Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota "Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," says one federal Air Marshal. Why? Because a memo from management requires marshals to file one Surveillance Detection Report (SDR) per month, and failure to do so will negatively impact upon their annual raises, bonuses, awards and special assignments. Marshals deny fabricating stories wholesale, but claim to have resorted to creatively stretching the truth to turn benign acts into potential threats and the harm this may cause to people who have done nothing wrong seems irrelevant to the marshals and the TSA officials who created the rules.
posted on Jul 24, 2006 - View this thread

The fish that threatened national security. Lara Hayhurst, a student at Pace University, needed to take one small thing through the checkpoint at LaGuardia Airport: her pet beta fish MJ. This was, however, an apparent threat to the security of the airport and Lara's flight home to Pittsburgh for winter break. Flush the fish or become a felon? Read about Lara's decision and how the TSA forced her hand. Remember, when 2" long tropical fish can freely gain access to our airliners, the terrorists have... yada yada.
posted on Dec 29, 2003 - View this thread

"Relax, this is your captain speaking." (Chicago Tribune link, use metafilter/metafilter to view) A United Airlines captain made a refreshingly honest, down to earth statement, in the cabin rather than the cockpit, at the beginning of Chicago - DC flight recently. A Chicago Trib reporter transcribed the pilot's remarks, and they seem to be just the kind of no-nonsense reassurance that the flying public could use more of right about now. Would you like to hear something like this the next time you have to fly?
posted on Jun 18, 2002 - View this thread

Well, gee, no kidding! The Indiana Education Policy Center released a study yesterday which stated the obvious: strict zero-tolerance policies do not necessarily create safer schools for children and teachers. Expelling students under zero-tol rules doesn't change student behaviour, unfairly targets minority students and can lead to an escalation of dropout rates.
posted on May 17, 2001 - View this thread