DHS officials pulled Faizal Shahzad off a NY to Dubai flight late last night and arrested him in connection with the Times Square bombing. Two sidelights on the arrest drawn from my forthcoming book, Skating on Stilts:
- First, while DHS continues to be described as a sprawling unmanageable department, its creation has unified US border agencies for the first time. That has been a major success, allowing DHS to use both customs and immigration record systems to quickly identify risky travelers crossing our borders — in both directions.
- Second, it appears that DHS pulled Shahzad off the plane after the jetway had been withdrawn. The police weren’t waiting for him at the airport. Instead, it seems likely that, during the day, his name was entered in a terror watchlist and then spotted on travel data (the passenger manifest or the airline reservation system) for the Dubai flight; DHS caught the entry just in time to recall the flight and arrest Shahzad. This, of course, is the same data system that the European Parliament wants to cripple in the name of privacy.
Assistant Village Idiot says:
Yeah, it’s a good thing we caught that health-care opponent before he got out and gave his secret Tea Party information to our enemies overseas.
May 4, 2010, 9:15 amMark says:
So where are all the “Reichstag fire!” posters now–moving on to their next idiocy, I suppose.
Good job, Feds.
May 4, 2010, 9:34 amSteve says:
If we’re not going to torture them, is it even worth the effort to catch them?
May 4, 2010, 9:44 amFederal Farmer says:
He’s a criminal. We catch, try, and if appropriate, punish according to the law.
May 4, 2010, 9:54 amPhatty says:
Bloomberg was right after all. Shahzad was a home-grown, Teabagger that was upset with the government over the health care bill.
May 4, 2010, 10:16 amDG says:
I’m shocked DHS got one right.
May 4, 2010, 10:22 amRicardo says:
I genuinely wonder why the U.S. does not adopt the same system that most other countries have in requiring people to pass through an immigration checkpoint as they leave the country. Is there an ideological reason why we don’t do this (e.g. one shouldn’t need government “permission” to leave the country)? I can’t see any serious logistical problem — major hub airports like Bangkok and Singapore have no problem channeling all departing international passengers through immigration and it seems like Heathrow may be considering doing this as well. I realize foreigners have to submit a form to their airline when they leave but doesn’t seem to be the same level of security as having your passport scanned and cross-checked.
With this system, this guy never would have made it to the boarding gate and the privacy considerations the EU is raising wouldn’t come into play since immigration would be doing real-time checking instead of accessing the airline’s passenger manifest.
May 4, 2010, 10:24 amDotar Sojat says:
The Left’s hopes were dashed when it turned out not to be a Right Wing Fundamentalist Christianist Militia conspiracy.
May 4, 2010, 10:26 amSnaphappy says:
Thank heavens its a muslin terrist instead.
May 4, 2010, 10:27 amPhatty says:
How would this have helped? Even if Shahzad had to go through an immigration checkpoint, he would have passed through without a problem because he wasn’t identified as a suspect yet. The authorities already have access to passenger data, so they know who is boarding planes. As soon as the authorities learned that Shahzad was a suspect, they learned he was a passenger on the plane and went and arrested him.
May 4, 2010, 10:31 amRicardo says:
This comment thread on a travel blog suggests some airlines in the U.S. aren’t even bothering to collect and process the I94 form they are supposed to collect from departing international visitors.
Some system! This seems like a raw deal for everyone. International visitors have to wonder whether they will be falsely accused of overstaying their visas because some incompetent airline employee didn’t follow proper procedure while the government doesn’t get to monitor people who are leaving the country. I’d ask Mr. Baker and anyone else who may be in the know why we have this seemingly vulnerable system.
May 4, 2010, 10:33 amMartinned says:
You do realise that the fact that it works is hardly the point? Doing random cavity searches on the street also works, in that it would probably allow the cops to catch some criminals, but that doesn’t mean we should start doing it.
Whether something works is relevant in only one direction: Invasions of privacy that have no rational basis are never on the table (or at least shouldn’t be), but invasions of privacy that do make some positive contribution can in some cases be considered. However, it is never the only question.
May 4, 2010, 10:45 amRT says:
I bet he thought he was home free once he was on the plane. I would love to have seen the look on his face when he found out he was being yanked off.
May 4, 2010, 10:46 amBleh says:
Yes, because we all know that privacy concerns should go out the window whenever there’s a question of security…
May 4, 2010, 10:47 amRicardo says:
I don’t know the exact time-line involved. But if the U.S. had identified Shahzad after he had checked in but before the flight boarded, the government may have needed to shut down the entire airport before he was taken into custody. As it happens, officials were very lucky to catch him in the half hour between boarding and take-off. Additionally, it does strike me as troubling that the U.S. is delegating the pretty important task of verifying travel documents and submitting details of each passenger to airlines. How accurate are the passenger manifests the government gets and how easy is it to get a fake passport past airline check-in agents? These are genuine questions I don’t know the answers to.
