task force that has something to do with high-value air shipments by private plane from Mexico to the US.

In the 1960s, to do this you'd either suborn someone on the task force or you'd plant a mole. Either way, you'd need someone who could add false data to the files or apply legitimate clues to innocuous subjects. You'd need Kim Philby. And that might be the case here.

Alternatively, this might be electronic cat and mouse. Team A is mining databases, looking for suspicious people and suspicious planes.  Team B is quietly planting clues and, perhaps, swapping FlightAware records, in order (1) to protect actual flights, and (2) to lead Team A's superiors to doubt their reliability. You want to swap, not delete, the records because, as you note, airplanes leave lots of evidence (gas receipts, ATC contacts) and the systems are built to notice missing planes. You want to avoid celebrities because, if you surround Donald Trump or Kim Kardashian or the treasurer of a Fortune 500 Company or someone running for the Texas Railroad Commission with guns and blue lights, people are going to look very carefully at the source of the disinformation.

The pattern of trumped-up searches is especially disturbing.  I wonder how common this is?  I think this may be an important question for rule of law -- much like your false equivalence series:  if people assume that the 4th amendment is a dead letter and that police routinely plant or fake evidence, they simply aren't going to trust the law.

From someone who is both a pilot and member of the judiciary:
Just read your recent stories re this. Of course, I'm horrified, but, honestly, I'm a little surprised it took so long for this to start happening. It seemed to me at the time that 9/11 allowed non-pilots to be aware that a VFR flight can take place with no notice or permission, and even my worldly friends were aghast at this idea.  During the weeks after 9/11, I was sure that those freedoms would never be restored to us, and I was profoundly moved when they were....

I have also sensed that, once having had the chance to restrict uncontrolled flight slip through their grasp, those who were suspicious of GA [general aviation] would seize any opportunity to begin squeezing it off.  Only making sure that these extra-legal violations of the rights and privileges of aviation are done in the sunlight can prevent this, and I thank you for writing about these terrifying events.

(I realize I am sounding just like my friends and acquaintances who believe the current administration has a grand plan for disarming the public and who are buying up all the ammunition and rifles in sight, and I don't know how to resolve that contradiction in my belief system.)

From someone who sees a connective theme:
I've been surprised not yet to see someone pointing out the common thread in the plane stops--that everyone's flying from California--and linking that to what you routinely see on the roads in the midwest.

My brother drives to see our parents in Iowa from California once every couple of years with his wife. On two different recent trips, he was stopped for no reason by the highway patrol, once in Nebraska, for failing to signal a lane change with enough notice, and once in Iowa for a "broken taillight" (which was not broken). In Nebraska, he and his wife were questioned separately and at length. In Iowa, the patrol backed off when my brother expressed indignation and recorded a badge number. Both my brother and his wife are blond, white schoolteachers.

On the last trip, after the Iowa stop, my siblings and father and I were at a Boy Scout camp for my nephew's family night, and happened to run into an old acquaintance who is now a police officer. We told him about the stops, and he just nodded and said, "yeah, about 90% of the California plates you see here are running drugs."

Maybe Jerry Brown can do something about the continuing and expanding criminalization of California?
Not just California but also Colorado:
I wonder if the federal authorities' enthusiasm for stopping and searching eastbound private planes from California to the east coast could be related to a story NPR's Planet Money team reported recently entitle "marijuana arbitrage." 

The gist of the story is, legalization (or medicalization) of marijuana in California has pushed down the prices for the product there, although the prices remain high in the east where the traditional legal environment still reigns.  Growers and sellers see the money to be made by buying cheap in the west and selling dear in the east and just need to find a way to get their product from source to customer.  If private planes are a primary vehicle, and the feds are onto that, it could explain the over-the-top response given to pilots originating in the west and landing in the east.
 
Really, did we  learn NOTHING from Prohibition?
And a new Colorado/California-inclusive name for what we are seeing:
Why not call it "spacial profiling"? Any flight heading east from the apparently drug-soaked western states seems to be vulnerable only because of its origin and destination.

Annals of the Security State: Turboprop Edition

You can find previous entries here, here, here, and here, with other links included in those items. Today's installment comes from David Blackburn, of San Diego, who like most of the recent correspondents has agreed to let me use his real name to tell about an encounter with the authorities late in 2010. 

The details follow in his own words, but this is the gist:
  • MU2.jpgBlackburn, a businessman and pilot, was making a normal and by-the-book flight from his home in San Diego, to a training base in Tennessee, and stopped for gas in Texas en route. He was flying a turboprop Mitsubishi MU-2 plane, with its very distinctive low-slung look. (Similar model, not his plane, shown at right.)

  • While in Texas, he overheard DHS officials calling the local airport manager on a phone-answering machine, asking that Blackburn be detained.

  • He left and went on to Tennessee, where on landing he was surrounded by police, in the way that is becoming familiar.

  • After being held and questioned for four hours, he was finally released. At no point was there any reason to think he had done anything wrong.

  • All this while, every inch of his progress across the country had already been monitored by air-traffic control authorities, with whom he had checked in throughout his flight. There is no comparable degree of monitoring in the normal ground-based travel world. To imagine it, think of motorists having to radio in their location to Highway Patrol officials every 20 or 30 miles along the Interstate, or whenever they changed course -- and meanwhile having devices that transmitted their position, speed, and altitude to federal authorities every few seconds. That is how aviation works for planes like this*. So before Blackburn's flight began and at every minute he was underway, government officials knew who he was and where he was going. Still he was the object of a manhunt. [* By "planes like this" I mean high-speed pressurized craft traveling at altitudes above 18,000 feet, where all trips must be under "Instrument Flight Rules" and subject to guidance from air-traffic control.]
Like the other people I have quoted, David Blackburn is not making any claim for special sympathy. Like other members of the pilot population, he is overall very fortunate, and is used to being on the right rather than the wrong end of scrutiny from the law. Rather I offer these cameos as examples of the way the "stop and frisk" mentality is extending throughout American life, and of the cumulative effect of our two open-ended wars: the War on Terror and the War on Drugs.

Over to Mr. Blackburn. This is his account, with clarifying remarks about aviation terms inserted in brackets [like this] where useful.
The following is an account of Three IFR flights from KSEE to L35 for fuel then to KBFE for more fuel then the destination KMQY.  [An IFR flight is under Instrument Flight Rules. The significant point here is that for IFR flights the FAA knows the name of the pilot; the details and home base of the plane; and every inch of the route it will take across the country. Most airports in the U.S. officially have "K" before their airport names -- KLAX, KJFK, etc. KSEE is Gillespie field, in San Diego; KBFE is Terry County Airport in Brownfield, Texas, south of Lubbock, where Blackburn stopped for gas. His destination was KMQY, Smyrna airport in Tennessee. The other airport is L35, in Big Bear Lake, California, where he also got gas. I won't go into why some smaller airports don't start with "K."]

I departed at 5AM on October 21st 2010 from KSEE. It was IFR, with poor visibility, to Big Bear CA, L35, for fuel and further flight planning. The weather was changing from mid- Texas to the north [and Blackburn had to adjust his planned route]. The route was also IFR more or less direct from L35 to Brownfield Texas and was conducted at Flight Level 270. [Approximately 27,000 feet] It was without a doubt a good fast flight at 300+ Knots [usually there is a tailwind for planes headed west to east].

The flight was planned for training purposes in the MU2 and for recurrent training to satisfy the requirements necessary to fly the MU2. [The piloting world has both regulatory and insurance-related requirements for frequent recurrent training. I was in fact doing some of that today in my Cirrus SR-22.]

The weather was down to 2,500 feet upon arrival to KBFE for fuel. [That is, the clouds were 2,500 feet above ground level as he came in for a landing. In pilot-world, "weather" often means "bad weather," as in "we ran into some weather."] The airport manager at KBFE,  whose name was XX, came to assist me with fuel.  He noticed the one of the tires was low and provided me a bottle of nitrogen to fill it up. We had a length discussion [about some mutual friends, including some who had come to tragic ends.] We had a long talk about that and shook our heads with what a small world it was. 

As I was returning the bottle in his shop the phone rang, the recorder picked it up and the manager answered.  I could hear the entire conversation.  The gentleman identified himself as "Homeland Security" and asked if a Mitsubishi was taking on fuel and XX said yes asked if he wanted to talk to me.  The caller said NO and asked if I could hear him and XX said no, as he did not know I was listening.  The caller said I will call you right back see if you can delay his departure and hung up. 

As I entered the shop I asked him if that call was about me and he said "Well sort of".  I told him I heard the call on his recorder and that I was going to depart now.  I filed an IFR flight plan and went direct to KMQY, in Smyrna Tennessee.  I landed and parked next to the National Guard after asking permission. [Smaller airports often have a variety of craft -- private airplanes, police helicopters, National Guard, etc, and you get local guidance on where to park.]

