Alert issued for ex-flight school student

I've been a keen observe of this site, I believe you guys are very level headed.
As a person who can be considered both an "alien" and a U.S national (mother U.S citizen). I have observed some of the ridiculous things people do in the name of being "observant".
During the summer of 2003, an ex-colleague of mine (flew for same company outside the US) came to do his ATP. Went to a GA field, and was inquiring about the cost of doing the course with the various schools there. Before we knew what was happening, the cops were quizzing us as to our motives. WE explained what we were out there doing, and we were told a call came in about 2 foreigners inquiring about doing flight training in 2weeks. We had to explain to the cops that my friend, took time off to come do the ATP, and had to be back at work by a certain date. I went on to tell the cop that I could vote in the US just like he could, and my friend was a British citizen. The cop told us to have a nice day and left.

The point I'm trying to make is that we were inquiring just to compare cost and the availability of their aircrafts, bcos of the time constraint. Whoever it was, took it as if we were up to something fishy. I thought it was very absurd, considering, we had explained that my friend had an FAA comm/instr/multi plus 2000hrs Do328.

I believe in some of these instances, common sense should prevail. My friend was actually concerned by this incidence, and was considering forgetting if altogether and go to south africa to do the course. I had to convince him otherwise and explain to him that not everyone in the US is paranoid.
 
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I'm a little hypersensitive because I've got a friend who is an airline pilot with a middle east background who was targeted for 'extra scrutiny' by some crews for the 'better safe than sorry' attitude.

Just the idea that he could be thrown behind bars indefinitely, without a trial and have a democratic society shrug and say "better safe than sorry" is pretty darned unpatriotic.

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Well, actually it's exactly the kind of thing a democracy does. Now in a constitutional republic, like the US, it's a different thing and there may well be some constitutional issues. But if we were a democracy we could just vote to imprison whomever we wanted. (Well depending on who was in the majority.)

Which case are you referring to with your above reference?
 
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But if we were a democracy we could just vote to imprison whomever we wanted. (Well depending on who was in the majority.)

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Oh man, so OJ and Michael Jackson would be behind bars by now....
 
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I believe in some of these instances, common sense should prevail.

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Wholehartedly agree with you. But unfortunately, common sense isn't so common these days, especially in a beauracracy like the TSA. Just look at my story of having to go through a total background check for my drivers license, even though I possess some of the highest DOD security clearances by nature of my profession. This idiocy has been, and still is, getting WAY out of hand. We keep this crap up, and we're done as a country.
 
MikeD

I believe the wackos are a minority, and we have to move our concerns out of threads like this and make them known to the "powers that be".

Alot of these measure arise from "intellectuals" who have no clue what goes on out there, and have no way of getting a feedback as to what damages their policies are causing.

I belive America will survive, but we have to put up a fight and stop this idiocy.
 
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I belive America will survive, but we have to put up a fight and stop this idiocy.

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I hope you're right, but when Ted Kennedy can get on a terrorist watch list and it takes even him multiple phone calls to get off it, and we have a US citizen (Padilla) sitting in a military prison without being charged with a crime and without being allowed to speak to legal counsel, something is wrong. What's even more wrong is that in some circles, if you say, this is absolutely ridiculous and un-American, you get called a liberal weenie!
 
I agree that we must ensure this does not get out of hand. However, we would be receiving alerts like this one on a weekly, daily, or hourly basis if the situation was being blown way out of proportion.

As mentioned by a previous poster about being questioned when asking about an ATP rating is over-the-top. Getting suspicious just because it's not a US citizen is a bit ridiculous. --- It sounds as though here, however, that the flight school was familiar with the student, giving them a foundation of behavior to determine when something all of a sudden doesn't click, and behavior becomes suspicious.
 
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MikeD

I believe the wackos are a minority, and we have to move our concerns out of threads like this and make them known to the "powers that be".

Alot of these measure arise from "intellectuals" who have no clue what goes on out there, and have no way of getting a feedback as to what damages their policies are causing.

I belive America will survive, but we have to put up a fight and stop this idiocy.

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Agree with MikeD that TSA is a mess.

Surprised that this is laid on "intellectuals". I thought all the intellectuals were on board with having no security.

Agree there has to be a debate over this issue. One part of the debate has to be: Are we going to have anti-terrorism security or not? While the threat against commercial aviation may be past, I don't think you can make the argument that there aren't even worse threats out there. At least I don't think either party is going to run on a platform of standing down and just not worrying about nuclear and biological terrorist threats.

It's at least worth remembering that the WTC was hit twice by terrorists, the attacks were 8 years apart and both times the goal was massive loss of life. Kind of calls into question the whole idea of: "Whew, well at least that's over with."