May 4, 2010, 10:48 amAnonsters says:
Sicko.
Wouldn’t that be an… emigration checkpoint?
May 4, 2010, 10:57 amSteve says:
As it happens, officials were very lucky to catch him in the half hour between boarding and take-off.
Lucky, yes, but even if the plane had already taken off, odds are good we would have been able to either turn it around or apprehend him at his stopover in Dubai.
May 4, 2010, 11:29 amLegalCookie says:
In short: yes. Why should I need the government’s permission to leave the country? I am not a subject of the United States government to be held at their will.
May 4, 2010, 11:33 amChris Travers says:
So now the next bomber will just drive to Canada immediately after the attempt, and then board a flight to Dubai…..
Weakest link, folks……
May 4, 2010, 11:42 amBleh says:
I’m sure Canadian law enforcement agencies would be very willing to help us aprehend a suspected terrorist, but I could be wrong.
May 4, 2010, 11:46 amChris Travers says:
Not my point.
The issue is that if travel data compromises privacy more here than in Canada, then it makes sense to try to get around this by going to Canada. It’s not a judgement on the Canadian law enforcement agencies, but just a note that it may be far easier to escape through a land border/airplane combination than just an airplane.
If other countries don’t follow our travel information system, and we don’t require this data to leave the country through all means, then the system can be circumvented.
May 4, 2010, 12:07 pmRicardo says:
Canada, the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean nations theoretically coordinate their checking of passenger manifests against a common database. As I understand it, if the U.S. red-flags someone on a no-fly list, they are supposed to show up on the no-fly lists of the other countries to prevent that person from entering or leaving North American airspace. As to how well this works in practice…
May 4, 2010, 12:08 pmChris Travers says:
Right, but that is only for flights over US airspace, correct? They don’t have to check with the US for a Toronto/London flight, right?
May 4, 2010, 12:38 pmStewart Baker says:
There has been interest in such a system, but reconfiguring and manning border stations, especially land stations, would be very expensive.
Mostly cost, and a sense that we have a more or less adequate system for catching departing travelers.
The manifests are built from passport scans, generally, so they’re only as good as the scans. So far, fake passports have been pretty rare due to new passport security measures adopted since 9/11.
May 4, 2010, 12:49 pmBleh says:
Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding.
May 4, 2010, 12:52 pmMartinned says:
The answer to this one is the same one given by the European Court of Justice to one of my compatriots who argued that he shouldn’t have to show his passport to get into his own country:
(Wijsenbeek, par. 43.)
In other words, even assuming that you, as a citizen, have the right to leave the country without being hassled, that right surely doesn’t extend to a non-citizen like myself. It follows that the customs officials are entitled – at the very least – to ask for proof of citizenship in order to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens.
May 4, 2010, 12:56 pmneurodoc says:
Who said anything about “permission to leave the country”? Sovereign countries, of which the US is one, have the right to control their borders, which at a minimum means the right to monitor who crosses them both in and out. The limits on an entry to this country are, or at least should be, substantial, but I know of none on leaving other than that you are not wanted by law enforcement or on a no-fly list (you can depart by land or sea, and possibly by private aircraft).
May 4, 2010, 1:15 pmneurodoc says:
Leaving on other than commecial flights? Private planes do leave the US for other countries don’t they, and passengers aboard such flights don’t have to identify themselves to US authorities, do they?
May 4, 2010, 1:19 pmneurodoc says:
But the decision you quote seems to contemplate only someone entering a country, not someone leaving. Am I wrong about that?
May 4, 2010, 1:22 pmMartinned says:
Yes, but the logic works the same way: Even if citizens have the right to leave the country, as long as that right is not enjoyed by citizens and non-citizens alike, citizens have to put up with being asked for proof of citizenship.
(I realise that there must be a simpler way to refute Legalcookie’s claim, but I’m just having a little fun here. That Wijsenbeek case is too cool not to work it into the conversation at every opportunity. What would we jurists do without really annoying people who sue to the highest courts over seeming trivialities?)
May 4, 2010, 1:26 pmSteve says:
Which countries make you pass through their own immigration checkpoint as you leave? My international experience is limited, but I don’t remember experiencing anything of the sort in Canada, Mexico, England, or France, so is it really the case that “most countries” have such a requirement?
May 4, 2010, 1:37 pmSteve says:
Yes, but the logic works the same way: Even if citizens have the right to leave the country, as long as that right is not enjoyed by citizens and non-citizens alike, citizens have to put up with being asked for proof of citizenship.