As I walked down the street to the office of the Mitsubishi Flight School, the airport security stopped me and asked if I just arrived in the MU2. I said yes.  He parked his car and said let's walk back to your aircraft.  He would not answer any questions. Just, let's get to your aircraft. 

As we walked to where the plane was parked,  he said I will need your identification, drivers license, Pilots License, Medical, aircraft registration and any other documents relating to the operation of this aircraft.  In the distance I noticed a string of 5 or 6 cars with Blue Flashing lights.  I asked if those cars were coming for my benefit and he repeated the demands for the documents and watched as I gathered them from the aircraft.  I had everything  arranged as the flight school was also going to need to see all of the same information before we started school. 

The 5 or 6 cars arrived and the gentleman immediately asked where the other two passengers went.  I said I had no other passengers as I was here to attend [flight training school].  He said several times that he wanted me to tell him who the other two persons were and I said there were none. 

He then asked If I was carrying a large sum of money and I said well I guess.  I reached into my pocked took the wallet out and counted out $300 which was more then I usually carry with me.  He said he was looking for a large sum.  I said like what and he said well like $250,000. 

I said NO I no longer carry that type of money because my wife would spend it.  He found no humor in this.  He asked why I did not stop when I crossed the Border.  I answered that I came from Brownfield, Texas, and from California before that.  All he had to do was look at my frequencies on my knee board and or look into my flight on Flight Aware as it was all IFR. [The pilot is saying (a) that the list of radio frequencies, for the air-traffic controllers he had been talking to through the flight, would show a sequence from California through Texas to Tennesee; and (b) that the radar tracks kept on FlightAware would also show his route.]

To this he answered "We will do this our way". I said again I was attending school for the recurrent training.  He said nothing to that and then requested access to the aircraft.  I said for what and he said he had a need to search the aircraft and that in fact if I was not carrying drugs or large sums of money that I shouldn't have a problem with that.

I asked him who all these people were and he informed me that he had three agencies investigating me  and they were Homeland Security, The FBI, and DEA.  Each team had their own dogs that would be going through the aircraft and that they would be as careful as they could.  I  gave permission for him to search the aircraft. 

That is when he brought out 3 dogs and what appeared to be 3 separate teams of two people with each dog.  One team went in at a time and after they were done they came over to ask me questions. 

At some point I was taken behind one of the vans and asked questions.  I asked to be in front of the vans as I wanted to see what if anything was going into the aircraft and they said no they wanted me right where I was.  They asked about other passengers, Mexico, drugs and money each time.  They would not allow me to make any calls and this went on till the wee hours in the morning for at least 4 hours.

At this point I was shaking in my boots.  I was absolutely concerned they were going to plant something in my aircraft.  After they completed their questioning over and over again they finally  instructed me to move my aircraft to a different parking  area and that the security would escort me off the airport and that they were done.  

And they were gone.  No contact information, no reports, no comments no nothing from them, nothing.  My phone was now dead and I knew that my wife was worried.  The security guard allowed me to use his battery as we had the same phone.  He also apologized for the awful interrogation and told me that they had called him earlier in the day and advised him to detain me with any means necessary until they arrived. He had no choice he had to do whatever they told him to do. 

He knew I was there for school because he knew of the MU2 instruction that was provided at this airport.
 
The next day I called my brother and asked him to look on flight aware for my flights.  He called back and said I have your flight from Ksee to L35 Big Bear and also the L35 flight to BFE Brown Field Texas.  The flights were direct and showed the correct flight levels.  The flight from BFE Brown Field however had been changed and showed a speed of 90 knots to 115 knots and never above 3,500 feet and all over the place south to the border and north for 60 miles and all over the place but never to MQY Smyrna Tennessee.  According to the Fight Aware I never arrived in Tennessee.
 
I can speculate as to a couple of the details and the first if about the money.  I had a conversation with a business associate about a project I was working on that needed a capital investment of $250,000.00 and during the same conversation I mentioned after my flight to Tennessee that I was going to Mexico in my airplane down to Cabo.  I think it is possible, that someone was listening to my cell phone for some reason and that is what started something with homeland security....

I really do not know if I am being treated any different than anyone else.... I will continue to fly and mostly IFR.  I will NOT be deterred from my passion of flight.
 In this case, unlike most of the previous ones, Blackburn was not held at gunpoint during the questioning and detention. But in all these cases we have many hours of detention, inspection by dogs, people left rattled and humiliated, and no indication of anything approaching probable cause. Further cases and commentary tomorrow. For now, just adding to the dossier. Sincere thanks to David Blackburn for going on the record here.

Finale on the NYT Mag Airplane-in-Peril Story

I am grateful to Hugo Lindgren for his response, as editor of the New York Times Magazine, to questions and doubts about Noah Gallagher Shannon's story, "The Plane Was About to Crash. Now What?" The response included time, date, and routing information for the author's flight, which had not appeared in the original story.

Before I heard from Lindgren, I was about to put up a large number ( > 20) of messages from pilots, flight attendants, engineers, etc on why they viewed details in the story as mistakes at best, technically implausible fabrications at worst.

In light of Lindgren's response, I don't think it's worth doing so -- though, thanks to those who wrote in. Here's how it settles out for me:

      - I do believe that the author was aboard a flight two years ago that had an unexpected diversion to Philadelphia, and that this frightened him.

      - I do not believe most of the detail, color, and sequence-of-events in the story. And it strikes me that Hugo Lindgren is not trying to convince me that I should. Look again at this central and extremely artful passage from his statement:
Naturally, not every detail matches everybody else's experience. Surely even people on that plane would remember it differently. The story was about the personal experience of a fearful moment....He only reported what he heard and felt, which is consistent with the magazine's Lives page, where the account was published.
So if you went to the trouble (as I have not done) of finding other passengers on that plane and asking them whether, in fact, a rattled-sounding pilot had left the cockpit during the emergency to yell instructions down the aisle, meanwhile dangling a cap in his hand; or if you found the radar tracks to see whether an airliner had actually circled for two hours over Philadelphia; or if you heard from an Airbus electrical engineer (as I have) that it would have been impossible for the cabin lighting or public-address system to have behaved in the way the story claims; or if you went to the FAA or NTSB and found that their records for that date didn't match this story; or if you did anything else of the sort --  it wouldn't matter. The writer was telling us "what he heard and felt," not necessarily what "happened."

OK. To me this is closed. I appreciate the quick response from Hugo Lindgren. Noah Gallagher Shannon is clearly a very talented young writer -- no one would have wondered about the story if it hadn't been so grippingly told. I  assume he will think carefully about his choice of genre for future work.

Annals of the Security State: 'Is Puerto Rico in America?'

Here are two more, from people willing to go on the record under their real names. Previous entries here, here, here.
My name is Ricky Gonzalez. I am a Captain on a Citation Jet for Dorado Aviation based out of San Juan, Puerto Rico. On Wednesday May 22nd, 2013 we were approach by three vehicles right after parking at the National Jets FBO at the Fort Lauderdale International Airport (FLL). The person in charge wore a safety vest " Sheriff" and said that they were working in conjunction with the DHS.

I could go forever with the description about this. Among a few interesting points, the Law Enforcement Officer asked me if we had clear Customs to which I answered that we were coming from Puerto Rico, which is a US Territory and Commonwealth of the US. He could not understand at first. Also, one of the ladies at the FBO's front desk said that in her many years working for the same FBO she had never seen an operation like ours.

To make this more interesting my boss the aircraft owner was onboard with his family. The officer asked if he could ask him a few questions. I went inside the FBO and when I walked back they were talking to him in the back of one of the SUVs.

We stopped in FLL to pick up fuel on the way to TEB [Teterboro, NJ]. ..  They asked the same questions to my Boss, my Co- Captain and myself, almost as I they were looking for one of us to change the version....
 
Is it becoming a new tactic from Law Enforcement?
Now, from David Rivera, who runs a small business in San Diego:
I too have had this happen twice to me. Both times leaving KSEE [Gillespie Field, on the east side of San Diego] and flying to KMKN [Comanche County airport in Texas, southwest of Fort Worth] in route to KFLL [Fort Lauderdale] Florida. KMKN at the time was the cheapest 100LL in the country and an easy choice in a southern route coast to coast low altitude flying. [100LL, also known as "Avgas," is the main fuel for piston-engine airplanes. It's a higher-octane, and higher-lead-content, version of normal gasoline. The aviation business is in the middle of a much-delayed shift to unleaded aviation fuel, but that hasn't happened yet. Flight planning software lets you know fuel costs at various airports, and there can be a huge difference. It's very common to pick a refueling site because it has cheaper fuel.]

