If FBI q'd the brother, why wasn't he on the no-fly list?

[elehhhhna]

Ted Kennedy was on the list. Why not this guy.

DHS SUCKS. Dissolve it.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Just because they questioned him doesn't mean they found anything...

It would be a grave injustice to make a conversation with the FBI a reason to be on the No Fly List.

[elehhhhna]

2. a heads-up from another nation should count for something.

[HereSince1628]

8. unless the other nation is Russia, and we want to surround the old Soviet Union

with states opposed to Russia.

The BIG GAME didn't end with the fall of the Soviet Union.

[treestar]

3. They found no derogatory information.

[ManiacJoe]

4. And Senator Kennedy was not on the no-fly list.

However, a different Ted Kennedy was on the list.

[Art_from_Ark]

11. Whether or not it was a different "Ted Kennedy",

which seems extremely doubtful and will in any case never be known for sure, the reality is that Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy was detained at airports on numerous occasions, as he himself testified in 2004.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html

[ManiacJoe]

12. Yes, he was detained.

Yes, it was someone else. This is what happens when the entry into the system is based on names, which are not unique.

[Art_from_Ark]

17. And how do you know it was someone else?

Do you have any proof of that?

This happened to Senator Kennedy on several occasions. It is highly doubtful that he was being confused with someone else.

[ManiacJoe]

21. If the entry had been for the senator,

he would not have been able to get on the plane.

The enterance into the system is by non-unique name. They entered his name. It matched an existing record; he is temporarily stopped. They view the complete entry and see the it is not in reference to him. The senator is given a boarding pass and gets on the plane.

[Art_from_Ark]

27. The name on the list was "T. Kennedy"

What bullshit. Senator Kennedy was delayed several time by the same airline. One time might have been an error, but several times was not. How many people named "T. Kennedy" were there in the United States at that time? How many of them were detained at airports?

[ManiacJoe]

28. You seem to not understand how this works.

Any and all persons with a name of "T. Kennedy" will be delayed a few minutes, every time through any airport, until his/her identity is confirmed by a ticket agent using the rest of the data in the in the database. The one person matching the rest of the data does not get on the plane, everyone else -- including the senator -- gets on. Every trip past the ticket agent worked just like it was supposed to with the senator getting his boarding pass after his identity was established.

Had the senator wanted to, he could have filled out the paperwork to streamline the process since he knew he would be minorly delayed every time though every airport.

How many "T. Kennedy" are there in the world (not just the USA)? I have no idea, but the number is probably bigger than expected.

[treestar]

15. No entity can perform perfectly

Especially when it comes to predicting the future behavior of another person. There are lots of radical Muslims. Most of them will never do anything. There are radical white supremacists, most of whom never do anything. There are people wrongly on the no-fly list and people who should be on it that aren't.

The FBI can get no credit for attacks it did prevent too, since there is no way to know the future behavior of a person. In fact there would be people screaming about the unfairness of it all, since the person had no chance to commit the attack and can therefore always claim they were never going to do it.

Quit blaming people other than Tamerlan. No one could have controlled his behavior and he could not have been jailed unless he committed a crime before.

[kenny blankenship]

9. In a less stupid and dishonest world, that judgement would be revisited

now, with a skeptical eye. But current management never wants to probe too deeply into the dirty dealings of former management. They are too busy digging new holes and enlarging the old ones.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. I'd like to know what "foreign country" urged the FBI to investigate

I mean, no doubt it was Russia, but then why did they let the guy fly in a year later?

Weird.

[X_Digger]

6. Honest-to-goodness terrorism suspects don't make it on the list..

.. because that would tip them off that the PTB know about them.

Crazy, eh?

[sabrina 1]

7. Then what's the point of it? Hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have had their lives

disrupted and even destroyed by being on that list, but no terrorists, 'because it might tip them off'

Do we have morons running this country? What happened? Where did all the people with brains functioning go?

And DHS is a waste, a total waste of money. With all the contracts they have with 'security' manufacturers it was Lord & Taylor's Security cameras that id'd the suspects.

That big Orwellian monstrosity they used at the OWS peaceful demonstrations was right at the site where the bombs were planted, and it did NOTHING! It's all show!!

