Comment Well here are some examples (Score 1, Interesting) 350
I have a lot of American-Arab in-laws and they are regularly mistreated as they go from airport to airport. The only time that my wife did not recieve a "random" security check was after she married me and got my American last name.
My brother in law, who couldnt hurt a fly, has been checked every time and treated rudely and even interrogted. His high school band went on a trip to Washington DC and a tough-looking Secret Service agent asked him if his last name was "some kind of joke."
My father-in-law regularly runs into the same kind of problems.
These are merely anecdotal, but this shows that those in official positions sometimes rely on predujices to decide who is "suspicious." This has been true even before the Patriot Act. It just makes me worry that these officials will label someone as suspicious just because of their last name. Why arent they looking for better evidence instead of wasting their time strip searching everyone whose name last name ends with Al- ?
My brother in law, who couldnt hurt a fly, has been checked every time and treated rudely and even interrogted. His high school band went on a trip to Washington DC and a tough-looking Secret Service agent asked him if his last name was "some kind of joke."
My father-in-law regularly runs into the same kind of problems.
These are merely anecdotal, but this shows that those in official positions sometimes rely on predujices to decide who is "suspicious." This has been true even before the Patriot Act. It just makes me worry that these officials will label someone as suspicious just because of their last name. Why arent they looking for better evidence instead of wasting their time strip searching everyone whose name last name ends with Al- ?