Both times I departed KSEE IFR and cancelled once in route VFR with flight plan filed. [IFR is Instrument Flight Rules, in which a pilot must follow Air Traffic Control's clearances for route, altitude, speed, etc. Even when the weather is good, pilots often choose to fly IFR to leave or enter a congested urban area with complicated airspace. That simplifies the process of knowing where they are and are not supposed to fly. Once away from the city, the pilot may "cancel IFR" and proceed on his own, under Visual Flight Rules, being careful to stay out of certain kinds of airspace.]

When I landed [at Comanche County] to refuel, I was greeted by black Ford Expeditions and local and federal law enforcement officers. My story was similar to the others you have posted, except for one crazy difference. Before I agreed to the search I needed to use the bathroom and was allowed to leave the plane and the officers and walk to a bathroom located a significant distance from the officers. I thought wow they actually would let a drug suspect leave their sight? 

I came back a few minutes later and they asked to me for my license and medical along with airplane documents. I got the BS line about the dog getting a "trigger". I allowed them to search the plane since I have nothing to hide and I was happy to be out of the plane after five hours. The officers were "very" knowledgeable about the FAR [FAA regulations] regarding pilots and planes. An hour later I was allowed to fuel the plane and depart. 

When I returned home I told my friends at the SDPD [San Diego police] and a good friend of mine that is an FBI agent about the "ramp check". They said that there is no way officers will let you out of their sight if they suspect you of committing a crime. They knew I was on a flight plan intending to land at KMKN and they could track me on Flight Aware. This allowed them to be ready to document a search. Homeland Security has a huge budget to fund government agencies and the agencies have to justify the money. Both of my friends had Homeland Security give them funding for similar projects. I believe this will just continue until the money runs out!
No more "analysis" at the moment. For now I am just rolling the stories out, and have asked federal authorities for comment. More on the way. (And, to put things in a larger Security-State perspective, consider this, via Michael Ham.)

Summarizing the Latest Security-State Post

The immediately preceding post, another Annals of the Security State installment, is very long.

Here is the TL;DR version, just for the record, for anyone who can't wade through the original.

A pilot who was doing absolutely nothing wrong -- had broken no rule, had received no warning, was behaving exactly the way a motorist would on a regular highway or a boater might do on a lake -- landed at night in fully legal fashion at a small airport in Texas. And at that point his plane was surrounded by armed security forces who directed spotlights and strobe lights into his eyes and pointed their guns at his head. The situation was so threatening he thought he was being robbed by a drug gang. But these were the Feds.

A sample:
During my engine/turbo cool down period I was blinded from the front right and left with white lights. I just covered my eyes and sat there.... I figured at this point that I was being hijacked by drug dealers who were going to steal my plane....

When they lowered their flashlights I could see they had long guns (one had a carbine and the other looked like a shotgun).... 

Once I got the plane shut down I was ordered out of the plane with a shotgun pointed at my head and patted down.   It was pretty stressful. 
This account is worth reading. And in the end, they determined, again, that he had done nothing wrong. 

To be clear, I am not saying that the pilot population is being singled out for stop-and-frisk treatment. I am saying that this is another window into what the open-ended War on Terror and War on Drugs have wrought.

Annals of the Security State: The Airplane Stories Continue

Silversteinthumb.jpgFor previous installments in this series, please see the stories of Gabriel Silverstein (right), Larry Gaines and Clay Phillips, and a Cirrus pilot who doesn't want to be identified.

Our next installment comes from another pilot who has asked me to protect his name and particulars because he is concerned about retribution. The first episode he describes, from Wyoming, was humiliating and annoying; the second, from Texas, sounds potentially dangerous and certainly quite frightening.

One point of context, which I'll pick up at the end. Many of today's security-state episodes arise from the open-ended "war on terror." Many others arise from the even more open-ended "war on drugs." Some appear to be caused by both at once, or a morphing of one into the other. Follow along with the cases, then a summary-for-now at the end:

'When they lowered their flashlights, I could see they had long guns.' A reader/pilot reports:
I've just finished reading your recent article "Annals of the Security State: More Airplane Stories" and it sounded oh so familiar.  I experienced almost an identical situation in flying from CA to TX.  It is hard to relate the stress, anxiety, adrenaline, concern and anger that is experienced during one of these encounters with our new federal government.

If you find it useful to share this story please delete my name and [other details] as my family has decided (after consultation with legal advisers) that we want no more attention from our wonderful federal protectors.  From what we have learned, they have lists, there is no one you can contact to get off the list and because they assaulted my plane and searched it for drugs, it and I are now tagged with a "drug ID number" and I must expect to be taken out of my airplane at gunpoint every time I land.... 

1. Wyoming, summer 2012. [From a letter to an aviation-world authority.] I recently had a very disturbing experience that I wanted to share with you. I'm a new pilot, I've owned a [single-engine, turbocharged Cessna] for a little over a year and am loving flying. It's been 14 months and I've racked up over 400 hours [JF note: that's quite a lot]...did I mention I love to fly?

The people I've met in the flying community have been uniformly helpful and friendly. That includes the folks at all the various FBOs [Fixed Base Operators -- essentially the service stations at small airports], so I was a bit surprised when I arrived at an FBO at a small Wyoming town last month and instead of the usual pleasant greeting the reception was a bit hostile. I found out why about a half hour later, after I'd put in my order for fuel, car rental, and wipe down and hangar storage for my plane. The manager said he'd gotten a call from Homeland Security (DHS) informing them that I was flying in shortly and to check out the plane and keep watch on me because I was "suspected of smuggling drugs."

At first I thought he was kidding me, or that one of my buddies had put him up to it - I'm an Army vet with lots of active duty military and law enforcement friends - and I wouldn't put it past one of them to play an evil joke like that on me, but it turned out he was serious. He said he decided to tell me because it was so obviously not true, once he got a look at me and at my plane.

I guess it may be true that my flying habits aren't "typical", whatever that is, but I didn't know that my decision to travel about the country in my own plane would result in Homeland Security monitoring my movements using the FAA ATC [air traffic control] system in real time and tracking me down. But it appears that DHS is calling up FBOs and making allegations that I'm a criminal based solely on my new found love of flying about the country. Because that's all it could be based on, anyone who had taken the slightest effort to look into my life would have known I have nothing to do with drugs or any other criminal activity.

I'm told by friends who should know that all this came about simply because I fly VFR (I'm not instrument-rated yet), and I often take advantage of ATC's flight following services when crossing the Sierras or Rockies. [Flying VFR, or by Visual Flight Rules, means that pilots find their own routes from place to place in clear weather and don't have to talk to air traffic controllers as long as they stay out of certain kinds of airspace.]

I'm not sure how much Homeland Security uses ATC's databases to track the activities of general aviation pilots and planes, or asks FBOs to engage in what is basically domestic spying on its behalf, but I thought you and other GA [general aviation] pilots might be interested to hear about what happened to me.

2. Utah, fall 2012
[From the same reader's letter to an aviation authority:] I departed [a city in California] on the night of November XX in order beat an incoming Pacific storm.  I stopped for the night in Cedar City, UT and then continued on to Texas the following day.  I flew mostly direct to Lubbock, TX where I stopped for fuel and then on to my destination in Corsicana, TX (just south of Dallas) a municipal airport south of town.  I landed an hour or so after dark.  I had called and made arrangements with the airport manager that morning before departing UT.

While on final approach to the airport another aircraft came on the frequency and basically blocked the frequency with banter and babble.  Approximately 1 minute after I landed a twin engine aircraft landed and taxied near where I was in the process of shutting down my aircraft. 

During my engine/turbo cool down period I was blinded from the front right and left with white lights. I just covered my eyes and sat there. There was no one else at the airport so I figured these people had come from the airplane that landed behind me.  I figured at this point that I was being hijacked by drug dealers who were going to steal my plane.  My sidearm was in my luggage in the back seat and I figured I wouldn't be able to get to it.

I tried to signal using hand gestures that I needed two minutes to cool down the engine/turbo, but I was then hit with strobe lights.  At this point I couldn't even make out the instruments on my panel so I returned the light with my own flashlight in an attempt to get them to stop blinding me.  Once they lowered their lights I was able to shutdown the plane. When they lowered their flashlights I could see they had long guns (one had a carbine and the other looked like a shotgun).  I did notice that one one of them had what looked like a shield on their jacket so I was hopeful that they were some form of law enforcement and not hijackers. The team looked to be composed of 5 or six men.

Once I got the plane shut down I was ordered out of the plane with a shotgun pointed at my head and patted down.   It was pretty stressful. I was told they were conducting "a standard FAA ramp check."  My ID, pilot's license, aircraft registration, medical, and airworthiness documents were demanded.  I provided all the documentation.

They continuously requested to search my aircraft and demanded to know where I was coming from and why I was in Corsicana.  After what seemed like 20 or 30 minutes I asked what I had done wrong and when I could leave. Finally I was given my documents back and told "I was free to go."

