Are Rahsaan and Chris the Names of Terrorists?:

The Chris Roberts item is now going viral.  Chris, for those of you whose internet access has been down for the past few days (mine went down for a few hours yesterday, but the cable company came around and fixed it; was some sort of pedestal box by the driveway a few houses down the street), is a security expert who was removed from a United Air Lines flight by the FBI for tweeting about a potential flaw in the airline security system.   He was en route to give a talk about airline security vulnerabilities.

Turns out that the FBI has, as of this posting, yet to produce the search warrant that was predicate to their seizing his laptop and other equipment.

It's gone viral, so I have little to add regarding the Constitutional and Due Process issues.   The stupidity of UAL and the FBI speaks for itself, and does not need any further expounding.

My comment: 

"Given Mr. Roberts' claims regarding manipulating aircraft systems, we've decided it's in the best interest of our customers and crew members that he not be allowed to fly United,' airline spokesman Rahsaan Johnson told The Associated Press. "

I note that the name Rahsaan, which, contrary to some websites that will not be linked to this posting, is of Arabic origin and not from the Hebrew.  It suggests some Muslim influence.  Mr. Johnson has more inside connections to UAL than Chris Roberts.

Would placing Rahsaan Johnson on the No-Fly List be any less rational than placing Chris Roberts on it?

Warding Off the NYPD

As noted here, here and here, Michael Ward, the FBI Special Agent in Charge in Newark, is now saying that the New York Police Department's monitoring of suspicious Muslim groups and individuals in New Jersey has compromised the FBI's efforts to reach out to the Muslim community.

There may well be some validity in Ward's contentions. But it is noted that the NYPD fully appreciates, and tries to fully utilize, its intelligence-gathering skills, and, to such end, has liaison officers stationed nationally and internationally, including but not limited to London, Tel Aviv and Hong Kong.

Ward is whining that the NYPD didn't fully apprise his people and others of the Joint Task Force of NYPD's activities in Ward's geographical territory. It has been characterized as a turf war, which it may well be.

But wait a minute! In order for the FBI to effectively do its intelligence work so well, it really, really needs to be above such pettiness. More to the point, why didn't the NYPD tell the FBI of its particular intelligence-gathering activity?

Could it be that the NYPD's trusted and reliable colleagues in its sister law enforcement agencies were not so trusted or reliable?