Or, to put it another way: which countries don’t let non-citizens leave if they want to?
May 4, 2010, 1:40 pmJust Dropping By says:
We must invade Canada! It’s the only responsible thing to do.
May 4, 2010, 1:42 pmAnonsters says:
Anyway, they’ve been asking for it, with their their friendly “eh”s and their disarming kindness.
May 4, 2010, 1:56 pmbs says:
You’re just making crap up.
“Instead, it seems likely that, during the day, his name was entered in a terror watchlist and then spotted on travel data (the passenger manifest or the airline reservation system) for the Dubai flight; DHS caught the entry just in time to recall the flight and arrest Shahzad. This, of course, is the same data system that the European Parliament wants to cripple in the name of privacy.”
By “it seems likely” I think you mean to say “I really hope the facts turn out this way since they will then support an argument of mine.”
May 4, 2010, 2:00 pmMartinned says:
AFAIK, every country has them. IIRC, even passing over land from the US to Canada there was a checkpoint (in 2004). The only thing is that they don’t usually check very carefully. If you don’t look like you’re up to no good, they usually just wave you through. The last time I passed over land through a serious border, from Bulgaria to Turkey in 2006, there was a massive check first by the Bulgarians and then by the Turks.
May 4, 2010, 2:03 pmMartinned says:
If that non-citizen is wanted for a crime? All of them.
May 4, 2010, 2:03 pmChris Travers says:
Martinned: Indonesia makes you pay an exit tax if you are a resident of Indonesia…..
On the US/Canadian border, though, I have never had to go through a US checkpoint in order to enter Canada or vice versa.
May 4, 2010, 2:05 pmSammy Finkelman says:
In some other country he never would have been allowed to board the plane (unless it is that they didn’t have his name until just before the plane took off.
One story says that they were tracking him all day.
Another says that he had gotten rid of the cellphone by then. Perhaps they had found the number of a SECOND cellphone.
They got his name from the e-mail address he used to answer the Craigslist ad for the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder and they must have had his email address and cellphone number (which was still working) by sometime Sunday night after they had talked to the seller of the car.
May 4, 2010, 2:14 pmAnonsters says:
And here’s an interesting tidbit from TPM:
May 4, 2010, 2:16 pmMartinned says:
I distinctly remember looking out for them, expecting them to rip the visa waiver thing out of my passport. They were there, but they didn’t care about my documentation. (Look at this Google Street view image, if it works. It’s on the US side of the border. On the left is where people enter the country from Canada, and on the right is the checkpoint for outgoing travellers.) So basically I’d say there are checkpoints for outgoing travel to Canada, but they don’t actually check most travellers.
May 4, 2010, 2:22 pmJoe T. Guest says:
All sovereign nations maintain the legal authority to control the traffic outward – the oddball Eurozone with it’s checkpoints & raised gates notwithstanding. The U.S. does as well, not always by checkpoint but frequently enough by Customs and Border Protection stops and inspections, sometimes pursuant to particularized investigations. You aren’t allowed to smuggle undeclared cash, weapons, narcotics, controlled technology or bearer bonds out of the country, any more than you’re allowed to smuggle them in.
May 4, 2010, 2:22 pmMartinned says:
The other day, when Zarkov talked about the Eurozone rules (deficit, inflation, etc.) as if they were EU admission rules, I decided to let it go. But I have only so much patience in me. The abolition of all border controls (it’s not just a matter of “raised gates”, they completely removed the gates) is nothing to do with the Eurozone, except that it involves many of the same countries. Border controls are a Schengen matter. (It didn’t become part of EU law until 1997, 12 years after the Schengen treaty was concluded.) Visually, this is a map indicating the Schengen Countries (EU minus UK & IRL, with BG and ROM in the waiting room, but including Norway, Iceland and Switzerland), and this is a map of the Eurozone. Because the Schengen Agreement started out as something outside EU law, it is possible to join Schengen without joining the EU. The Euro, on the other hand, is only available to EU members. (Unless you’re willing to take the dodgy route, as Kosovo and Montenegro have done.)
May 4, 2010, 2:38 pmChris Travers says:
You must be spying on me ;-) That’s the border crossing close to where I live.
Nonetheless, I didn’t say that there were no such checks that could be made. I simply said that I had never had to go through one. At that border crossing the only folks I have interacted with were customs of the country I was entering. This is different from leaving the country in say Indonesia where you have to have your passport stamped, etc.
The fact that they could check such documents doesn’t mean that the US government in fact does. And conceivably one could drive from New York into Canada before the the government even knew who or what to look for. This means that in all likelihood there would be no check of his paperwork by the US government leaving the country.