Once I secured my plane and loaded my luggage into a car I had arranged for from the airport, a local law enforcement officer arrived with what they referred to as a "drug dog."  I was told that they were going to walk the dog around my plane.  There dog was clearly trained to indicate for drugs when the handler wanted the dog to do so.  And, so, the dog indicated on the pilot's door and the baggage compartment door. 

The plane was searched without my authorization and against my will.  Obviously nothing was found.  I was then told that all my bags would be taken out of the car and the dog was going to inspect them.  I told them I didn't consent to that and they said they didn't care and continued to go in the car and remove all the bags and place them in the parking lot.  The dog walked around them and did nothing.  I was told I was free to go again.

After a couple of hours I was released and I headed for my hotel -- never to hear from them again, not that I really want to.  Obviously everything was in order and I was very thankful of that as these guys were very scary.  I've been spending some time trying to figure out how to make sure this doesn't happen again, but I'm not coming up with any real solutions.

A few thoughts:
1.  The initial contact was dangerous and unprofessional.  These idiots are going to get themselves or someone else injured or killed.
2.  No identification was given nor was an announcement made over the common frequency, I had no way of knowing these were government agents, thank god my gun was packed away.
3.  The only identification that was offered was CBP letters on one or more of the agents jackets.  No badges or identifications were presented...only firearms.
A European view. A reader combines the war-on-drugs and war-on-terror themes:
I write to you from Holland. Recently our national police started a similar harassment on pilots. If you ask me why I can suggest the following reason.

Security services all over the world have been very successful in repressing terrorism done by larger groups. They could do this by attacking the infrastructure necessary for the organization of these large scale attacks. Tapping into phone and e-mail, tracking financial trails and so on.The result is that terrorism has gone back to small operations done by small groups of people (Boston, London).

The result is also that the huge organizations like DHS suddenly hear and see nothing anymore. So they start to look for patterns done by profilers. Also they want their people to be in the alert status all the time because they have no clues anymore.

All of a sudden private pilots become a lovely soft target. They use the privileges of their license in the most rigorously controlled environment ever created by man. Do they focus their attention into motor gangs, a category much more likely to yield criminal results? No of course not. That would end in heavy gun battles all around the country.Imagine that you would like to make a trip on your motor bike and are allowed to ride only on certain times in the day due to noise restrictions, that you are obliged to have a tracking device on your bike the allow authorities to constantly monitor where you go and how fast, where you stop and how long. That you would have to file your itinerary one hour before departure and report upon arrival.You would find that absurd and society would not allow it.

But that is exactly what private pilots are subjected to. These people are obsessed by rules and regulations and are the most hyper obedient citizens you will find. So no resistance expected, soft targets and easy practice targets to keep your swollen bureaucracy going. In one of your stories there are a business jet ($3000/hr) a King air ($1200/hour) and a small army busy for three hours. That is an easy way to spend your budget. And the budget has to be spent at the end of the year. So the good news is that DHS was successful in fighting terrorism, the bad news is that you now live in a police state.
Similarly, from a reader in the US:
I might suggest that it's not the "Security" state, but the Drug War state. Which are slightly different things. The latter is the bigger problem than the former, in my opinion.

And I think as the security state comes under increasing "why did you exist?" pressures, it falls back on drug enforcement. Because that's an endless hole of discretion, for which astonishing infrastructure costs can be justified. Just look at the unbelievable hardware put in use in this episode. 

And I really appreciate the extrapolation part you discussed at the end. It's important for all of us to "internalize" what this means on the ground for all of us, as I noted yesterday. This could have been a Jay Z song.
And, from north of the border, a Canadian view:
Having read your stories about random checks on aircraft pilots, including a glider pilot, I thought that the time may have come to propose a general stand down. Your society seems to have entered a spiral in which more intrusive policing leads to a desire for greater private possession of firearms, and greater resistance to common-sense measures to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals or mentally unstable persons, while police react to the number of firearms in the population with more body armour, more "Terry stops", and a more intrusive and dominance-focused approach to policing.

A stand down would mean that both individual members of the public, and the public bodies dedicated to law enforcement, should give up some power. On the individual level, that means gun safety: accepting that not all people have the maturity or the mental stability to handle firearms, and accepting necessary restrictions to keep those weapons out of their hands. On the level of law enforcement agencies, it means reducing intrusions on the lives of innocent people. On the level of government, it means reducing penalties and enforcement efforts for consensual crimes and dialing back programs designed to provide police with body and vehicle armour and high powered weapons.

A few common-sense confidence building measures could level out a process that seems set, to use an aviation metaphor, to turn into a graveyard spiral.
The apotheosis of the Border Patrol. An American reader refers to a previous message about the Border Patrol's authority to stop and search without a warrant:
I am not a lawyer, but when I see this:

"As a former US Border Patrol Agent, and a pilot and aircraft owner I feel for the man who was searched but a border patrol agent is fully authorized by the Government to "board and search any Vehicle, Boat, Aircraft, dog sled, ect.. without a warrant or probable cause.
The DEA and other law enforcement agencies do not have the authority to "board and search" and that is why the Border Patrol was there."

I have to wonder by what nebulous authority the Border Patrol can, with legal justification, search a flight originating within the United States (Calaveras County Airport) and flying to an airport in Oklahoma.  Neither airport is international.  Neither airport is particularly close to an international border.  The pilot did not exit US airspace during his flight.

What part of either airport, what part of the flight, what action by the pilot could allow the BP to consider Cordell Municipal Airport in Oklahoma to be functionally equivalent to the border?
These actions strike me, on their face, as an abuse of power.
And, to wrap things up right now, I have received many messages from fellow pilots who (unlike me) are politically very conservative, and who are convinced that what we're seeing is an Obama-era "war on the right wing." I don't believe that -- remember, the two main open-ended "wars" are fully bipartisan -- but offer this exchange as an illustration. It starts with a message from a reader in South Dakota:
Every time I travel abroad I am taken aside and asked a whole lot of questions that most of these highly irate pilots would ever be asked because I am dark-haired, dark-eyed woman who was born in Greece and is a naturalized citizen.  (NOTE:  I was naturalized when I was three years old; I was an orphan, adopted to this country.)  Considering what I go through in order to travel, and have for years, I have no sympathy at all for them and their encounters with "jack-booted thugs".  In fact, I find it ironic that they have discovered that the war on drugs and the war on terrorism applies even to them - nice, white, middle to upper-class, middle-aged folks - and that the Patriot Act and its ilk might have serious repercussions for all of us.

Thank you for pointing out that "as a group they're not used to being on the wrong side of routine hassles by the police. Therefore, I concluded, if they (we) are now being viewed with routine suspicion, you can imagine circumstances for people in the "driving while black" category."  And for traveling while looking foreign. 
I wrote back saying that I understood her "welcome to my world" point, but that I very much disagreed with her saying that she had "no sympathy at all" for other people affected by the same treatment. She responded thus:
I will amend my statement:  I do have sympathy for anyone subject to harassment.  Until they launch into conspiracy theories and "jack-booted thug" statements, at which point I try (if they're sitting next to me) to explain the way things work in the real world. 

Sadly, what I often hear is "well of course they're being careful about THOSE people [blacks, Muslims, Native Americans, etc.], but I was doing nothing wrong!"  And they stick to it like glue... 

What I would really like is for those who do experience such harassment - rather than raise up conspiracy theories or complain endlessly about how badly they have been treated - to recognize that they have just been inducted into the world that thousands, hundreds of thousands, of American citizens undergo every day, and which they have acquiesced, approved, participated in it.  And feel just a little bit ashamed of themselves...  And decide that if it isn't fair for them, it isn't fair for anybody, including the scary black guy or Muslim woman or the 60-year old Greek born woman trying to get to Ireland...  :)
On these closing points I agree. This is a little sample of the incoming flow. More as soon as I can manage.

For Memorial Day, Another 'End the War on Terror' Speech

There's a connection between two themes I've been hitting hard recently: the surprising extension of "stop and frisk" inspections into the general-aviation world, and Barack Obama's announcement that the time had come formally to end the "war on terror."

The connection is that events in the first category -- overreach of the security state, at home and abroad -- are reflections of the second development: the 11-plus years of "permanent emergency" in America's rhetoric and laws about terrorist threats. In this war like many previous ones, "normal" Constitutional constraints and checks-and-balances were suspended. But all previous wars ended. Until this week, no president or serious presidential contender had argued that, for the health of America's democracy, it was time to end this one too. 

In his speech this week, Obama quoted James Madison to the same effect: "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." Seven years ago, in the issue shown below, I tried to imagine what a future speech like Obama's would sound like. This was its [imagined] peroration:
DeclaringVictory.jpg"My fellow Americans, we have achieved something almost no one thought possible five years ago. The nation did not suffer the quick follow-up attacks so many people feared and expected. Our troops found the people who were responsible for the worst attack ever on our soil. We killed many, we captured more, and we placed their leaders in a position where they could not direct the next despicable attack on our people--and where the conscience of the world's people, of whatever faith, has turned against them for their barbarism. They have been a shame to their own great faith, and to all other historic standards of decency.