Every potential 'terrorist' has been caught by ordinary people, the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear bomber (who was on a list of suspected terrorists but allowed on a plane with NO PASSPORT). So, isn't it finally time to stop the insanity of spending billions of dollars on these failed Bush Orwellian institutions who have done nothing but harass innocent people?

So sick or it all.

[X_Digger]

10. The point? Security theater to make you *feel* safer. And make some MIC contractors rich, 'nach. n/t

[sabrina 1]

18. That's about it. The truth is we seem to be less safe than ever.

[X_Digger]

24. Well, honestly, we had a false sense of security for a long time.

I think it was more bravado and ignorance than anything.

Crime stats tell us we're more safe than say, the mid-90's, and we're not having planes hijacked every month like in the 70's, or blown up like in the 80's.

Remember the hijacker that Sonny Bono played in 'Airplane II' the movie? That was some pretty biting social commentary for a comedy.

eta: I misremembered- it was Airplane II, not the original.

[sabrina 1]

25. I think we had a normal sense of security. Driving a car every day is a risk, flying a plane is a

risk, getting a serious illness happens to people every day. Dying is dying. How many murders are there every day, how many work related deaths are there?

I feel less safe today than I did in the past, but I'm not anymore worried about it. If we go around the world killing people as we've been doing, making OTHER unsafe, we should expect some repercussions.

There are plenty of terribly disturbed people in the world. And for one reason or another every so often they decide to go kill innocent people. Maybe we should end all of our foreign invasions, drone programs, or whatever it is we are supposedly doing to 'make us safe' and focus on our own internal problems, we sure have enough threats to our security right here to keep us busy for a while.

44,000 people die each year for lack of Health Care. That is a major crime, imo. O people die in other civilized countries for that reason. That is approx half a million people dead due to criminal negligence since 9/11. Among them were some of the first responders to 9/11.

Mass killings get our attention even when the numbers are relatively small. While deaths due to something we could fix, lack of healthcare eg, don't get any attention at all, yet they are just as tragic to their loved ones. All unnecessary deaths are tragic. I guess I'm more afraid of getting sick and not having HC than I am of a terror attack. The statistics are far more in favor of someone dying for that reason than of a terror attack.

As for the 'nineties. There were plenty of terror attacks yes, but with diligence by the Clinton administration most of them were prevented. Bush ignored the warnings about 9/11. If it had been Clinton, I doubt it would have happened considering all the info the FBI had on the perps and how they tried to get it to those who could do something about it, according to their own testimony, it isn't the terrorists I worry about, we will always have that threat, most countries do and always have had, it is the negligence and incompetence of those we trust with that job that I worry about.

One thing I won't do is to live in fear because of ONE of the many ways in which we are NOT secure.

[RedCappedBandit]

26. Yeah. The point is to funnel public funds into private hands.

They don't give a shit if some peons are harmed in the process.

[JI7]

13. at that time he wasn't religious enough i guess

[cali]

14. So you want everyone who's been questioned by the FBI on a no fly list?

Well, that's just brilliant.

[treestar]

16. Then who will you blame when there is a terrorist act?

Certainly not the terrorist himself.

[kenny blankenship]

19. They thought he was the good kind of terrorist?

He only kills Russians, they said to themselves, so what... are we calling that a crime nowadays? And besides, there could be thousands of "Tamerlan T. Tsarnaevs" in the Chechen phonebook. How can we be sure they pointed us to the right one? It's inconclusive!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

22. He only commits "legitimate terrorism"

... recycling one of last year's Republican faux-pas.

Wait, what is the plural of "faux-pas"?

[TheKentuckian]

20. I'm not sure there was any reason for him to be in the list

That said, I'm also not sure the list makes any sense its self. Either charge folks or not and if not then they should not be restricted. If someone is a person of interest then they should be advised of such as well s as any restrictions (don't leave town, don't leave the state, don't leave the country) and then a list of such persons and their temporary restrictions.

I also have to agree that DHS should be disbanded, it is a dangerous waste.

[arikara]

23. Because they only put peace activists

and people who speak out against the government on the no fly lists.