May 4, 2010, 2:56 pmMartinned says:
The stamping of passports has to do with proving when and for how long you were in the country, for example for tax purposes. Many countries do that, or at least used to. (Including Bulgaria, that I know of.) As long as no important matters of law turn on whether you were outside the country for more than, say, 180 days in a given year, there’s no reason for such hassle.
Otherwise, yes, I did take the word “checkpoint” quite literally, as a place with a gate, etc., designed for the purposes of border checks. Whether such checks are actually carried out is a different matter. In the Schengen area, too, they stopped actually checking long before they took away the checkpoints.
P.S. I took the one in Oroville, WA, because that’s the one we actually used when I was in Canada in 2004. That way, I knew how to find it on Google maps. (Canada’s only desert, etc.) I assure you I haven’t been Google-spying on you…
May 4, 2010, 3:05 pmChris Travers says:
Well, it also creates a travel record regarding when you left the country. This could be useful, for example, when wondering whether a suspect in a crime has indeed left the country. I think that’s the point here (regarding travel security and anti-terrorism measures).
(In case it wasn’t obvious, I was joking about you spying on me.)
May 4, 2010, 3:51 pmMike says:
I don’t think you can conclude that the police weren’t waiting for him based on the fact that the jetway was withdrawn. If police were waiting for him, and they let him board the plane, they were obviously waiting to see if someone joined him. Once the jetway was withdrawn he’d be even more comfortable with his escape, as would any accomplices. Isn’t it just as likely that there were FBI agents or sky marshals on the plane, watching to see if anyone approached the suspect as the plane neared the runway (or watching to see if he made any calls)?
The police did detain three other individuals and searched every bag on the flight–I think it’s obvious they were hoping an accomplice was onboard as well.
May 4, 2010, 5:52 pmStewart Baker says:
Fair point. I thought that was the logical conclusion, because in my experience the police wouldn’t want to take a chance letting a suspected terrorist on a plane just to see who he sat with, so in an ordinary case, being pulled off a plane is a sign your travel data gave you away. But early conclusions are always risky, and now the possibilities seem to include such unusually cool techniques as secret eavesdropping planes in the air over New York and such humdrum ones as the old “pays cash for a one-way ticket” rule. So we’ll have to wait a bit to know whether travel data and screening really played a role in tipping the government off.
May 4, 2010, 7:00 pmMike says:
Police might be reluctant to let him sit on the plane, true, but he already went through airport security. That’s another reason why it seems plausible that he was under surveillance the whole time–by letting him go through airport security, they avoided bloodshed. He was probably ready to kill himself and police if apprehended–he had an automatic pistol in his car. But once he got to security (or at least the airport) without any sign of police, he probably let his guard down. And once he was through security, the threat he posed to police and the other passengers was minimal.
May 4, 2010, 7:20 pmRPT says:
They’ve moved to the “ACORN sabotaged Deepwater” Fox/”Brownie” meme.
May 4, 2010, 7:29 pmRPT says:
Nice change from the last administration, eh?
May 4, 2010, 7:38 pmRicardo says:
Western Europe and North America don’t have it. On the other hand, Czech Republic and Poland certainly do based on first-hand experience and I think other countries in Central and Eastern Europe do as well. Every Asian country I’ve been to (India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Macau, China, Philippines) do as well and as far as I know it’s very normal among other Asian countries. I’m less sure about Africa and Latin America but people who have traveled much more extensively than I have remarked on how the U.S. and the handful of Western European countries are odd on this issue.
One reason is that many countries like popping people with fines for overstaying their visas. Perhaps if the concern is more looking out for bad people, the U.S. system is adequate. I’m still a bit skeptical. There have been a few high profile stories of people getting past the airline check-in counter either without a passport at all or (in a U.K. incident) a fellow family member’s passport by accident.
May 4, 2010, 11:32 pmMartinned says:
Indeed. That’s why I wrote “for example for tax purposes”. Apart from that example, another example would be for use in criminal investigations”.
Should I have used a smiley in my reply, to let you know I got the joke?
May 5, 2010, 10:06 ammarkm says:
Singapore and Malaysia both require you turn in a form to leave, and match that up with the forms you filled out to enter. If you said you were going to be there for three days, you’d better leave in three days (or get permission to extend the stay), because they will know almost immediately if you overstayed.
May 5, 2010, 10:54 pmMac says:
Chris, don’t buy that. All spies say they aren’t spying on you!
May 6, 2010, 8:05 pmmarkm says:
No outbound check is going to be effective at stopping “bad people” from leaving when there’s a delay in getting updates to the list to those doing the checking. This guy was added to the list only a few hours before he checked in at the airport, and apparently the airline wasn’t keeping up with the updates.
May 7, 2010, 5:27 am