"Achieving this victory does not mean the end of threats. Life is never free of dangers. I wish I could tell you that no American will ever again be killed or wounded by a terrorist--and that no other person on this earth will be either. But I cannot say that, and you could not believe me if I did. Life brings risk--especially life in an open society, like the one that people of this land have sacrificed for centuries to create.

"We have achieved a great victory, and for that we can give thanks--above all to our troops. We will be at our best if we do not let fear paralyze or obsess us. We will be at our best if we instead optimistically and enthusiastically begin the next chapter in our nation's growth. We will deal with the struggles of our time. These include coping with terrorism, but also recognizing the huge shifts in power and resulting possibilities in Asia, in Latin America, in many other parts of the world. We will recognize the challenges of including the people left behind in the process of global development--people in the Middle East, in Africa, even in developed countries like our own. The world's scientists have never before had so much to offer, so fast--and humanity has never needed their discoveries more than we do now, to preserve the world's environment, to develop new sources of energy, to improve the quality of people's lives in every corner of the globe, to contain the threats that modern weaponry can put into the hands of individuals or small groups.

"The great organizing challenge of our time includes coping with the threat of bombings and with the political extremism that lies behind it. That is one part of this era's duty. But it is not the entirety. History will judge us on our ability to deal with the full range of this era's challenges--and opportunities. With quiet pride, we recognize the victory we have won. And with the determination that has marked us through our nation's history, we continue the pursuit of our American mission, undeterred by the perils that we will face." [End of imagined speech. Note: no 'God Bless America' ending.]

Different leaders will choose different words. But the message--of realism, of courage, and of optimism despite life's difficulties--is one we need to hear.
The different leader of 2013 did indeed choose different words. But the essence of his message was one I have been waiting for a long time to hear.
__
In-house note: That September 2006 issue, with its cover story rashly announcing "We Win," was the first one fully under James Bennet's control after he arrived as editor. By the time he got here I had already begun work on this "declare victory" article.

It was a very gutsy choice for him to stick with that story, and that claim, as the cover of one of his early issues. What if some big bomb went off somewhere just before or after the issue appeared? By the strict logic of the story, that "shouldn't" matter. In the story I took great pains to explain, quoting many historians and experts in the long arc of terrorism, that attacks probably would continue, as other disasters and misfortunes do. Nonetheless (I said) we shouldn't let that blind us to the damage done by an open-ended state of war. That's fine as far as logic goes -- but in the real, trans-logical world of emotion and buzz, we unavoidably would have looked bad, "Dewey Beats Truman"-style. The risk was all the greater with a new editor's first issue, and even more so when the writer (me) had moved to China as soon as the article was done but before it had appeared. I have always been grateful for the guts of James Bennet's choice to go ahead. 

It may seem the exact opposite of gutsy to compliment one's own editor for promoting one's own article; I recognize that. But because so many people assume the worst about the choices journalists make, I thought it was worth letting people outside our office know about this one.

Annals of the Security State: More Airplane Stories

DHSTank.jpg

Over the weekend I related the story of Gabriel Silverstein, a businessman and pilot who for no apparent reason was subjected to a two-hour detention and invasive search by Homeland Security officials as he traveled across the country in his small plane. The picture above is not from that episode; it's an official DHS photo of its emergency-response agents being trained.

Below and after the jump are two additional stories of the same sort. The first is a long account from Larry Gaines, a small-plane pilot from California who had a similar episode last year. The story is long and detailed, and will be riveting for those in the aviation world. The summary for general readers is this.
  • A private pilot set out from an airport in the Sierra foothills of California, headed to Oklahoma; 
  • He made the trip "VFR" -- under visual flight rules, choosing his own path and knowing that he did not need to check in with air-traffic controllers as long as he stayed out of certain kinds of airspace (around big airports, in military zones, or subject to other restrictions).
  • He eventually landed at a tiny little airport in rural Oklahoma, where a friend met him and took him home for dinner. 
  • The pilot realized that he had dropped his eyeglass case at the airport and went back to retrieve it.
  • At which point all hell broke loose, as he describes in detail. In short, local, county, and federal enforcement agents were there to inspect him and his plane -- and when he asked why, they said that his "suspicious" profile was "flight west to east, from California."
Again to put this in perspective for people outside the airplane world, a person who was doing absolutely nothing illegal and was embarked on a perfectly normal trip from place to place, became the object of an extensive and costly manhunt -- on grounds of general "suspicion." As he says at the end of his account (taken from an email to a friend):
The whole episode lasted about 2 hours.  While the officers who questioned me were not overtly or personally threatening, the situation was intimidating and threatening.  I was never told details of the "profile", so I don't know how to prevent this from happening again, aside from talking to federal employees at all times while flying.  I am concerned that DEA and DHS now have files on me.  This distresses me GREATLY.  I am equally concerned that my plane's tail number is now suspicious in the eyes of law enforcement....

[He adds this caveat in a follow up note:] Although my adrenaline gets going when I think about this whole mess, and I can read the US Constitution, I have ENORMOUS respect for the rule of law and for the men and women who put their asses in harm's way to help assure my safety.  That includes local, state, & federal law enforcement agents, as well as our military.  The people who should answer for this crap are the cowardly bureaucrats who sent all those men, vehicles, airplanes, dogs, and guns out there - not the men dispatched to the scene.
His full account after the jump. After that is the second case, from Clay Phillips, a retired Navy officer who had a similar experience.

To say it again: I am not contending that the aviation world is being inordinately picked-upon. Overall it is a privileged part of society -- and demographically it skews toward older white males who are politically conservative, have money, and often have military experience. Ie, these are people who are not generally the object of police profiling for terrorist or other criminal tendencies. So if the security state is leaning heavily on them, you can extrapolate to other groups. The stories begin below.

More »

Annals of the Security State, Gabriel Silverstein Division

Silverstein1.jpg

This is Gabriel Silverstein. Unlike me, he is involved in commercial real estate and investment banking, and once worked at Morgan Stanley.  Like me, he is an amateur pilot who likes to fly the Cirrus SR-22 small airplane -- and, as I will soon be doing, he recently was flying his Cirrus from the east coast to the west and back again with his spouse, on business, making a number of business-related or refueling stops along the way.

At two of these stops this month, he and his airplane, and his husband Angel who was traveling with him, drew the attention of security officials who "happened" to be at the small airports where he landed.  One stop, at an otherwise deserted site in Oklahoma, was perfunctory -- but a few days later, in Iowa, a group of police were apparently waiting for the plane and surrounded it after it landed. They inspected it, with a dog, and took two hours to look through every part of the plane and all of the onboard baggage and possessions, before letting the Silversteins go. According to a fascinating account on the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) site:
 Silverstein, the pilot in command, raised objections and was given three options: wait inside the FBO [the "Fixed Base Operator," the little office that exists at most small airports] or  wait quietly outside, or be detained in handcuffs. An instrument-rated private pilot and AOPA member, Silverstein is also an active real estate investment banker who has never committed a crime, he said.
You can get more details at the AOPA site or in the opening minutes of the accompanying video, below, produced by my friend Warren Morningstar and featuring an interview with Silverstein.


Because several aspects of this story seemed so strange, before mentioning it I wanted to check it out a little more. I found a number for Silverstein (whom I do not know) and reached him on his cell phone yesterday while he was getting ready to board a commercial airline flight. 

He confirmed that the AOPA story was accurate, and that he was filing a Freedom of Information Act request, with AOPA as a backer, to find out why he was apparently targeted for a preemptive,  invasive inspection as he traveled around in perfectly legal fashion. To put this in perspective: it is as if you pulled over at one of the stops on I-95 on the east coast or I-5 on the west, only to find your car surrounded by cops and federal agents who held you for two hours and insisted on looking at every single item in your possession. Also for perspective: the prospect of "ramp checks" by FAA officials, who can show up to make sure that all your certificates, inspections, and other paperwork is in order, is theoretically possible at any moment but in practice is rare. (I am tempting fate to say this, but in 15+ years of active flying it has never happened to me.) 

"I find it hard to believe that two inspections in four days was completely coincidental," Silverstein told me yesterday. "When I commented to the homeland security guys at the second, more invasive, inspection that this had happened a few days before, they didn't seem fazed by that at all. It seems strange that after a first inspection they would immediately feel the need for another."

