Fuck the PATRIOT Act and Fuck DHS

I almost forgot all about this. Correction, I wanted to forget all about this. The following was written on dead tree stuff while I was on the plane on my way from Amman, Jordan to NYC to catch my connecting flight back to Atlanta. Parts of it are very similar to this experience by another person. I should point out that this interrogation process happens EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I return from Jordan to the United States (which is usually once a year)

I have been unable to locate more information on the legality or purpose of these interrogations. Though I am almost certain it's more bullshit cooked up by the Bush administration. While this particular interrogation occurred in Queen Alia International Airport in Amman at the Delta ticket counter, having gone through it before in the US with DHS/ICE officers I can tell you that it was neither a QAI nor a Delta policy.

After correcting for spelling, grammar, and coherence, what I wrote on the plane is as follows:

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August 17, 2008

I am writing this on a pad of paper for later transcription. I'm on a plane, so I can't exactly use my laptop. It's not so much that I'm not allowed to as it is that I am not able to use one on the tiny tray table I've been provided. If the person in front of me decides to recline he'll crush my fingers between the screen and the keyboard.

I am incredibly pissed off with airline/airport/air anything security right now. Fuck that, I'm pissed off with anything "security" period. Homeland, national, theme park; it's all an annoyance and a hindrance designed to trip up only the least sophisticated terrorists and criminals using the most sophisticated equipment, in the hands of unsophisticated people. As the sage George Carlin put it best,

"I'm tired of some guy with a double digit IQ and a triple digit income rooting around inside of my bag for no reason and never finding anything!"

Let's start with my trip to the airport. After saying good-bye to all of my relatives I ended up at the airport with just my uncle. My brother, who was travelling with me, and I both said our good-byes to my uncle and passed through the first part of airport security, which in QIA is before the the ticket counter. I was optimistic about my travel and hoped (despite prior experience) for a smooth trip. As it turns out the TSA has gotten more proactive in annoying, aggravating, and otherwise hindering honest travellers since the last time I travelled.

When I got to the counter, people from a firm called ISDS were there to interrogate us before reaching the ticket agent. If I didn't know any better, I would have thought they were from Delta because the lanyards they wore were red, one of Delta's colors. I use the word interrogate because that's what it was. We aren't talking about, "How was your stay in Jordan? Did you pack your bags yourself?"

Now before I continue, I should point out that I was born in Yemen. No one in my family is originally from Yemen. Yemen just happened to be where my parents were living when I was born.

So one of the first questions I get from the woman interrogating us is, "Where is your other passport?"

I knew where this was going, "I don't have another passport."

"So why were you born in Yemen?" This question (which has been asked of me in previous interrogations) offends me deeply. It's a discriminatory question, it's like asking someone why they're black or white. It's not something I have control over. I was strongly tempted to condescend to her, "Well, you see, nine months before I was born..."

Instead I told her the truth, "Really it was an accident." I apologized, "I promise it won't happen again. My father happened to be working there at the time." I'm sure if I was born in Texas, I wouldn't have been asked this question. You want evidence for that? My brother was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He wasn't asked about his birthplace.

I love my brother, sometimes he can get on my nerves, but the very thing that usually annoys me kind of made me a little happy here. She asked my brother the same questions over and over again, rapid fire style. Of course terrorists and criminals don't know how to keep a story straight I guess. Like people have never been teenagers. My brother very nearly lost it when she asked him what we were doing in Jordan for the third time,

"I ate. I slept. I used the bathroom. What do you think I did?" While the reasonable part of me wanted to tell him to calm down, the other part of me felt malicious and indignant. She reprimanded him for not answering his question and asked it again. After we passed the gate keeper, I got to weigh my bags and check them. At that stage I was so high strung that if the ticket agent had been less polite than she was (thank you Delta) I would have snapped. I'm a very patient person, I had numerous small cousins crawling all over me while I was in Jordan, tugging on my hair, jumping on me, and yanking on my beard (which hurts like a bitch, believe me) without once raising my voice. I have never gotten into a physical fight in my life where I did not feel deep regret later for losing my cool. So to say I was taken to the edge by this insignificant person, and I have no respect for people who choose to stay in this profession anymore, is really saying something for me.

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That's pretty much the end of what I wrote on the plane. There is some more stuff, mainly thoughts on the flight itself. I forgot to mention the woman slapped a sticker on both our passports with the ISDS logo on it. wasn't sure why I was interrogated in Amman rather than my point of entry (New York City) but I have a hypothesis. I would find out from the pilot we would be flying over "restricted airspace". There is no other plausible explanation except we were flying over Israel. Indeed, further research lead me to ISDS's website. It's an Israeli private security (mercenary) firm. There are plenty of stories similar to mine.

Oh wait, you want some irony out of this story? When I got home, safe and sound in Atlanta I found something funny in my bag. After passing three levels of security in Jordan and two in NYC (after exiting the airport briefly after getting confused about where to go): I realized that in my carry-on I had forgotten I had a canister of shaving cream and a tube of tooth paste, in clear contravention of TSA guidelines. No one stopped me.