Loss of Privacy

From CNN:

The parents, who reportedly would not disclose their last names for fear of repercussions, and their infant, identified only as Riyanna, had boarded JetBlue Flight 510 from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday evening when they say an airline employee ask them to get off the plane.

“I said, ‘For what?’” Riyanna’s mother told CNN affiliate WPBF. “He said, ‘It is not you or your husband. Your daughter was flagged as no fly.’”

The family is of Middle Eastern descent and the mother wears a headscarf, but they say they are U.S. citizens and have lived in New Jersey all of their lives.

The government disputed the airline’s initial characterization.
“TSA did not flag this child as being on the no-fly list,” Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Sterling Payne told CNN in a statement.

“TSA was called to the gate by the airline and after talking to the parents and confirming through our vetting system, TSA determined the airline had mistakenly indicated the child was on a government watch list.”

The TSA has said that, since the family cleared security and were issued boarding passes, it is not investigating the incident. It’s up to the airline now.

The airline says it was a technical mistake.

“We are investigating this particular incident. We believe this was a computer glitch,” JetBlue Spokeswoman Allison Steinberg said in a statement without elaborating. “Our crewmembers followed the appropriate protocols, and we apologize to the family involved in this unfortunate circumstance.”

“The whole situation was bizarre, it was completely bizarre and absolutely made no sense,” the mother added.

Steinberg said JetBlue crew members “are trained to address each situation discreetly, treating every customer with dignity and respect.”

Well, JetBlue training clearly failed here. If there was a problem, it should have been dealt with discretely, not out in the open, embarrassing people for no reason.

A leaked directive issued to the Red Cross indicates that the federal government has prepared plans to evacuate Chicago during the NATO summit.

An email sent to Red Cross volunteers in the Milwaukee area notes that the NATO summit in May could “create unrest or another national security incident.”

“The American Red Cross in southeastern Wisconsin has been asked to place a number of shelters on standby in the event of evacuation of Chicago,” the email, which was leaked to CBS News, reads.

Source.

Transcript.

From 60 Minutes:

When two small-town newspaper reporters in Kentucky began investigating the corrupt local sheriff, they not only got headline stories. They also got death threats. Byron Pitts reports.

You can read it here.

In what should come as no surprise, a new study reveals that tasers with barbs can kill a person if it hits them in the chest.

The study, which analyzed detailed records from the cases of eight people who went into cardiac arrest after receiving shocks from a Taser X26 fired at a distance, is likely to add to the debate about the safety of the weapons. Seven of the people in the study died; one survived.

“This is no longer arguable,” said Dr. Byron Lee, a cardiologist and director of the electrophysiology laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is a scientific fact. The national debate should now center on whether the risk of sudden death with Tasers is low enough to warrant widespread use by law enforcement.”

The problem lies with the police officers who are quick to rely on tasers instead of traditional policing methods. In any confrontation, police officers seem happier with hitting someone with a taser instead of conflict resolution and good, old-fashioned talking to solve a situation. Verbal and non-violent resolutions don’t appear to be in favor anymore with law enforcement.