There are more, great-but-terrible details in the AOPA report -- including references to two previous heavy-handed security measures involving small-plane pilots. One, as reported here a few months ago, involved a 70-year-old glider pilot who was handcuffed and jailed for 24 hours for gliding over a nuclear power plant that was not marked with any restrictions on air space. In normal-world terms, this is like being arrested for driving down what looked like a normal street. The other involved two of the most familiar and Mister Rogers-ish benign figures in the aviation world, John and Martha King, who in 2010 were handcuffed and held at gun point by police for no apparent reason.  (Actually, because police mistakenly thought they were flying a stolen plane.)

To anticipate an objection: we all notice security-state intrusions when they affect our own. For me that includes journalists, in the recent AP-phone records case, and now pilots. But I am not special-pleading here: I am offering data points from (generally very privileged) realms I happen to know about, for the light they shed on the larger over-reach of the security state. And at least I'm consistent. Seven years ago, in an Atlantic cover story, I was arguing that the time had come to "declare victory" in the benighted, open-ended global war on terror, and try to restore some of the sane balance that keeps free societies free.

Kicking Passengers Off Planes: A United Captain Weighs In

Last month we went 15 rounds over the saga of the United flight from Denver to Baltimore that made an unscheduled stop in Chicago, so that a family could be taken off the plane by police. The parents' offense was to complain about a violent/sexy PG-13 movie that was being shown on the cabin's overhead screens in front of their two little boys. Even the movie's director wrote in to say that he never imagined that the film, Alex Cross, would be shown in general-viewing circumstances like this. You can get all the detail you want here or here.

Two reasons to follow up. First, a parents' group that has been petitioning United to change its movie-choice policy claims victory. Here's a note I received from one of its organizers:
We won! ...Our voice combined with other voices of journalists, traveling parents, and organizations like the Campaign for a Commericial Free Childhood made this happen.

I hoped to get the full policy from United Airlines to share with you.  But I am satisfied with this for now:

"From: "CustomerCare@united.com" <customercare@united.com>
To: D... 
Sent: Friday, May 3, 2013 12:57 AM
Subject: United Airlines - 

Dear Ms. xx:  
The policy change is that the standards are in line with guidelines of  
PG-rated movies.  More review may be underway, however this is internal 
company information.
Regards, 
Cxxxx 
Customer Care

Now who wants to contact American Airlines and Delta?!?"
Congratulations to the families that asked for the change. Apart from revising its movie policy, as best I can tell United has never apologized for or acknowledged the original over-reaction -- that of humiliating the family by turning them over to the police. I've had no followup beyond the opaque statement I quoted a month ago. 

Next, a very interesting dispatch from another United pilot. This note is actually in response to an incident reported by someone else: Matthew Klint, who was kicked off a flight from Newark to Istanbul after a flight attendant (falsely) told the captain that he was disobeying orders to stop taking photos. The whole tale is almost too bizarre to be believed, but you can scroll through the follow-up accounts here. The essential point is that a number of other passengers later confirmed that the flight attendant had over-reacted and misled the captain about what Mr. Klint was doing, but the captain nonetheless made him leave the plane (and miss connecting flights and meetings) before it took off.

I know the real name of the pilot who sent in the note below, but he (or she) has understandably asked me not to use it. Worth reading:
I am a Captain with United Airlines. I have been with UA for over 25 years. There is no excuse for the way you [actually Matthew Klint] were treated on your Newark Istanbul flight.

Let me tell you how the incident should have been handled. I had a very similar incident on a Las Vegas-Dulles flight. A flight attendant told me of a disruptive passenger that would not move his underage son out of the exit row. I went out of the cockpit to see what was going on. I went to Customer Service and had them come back to the airplane. I spoke with the man. I wanted to hear his side of the story. He began to tell me how UA had put his special needs son in a different row than him. He had moved the child to the row because the FA had not listened to him, but ordered him to move the boy. While he was telling me his side the FA immediately tried to interrupt. I told her to let the man speak. When he was through I told him not to worry the Customer Service person would re-seat them so that we could get on our way.

I wanted to point out the difference in approach to the situation. The flight attendant had told me what she thought was going on. She told me how they had to move or be thrown off the airplane. As a professional I wanted to get all the facts before just arbitrarily removing someone from the airplane. The situation was defused and we went on our way.

I did not come out of the cockpit with the preconceived notion that I was going to throw someone off the ac. In your situation I would not have overreacted over pictures. I did not know such a rule even existed. I am confused about the picture thing anyway. I would have listened to you before I made a determination whether you had to leave.

You need to know that United was not always so anti passenger in the past. Since continental took over our management they have brought in all kinds of rather strange and illogical rules.

1. You cannot take pictures, I assume because of security, but they are paying to have the secondary barriers that protect the cockpit removed from our aircraft.

2. You cannot pay cash for your food or drinks in coach.

3. You can order special meals such as Hindu, but you will most likely get a burger because management is from Texas and everyone likes beef right? (Didn't work out so well with a group of Indian Hindu engineers in First Class coming from London. You know the sacred cow and all. I apologized to them, but the damage was done.)

We are supposed to speak to our CEO like he is a close friend or something. If you don't call him Jeff he becomes upset. [JF note: This is Jeff Smisek, well known to all United travelers because of the video ads featuring him that precede the safety instructions on each flight.] They call everyone co-workers. They setup a human resource complaint system so that anyone can file formal complaints against their fellow workers for the littlest thing. You can be terminated. We have over 200 complaints being investigated just for the pilots so far.

My point is the new UA management is anti-employee as well as anti-passenger. It puts a tremendous amount of pressure on everyone. Some people handle it differently than others. I think your case is a perfect example.

I on behalf of all United Airlines employees would like to apologize to you to your ordeal. Management might think they are too important to apologize, but I think you would find the people that make the airline work don't think that way.
I appreciate the care that went into this note, and want to take the chance to say again that when there is a troubled corporate culture, the tone is almost always set at the top. I'm also grateful to the other United employees with whom I've had interesting and revealing talks in the (many) trips I've taken in the past month.

From the Director of the Film That Made a Pilot Divert a Plane

AlexCross2.jpg

On re-entering Internet land after 24 hours, I see a zillion responses to the mysterious case of United flight 638. This is the one on which parents traveling with young children complained about a movie they considered too violent and risque being played on the overhead projectors. The flight was headed from Denver to Baltimore, but the pilot made an unscheduled landing at Chicago O'Hare so police could remove the family from the plane. The three background installments are here, here, and here. To put it mildly, at face value this is a strange episode, and there must be some further backstory on how and why it happened. After I sort through the latest responses from pilots, flight attendants, regulators, etc. I'll put some up.

For now, here is a message from the man who directed the movie in question. His name is Rob Cohen, and the movie was called Alex Cross. I turn the floor over to him:
>>I'm the director of "ALEX CROSS' and I'm writing to you to add my perspective to this United Airline matter should you care to know it.

The film is rated PG-13 due to the level of violence and some very intense content.  By definition,  it is not meant to be shown to people under thirteen unless accompanied by an adult. To me, this clearly defines a box office situation where you are voluntarily purchasing tickets to view something that has been clearly rated as not kid-friendly. It does not, however, really accurately cover the airplane experience.

An airline showing on all the cabin monitors is clearly no longer a voluntary situation but one where the content is being shown indiscriminately to those who wish to view it or those who don't. It's impossible to avoid the images, even if you are not using the headphones in such a situation.

There is something unfair and, in my opinion, unwise about such a policy. I did NOT do an airline edit although I did a TV version. My assumption was that the film would be either further edited from that by the airlines or shown only on systems where a passenger can select specific films for his or her seat.

When I read your piece this morning, I felt extremely sympathetic to the family involved and, in some ways, quite apologetic. I never made the film to cause anyone this kind of discomfort. It seems to me they (the family) were well within their rights to request some control as to what their two young children were exposed. As a father of five year old triplets, I, too, would not want them to absorb some of the images we created for my film. It's a thriller based on the work of James Patterson and accurately captures the milieu, content, and characters of his many "Alex Cross" books.

These books are not for young people, either.

I cannot comment on the Captain's decision as I don't know all the facts but I do know this: there should be another standard of judgement or set of editing guidelines for airline consumption. PG-13 should mean what it does at the box office, at the very least meaning no one under 13 should be exposed to it. If the airlines cannot accommodate a more flexible presentation giving seats the option of viewing or not, they shouldn't show the film unless it meets what we could call "general cabin" suitability.

If the film cannot be edited back to a more general audience presentation, then it shouldn't be shown on the cabin monitors. If that means the loss of air line revenue, so be it. Protecting children from things they were never meant to see should take priority.

Rob Cohen <<
And FWIW, here is a sample from a large number of similar notes I've received, about this movie:
>>I just read your article about the family being kicked off the United Airlines flight that was airing the Alex Cross moving throughout the cabin. It reminded me that on our last flight from SFO to Chicago (February 23rd or 24th, not sure if it was the flight going or coming back) they were playing the same film and I was very put out that they were showing it in cabin. I had a two year old with me that was thankfully too busy with her crayons to notice the screen, but if she had I would have probably raised my concerns as well. I just wanted to highlight that the Alex Cross showing was not an isolated incident, even if the removal of the family was.<<

The Way We Live Now: United Airlines and 'Disruptive' Passengers

This is a long item; to read it in "classic view" click here. The messages below were some of those that came in over the weekend, after I mentioned my intention to say more about United Airlines. 