Obviously the other side of the debate is preserving constitutional freedoms. I'm all for that and have concerns about the bi-partisan Patriot Act as anyone should. But I'm not as concerned about being politically correct about this.

I haven't heard a cogent argument yet as to why this strange character at this flight school, who was in the country illegally, shouldn't have received any scrutiny. If the argument is for anarchy and no security efforts or immigration laws I can consider that. I'm libertarian enough that I wouldn't be that upset if there was no pilot licensing at all.
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But I'm also libertarian enough to believe that secure borders are one of the few legitimate functions of the federal government.
 
Interesting and timely op-ed on NY Post online for anyone interested.

PATRIOTS & PROPAGANDA

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Heater MacDonald


There is a slippery-slope problem in terror investigations — but it runs the other way. Going back to the 1970s, libertarians of all political stripes have piled restriction after restriction on intelligence-gathering, even preventing two anti-terror FBI agents from collaborating on a case if one was an "intelligence" investigator and the other a "criminal" investigator. By the late '90s, the bureau worried more about avoiding a pseudo-civil liberties scandal than about preventing a terror attack. No one demanding the ever-more Byzantine protections against hypothetical abuse asked whether they were exacting a cost in public safety. We know now that they were.

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I belive America will survive, but we have to put up a fight and stop this idiocy.

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I hope you're right, but when Ted Kennedy can get on a terrorist watch list and it takes even him multiple phone calls to get off it, and we have a US citizen (Padilla) sitting in a military prison without being charged with a crime and without being allowed to speak to legal counsel, something is wrong. What's even more wrong is that in some circles, if you say, this is absolutely ridiculous and un-American, you get called a liberal weenie!

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/02/10/terror.trial.lawyer/index.html

There might be a reason they don't get legal counsel...And Ted Kennedy should be on some kind of watch list anyway!
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Well, my brother is a lawyer. And if you think I lean left, you ain't seen nothing yet compared to him.

But he said what this woman did is absolute BS. He said that it is not just un-American, but it destroys the foundation of the legal system. He said that us lay people have to be able to count on attorneys to not hide behind technicalities to do [poop] like she did.

He was livid. As long as there are attorneys that think like him, we will be okay.
 
Strange days indeed.

People are more than happy to trash civil liberties and the basic American foundations because "Oh, I'm not part of that targeted demographic/nationality so it doesn't affect me and I want to feel synthetically safe".

I've got a pal on the east coast who is Sikh, complete with beard and headress. You couldn't imagine the stories of things he went thru trying to find flight training... And he's Indian!
 
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We keep this crap up, and we're done as a country.

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Isn't it possible we're getting a little hysterical here. A lot of observers have noted that government agencies have gotten so balled up worrying about civil liberties and lawsuits that they lost much of their effectiveness during the 90s. There is nothing in the Patriot Act that is new. It simply codifies things that were already being done with court orders, and they still require court orders. It also attempts to require different agencies to work together.

The TSA or office of Homeland security isn't trampling on any rights. They are too incompetent for that. I mean so far we're talking about looking at one guy who was here illegally and someone else mentioned being queried by a cop and told to "have a nice day". MikeD has trouble getting a driver's license. Big news that that agency is incompetent.

And despite claims to the contrary, the US has successfully prosecuted about 20 suspected terrorists or collaborators here in the US since 9/11. Most of them plead guilty.

In the meantime the country has survived such things as a civil war and the suspension of the writ of habeus corpus. The imposition of an income tax. All kinds of trampling on states rights for the greater good. And decades of a national secret police being run by J Edgar Hoover, so powerful that no president dared replace him and much admired and copied by the Nazi SS.

The constitution hasn't been respected as the document the founding fathers intended since they passed on and weren't around to defend it anymore. Practically everything Lincoln did in the civil was was outside of the constitution. Few politicians of either stripe understand or respect the constitution today. If they did DC would be a lot smaller.

So if we're going to worry about "being done as a country" or something being unconstitutional then let's get serious about it. We need a JC compound somewhere up in Michigan or Idaho (Arizona is too hot, dries out my skin.)
 
Hey, the JC compound was one of my secret ideas! Dangit. I've got to find the 'leak'!
 
Atlanta paper has follow-up. The guy was indicted on weapons charges and declared a fugitive. Seems that when he heard officials wanted to talk to him, before he fled the country, he dumped one gun in a river and stashed some other guns somewhere else. Also comments from the owner of the flight school who says he was a model student who got turned in by a disgruntled flight instructor who knew he was here illegally.

Just gets stranger and stranger

Grand jury indicts student pilot
 
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