First, on the economics behind United's current attitude. A reader writes:
>>I am an economics graduate student, and my partner has family working for Delta. She is thus able to fly standby for free, and me for a discount (and the economist part perhaps induces a certain line of thinking..). I'm in Los Angeles; our families are in Colorado and the Chicago suburbs. To get between LA and Denver, we have to fly via the Delta hubs of Salt Lake City or Minneapolis. To get to Chicago from LA, we have to fly from LA to Salt Lake or Minneapolis and then onward...  On a bad day, it might involve Atlanta, Memphis, or Detroit--Delta's other hubs.

Now, this is partially just due to having family in Delta-inconvenient places, but look at the list of major United hubs: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Dulles, and Newark. [JF note: And don't forget its international connections through Seattle.] Newark is probably the least-awesome of these, but United has hubs in the 4 largest American cities, two of the richest metropolitan areas that are also hubs of technology and government, and the largest city in the middle of the Mississippi and the Pacific. It's hard to beat, and the odds of United having the most (and most direct) options for a wide range of long-distance flights seems quite high for a quite large fraction of Americans, and especially for Americans in wealthy and travel-heavy metropolitan regions. 

As to the customer service angle: if your business has a particular advantage that induces a great number of customers to default to it, then skimping on customer service won't cost you much, and investing in it won't gain you as much. I'm not sure how plausible this is as the fully story, but it seems plausibly part of it.<<
This post does describe my situation as a customer. The places I have mainly wanted to go over the past decades-- DC, SF, LA, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, and via the West Coast to China or Japan or Australia -- are exactly the routes United specializes in. So I end up with millions of miles and super-elite status, but also with a sense that the airline knows that no matter what I will generally end up traveling with them. 

Next, from the passenger who lodged the original "Bartleby the Scrivener Goes Airborne" report last week, and who was criticized by many other readers:
>>I must have been unclear in my note to you. My wife and I had booked our seats in January, and we were seated together. We checked in two hours before the flight and got our boarding passes, for our seats - together. They split us up as we were walking on the plane. I guess the comments show how far we have come in ceding control of our travel experience that the readers felt that *I* was the one being unreasonable.
 
On our return flight to Houston, the service on the plane reflects the "don't bother me" attitude that I usually see on United.
 
As you know, they pass out small bottles of water in business class, and the seats even had a little indentation to hold them. Both my wife and I were sleeping when these were passed out. After we woke up, my wife asked if the water had been distributed. Yes, she was told, but they "ran out" so we wouldn't get any. Another FA overheard, and said that wasn't the case, walked away and brought us our water.
 
Later in the flight, my wife asked for some sparkling water from the first FA. She said they "ran out" of sparkling water as well.
 
You will not be surprised when we did not believe her.<<
For compare-and-contrast purposes, a reader in Juneau describes another airline's approach. His account matches my own, more limited expertience with Alaska Airlines:
>>Just read your blog about lousy treatment by airline staff and I have to stand up for Alaska Airlines outstanding flight attendants  and staff.

Having flown on many other airlines, no one else I have flown with has such courteous, customer-oriented staff, (with the possible exception of my experience on Air France). Even when there was tension over contract negotiations, attendants never let their frustrations affect their service to passengers. I can grouse about management of Alaska Air, and hate getting stuck on Delta when making connections now that they are partners, but pilots and employees of Alaska Air are The Best and merit not getting lumped together with United or Delta.<<

A stroll down memory lane. Another reader reminds us of the conditions that may have produced today's workforce attitude at UAL:
>>I'd been a lifelong United fan.  Not just a flyer, but a proud shareholder back to the days of three shares bought with teenage summer job earnings (actual paper shares!  was ever there such a thing?).  For me, a Chicagoan, they were the home team, always buying and flying Boeing's latest and greatest.  Delta may have been the grand old dame, but United was the courteous valet.

Then came the bankruptcy.  Not ever a good thing, but there are ways to go about it that are less bad.  To those of us who were paying attention, it had become the most likely outcome a few years prior when the board capitulated to the pilots union.

I was in the Red Carpet Room at DIA the day of the filing.  Went up to the desk for help with changing plans.  There was weather (when isn't there?) making for system-wide complications, so figuring things out took some time.  And talent, which I was lucky enough to have found with the 23-year-service employee I had helping me.  As he keyed, we talked, and I learned about his wife, cabin crew with 28-years under her belt.  51 years of service between the two of them.  The filing came up (how could it not?), and the tears in his eyes told me everything I needed to know:  any modern corporation willing to shred that kind of loyalty on the inside wasn't likely to bat an eye when it got around to "rationalizing" customer relations.

Not long after, made the switch to American.  Not always a good thing, but certainly less bad.<<

Now, the passenger report. I know the real names of the family, in Baltimore, lodging the complaint below. For now I am not using their names, although on my inquiry they said they would be willing to be identified if necessary. I am also not naming the specific pilot they refer to in their complaint, though I have found his name and particulars in various United rosters. For the time being the point is the general "this is how we live now" observation. Here goes:
>>We trust you will find the following narrative interesting and relevant to your frequent essays on air travel in general, and United in particular.

On February 2, 2013 we travelled with our two young boys (4 and 8 years old) aboard United 638 from Denver to Baltimore's BWI airport. The inflight entertainment was the movie Alex Cross, which United's own inflight magazine rated as 'T', or, "Adult Themes". It includes extreme, graphic violence and sexually explicit content. On our plane, an A320, the movie was projected on drop-down screens above the seats, such that we could not shield our young children from this inappropriate content. Alarmed by the opening scenes, we asked two flight attendants if they could turn off the monitor; both claimed it was not possible.

The first flight attendant also claimed that the screen could not be folded up independently (which it clearly could) and that even if it could, she would still not authorize closing it because of the passengers sitting behind us. At this point, the passengers behind us spoke up and agreed the content was inappropriate for children and announced it would not bother them at all to switch it off. Both flight attendants, and later the purser, claimed that they have no authority or ability to change or turn off the movie. The purser did, however, agree with us, as did many more of the passengers around us, that it is patently inappropriate to expose children to such content.

We asked if the captain has the authority to address this issue, but received no response. A few minutes later we asked for the captain's name (I failed to make note when he welcomed us on the PA system), and was told, by the purser, that we will have to ask him ourselves when we disembark.

Throughout these interactions the atmosphere was collegial, no voices were raised and no threats, implicit or explicit, of any kind were made. The flight continued without incident, while my wife and I engaged our children to divert their attention from the horrific scenes on the movie screens.

More than an hour later the captain, [name withheld for now], announced that due to "security concerns", our flight was being diverted to Chicago's ORD. Although this sounded ominous, all passengers, us included, were calm. After landing a Chicago police officer boarded the plane and, to our disbelief, approached us and asked that we collect our belongings, and follow her to disembark. The captain, apparently, felt that our complaint constituted grave danger to the aircraft, crew and the other passengers, and that this danger justified inconveniencing his crew, a few of whom "timed out" during the diversion, and a full plane of your customers, causing dozens of them to miss their connections, wasting time, precious jet fuel, and adding to United's carbon footprint. Not to mention unnecessarily involving several of Chicago's finest, two Border Protection officers and several United and ORD managers, and an FBI agent, who all met us at the gate. After we were interviewed (for less than 5 minutes), our identities and backgrounds checked, we were booked on the next flight to BWI, and had to linger in the terminal for hours with our exhausted and terrified little boys.

Everyone involved: The FBI agent, the police officers, United employees, the passengers around us and (we were told) some of the crew, were incredulous, and explicit in their condemnation of Captain [XX]'s actions. However, even United's Area Supervisor, although cordial and helpful, was powerless to override the Captain's decision that we be removed from the plane.

To us, this incident raises two grave issues. First, the abuse of power by Captain [XX]. We understand that airline captains can and should have complete authority. However, when this authority is used for senseless, vindictive acts, it must be addressed.

Second, and of even greater concern is United's decision to inflict upon minors grossly inappropriate cinematic content, without parents or guardians having the ability to opt out. Had this been in a cinema or a restaurant, we would have simply left if the content were too violent, or too sexual, for a preschooler and a 2nd grader. Cruising at 30,000 feet, leaving was not an option.

To this date, our appeals to United to address these issues remain unanswered. We wrote to their Customer Service, and directly to their CEO, but received no responses.<<
More to come. Update I have asked United's press operation about this episode and will report back if I hear from them.

Easter Weekend Special: A Reason to Worry Less About the North Korean Threat

Many world news agencies carried this wonderful map, via NKNews.org, of the strike plan Kim Jong Un is preparing so as to make good on his threat to engulf U.S. cities like Austin and Washington D.C. in "a sea of fire." Note the paths shown for missile-strike assaults on North American cities.

NorthKoreanMap.jpg

A natural-sciences professor at an East Coast university sent me this note just now:
>>Take a close look at the North Korea war room photos.  The maps showing the ballistic missile trajectories use a flat earth projection- straight in over the Pacific Ocean.  I haven't seen comment on this.<< 
Indeed! Here is what the actual path for a missile going from Pyongyang (or thereabouts) to Austin would look like, courtesy of the wonderful Great Circle Mapper site. "FNJ" is the code for the airport in Pyongyang -- there is one.

Missile.gif

And the path from Pyongyang to downtown Washington is so different from a straight-line trans-Pacific route that Great Circle Mapper has to show it from a polar perspective:

FNJDCA.gif

This doesn't mean there's no reason to worry about current tensions on the Korean peninsula. But it might mean that Kim Jong Un has some "Hey, wait a minute... " questions to ask his strategic planners. Or perhaps he should buy them a globe. I should probably add that I didn't manage to get this posted before March 31 had ended and April 1 began, but it very definitely is not an April Fool's Day item. The straight-line map was real. Or "real."

To see this item in "classic" view, as I very much recommend you do, please click here.

UPDATE BuzzFeed has essentially re-done this item, with a tiny "h/t The Atlantic" note, this morning. Maybe it's their April Fool's Day entry.

The Rationale Behind Those 'Caution: Immigrant Crossing' Signs

immigrantxing.jpg

Recently I mentioned a Baja California-brewed "Runaway IPA" whose label cheekily mocked the famous "immigrants crossing" sign on I-5 and other roads just north of the U.S.-Mexican border. A reader in Southern California says that the signs weren't really so preposterous:
I don't want to "harsh your mellow", as Charles Pierce is fond of saying, but having driven that stretch on and off (mostly on) for 15 years commuting to Santa Ana I've seen my share of people darting across the road, almost hitting one.  I also saw a man stretched out in the middle of the highway one night coming home from work who appeared dead when I passed by (he was already being attended to).  So yes, I laugh at the sign too but it was put there for a serious reason. 

Actually, once they built the fence down the middle median most of the pedestrian crossing attempts stopped.  I think the major reason for the crossings was when drivers, seeing the Border Patrol checkpoint open ahead, stopped to kick out their passengers. ...

That wasn't the only dangerous behavior I witnessed over the years.  Once getting off the Amtrak in Santa Ana, I saw two men standing on the outside ladder rungs between two cars.  This was during a period when the Border Patrol would board in Oceanside and check passengers as we headed north.
Offered for the record.
UPDATE Another reader writes in to say:
 I agree with your correspondent [above].  I did my grad work at Irvine in the late 80s and then lived in San Diego for a couple of years in the early 90s. I had a good friend in SD so I drove I-5 with some frequency.  At this point, I can't say how many deaths there were in that period, but certainly more than a few, and between he possibility for setting off a chain of accidents in reaction to people dashing out into traffic (which I certainly did see more than once) and the trauma of running someone over, even if it's not your fault, the warning was reasonable.
 
The image, on the other hand, is something I'd like to see explained.

Watching Hacking Attempts in Real Time

This animated graphic by T-Mobile is surprisingly interesting. What you see below is a static screen shot; the site itself says it offers a depiction of ongoing cyber-attacks
.
TMobile.png

Here's the policy point: Everything I've heard from cyber-security experts over the years has emphasized that China is one of many important sources of cyber-assaults, rather than being in an ominous category of its own. That's what this rendering also suggests -- but I think you'll find it interesting to check out for yourself.

Tmobile2.png

UPDATE There is of course a reason why Chinese hacking has gotten more attention than intrusions from Russia, Nigeria, etc: of the intrusions from China appear to be government- or military-directed than from most other countries.

Also, the chart above is meant as an interesting illustration, as opposed to anything purporting to be a comprehensive map of who is doing what to whom. As a reader from the tech world writes:
I trust the statistics are for attacks wherein there has been at least one complete exchange of packets with the purported source.  Eg the attacker has sent a packet, the destination has sent a packet in response, and something based on that response bas come from the purported attacker - such as happens with the TCP connection establishment handshake.   If it is based solely on the source IP address of a single inbound datagram it will be very vulnerable to IP address spoofing.  In that case, for all we know it could be the Duchy of Grand Fenwick spoofing IP addresses in their quest for Internet Domination (™).

Involving the Taliban in Afghanistan Solution: William R. Polk, Part 3

William R. Polk's first installment in this series, about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, is here; the second, about Afghan realities constraining U.S. options, is here. This is the third and last for now, an analysis of the least-bad way for the U.S. to manage its extrication from Afghanistan. For completeness, his 1958 article on "Lessons of Iraq" is here. The points below follow "Point I. Basic Facts" from earlier today:


By William R. Polk

II. The Essential Objectives of the Afghan People and The World Community:

The fundamental objective shared by the Afghans and foreigners is a peaceful and secure country, able and willing to manage its own affairs and to act as an independent member of the world community;

This objective is brought into sharp focus by the insistence of the member nations of the NATO alliance that Afghanistan, under any government, prohibit the use of its territory or other facilities for acts of terrorism or subversion in member countries and their allies.  This, after all, was the justification for the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2003.  This is the second objective;

The third objective is particularly important for, but not necessarily understood by,  Americans.  It is not only to eliminate or cut down on the vast expenditures of money (much of it borrowed) and human resources (much of it wasted in battle or used in unproductive ways) but also to avoid a "blowback" by the warping or degradation of their institutions, comity and laws caused by fear, apparent necessity for drastic action and excessive concern with "security;"

The fourth objective of the member nations of the NATO alliance and particularly of the United States is to end or at least diminish the costs to them of the war. Member nations of the NATO alliance are already acting to accomplish for themselves this objective.   Afghans generally do not share it:  the Taliban movement, fractured though it may be, is determined regardless of  cost to induce the foreigners to leave and to reestablish something like the regime that was destroyed by the American invasion.  The Karzai government wavers between the NATO/ American and the Taliban objectives.  In principle, it seeks total independence but its power brokers (aided and abetted by influential outside participants) are making vast amounts of money off the occupation and are in no hurry to end it.   That is to say, there is a small but significant area of agreement on the objectives but not on timing, on the means to achieve them and on whom will control the action.


III. Objectives Desired By The Afghan People and The World Community:

Although, in current conditions they have not uniformly or vigorously articulated it, we may assume that a desired objective of all the Afghan people is a more adequate standard of living with both an improved diet and an enhanced level of health as well as a level of education that will enable to achieve and sustain a strong economy;

Both the majority of the Afghan people and concerned foreign powers desire a level of stability sufficient to prevent civil strife and invite further foreign intervention;

Member countries of the NATO alliance as well as China and Russia would like for Afghanistan to take a place suitable to its capacities in legal world trade.  Specifically, they would like to profit from Afghanistan's mineral resources, to make use of its routes of trade and to get its help in interdicting the drug trade;

Since some aspects of Afghan society, notably the position and role of women, appear to outsiders as ugly and "medieval," they would like to foster the "evolution" of the society along contemporary Western lines.  This objective is not widely shared in the country today although, briefly in the 1960s and 1970s, it was the policy of the then Afghan government and was approved by a wide swath of urban society.  Under conditions of peace and independence, especially if these are brought about through negotiations, it is likely gradually to re-emerge.

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Suddenly My Financial Problems Are Over

From the inbox -- actually, my wife's email inbox. Fortunately we live in a community-property state.

From: <datdave@centurylink.net>
Date: Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 10:38 AM
Subject: MGH
To: Dxxx

The Microsoft is glad to pronounce you as the lucky winner of Eight crores Thirty Four lahks and Thirty Two Thousand INR,send us the following details for claims.

Sex:
Full Address:
Full Name:
Age:
Telephone Number:

Thank you.
Dave Robinson.
To be precise, we live in a taxation-without-representation District rather than a state of any sort, and here the marital-property principle is called "equitable distribution" rather than community property. Either way, I'm looking forward to my share of the loot, knowing that one crore is equal to ten million rupees, which in turn is worth about $200,000. 

Bonus background point: Why would anyone bother sending out something this pidgin-implausible? Quora offers some hypotheses, starting with:
  •     To filter out smart users who would immediately recognize the scam, thus ensuring that only the most gullible users respond.
  •     To read in a way that an American with money might imagine a Nigerian would write (for the multimillion dollar transfer scams)
  •     To get past spam filters
  •     To fool the victim into believing the scammer is not very sophisticated and can be tricked by the victim

More »

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