There were 80 cards total. At least 10 were bizarre words that would get you arrested if you handed to a bank teller.
Lucky he hadn't handed them a dictionary then. That has all the bad words.
By the way, given you seem to agree with the TSA that it is suspicious for a traveler to be learning certain words, how would you plan on reading the news in a foreign language without learning words like bomb and kidnap?
What I actually think is that the blog post left out some key details and slightly altered the "money quote" to make the story appear much more ridiculous than it really was. In reality after considering the totality of the evidence, this was a bizarre case which is way above the pay grade of the average TSA agent. They perform the smell test and this one reasonably doesn't pass.
To the point of another poster re "security theater" terrorists don't come with name cards. TSA is not supposed to just check you're not carrying any liquids. The agents need to be able to question people who trigger that gut feeling. The questioning should be professional, respectful, but curt and effective.
A guy going through airport security, recently in the middle east, not familiar with key aspects airport protocol (take out electronics, empty pockets), carrying cards with those words. Yeah, talk to him for a few minutes. I'd rather that than spending their time patting down kids and grannies.
Ideally get him through the full eval without even missing the flight. Don't handcuff a non-violent suspect, etc. The process here was imperfect but simply not as insane as the blog post made it out to be.
I, for one, am glad you took the time and put some more context to this whole situation. And frankly, I can't understand how anyone could argue with you right now, as it seems there is no disagreement. You merely pointed out other variables that the blog post didn't cover.
As for myself, I'd much rather support someone who provides all facts than conveniently leaves out stuff that could damage his cause.
What happened to him was bad and this extra details would not have made much of a difference. By leaving them out he gave them far more importance than they would have been before…
Lucky he hadn't handed them a dictionary then. That has all the bad words.
By the way, given you seem to agree with the TSA that it is suspicious for a traveler to be learning certain words, how would you plan on reading the news in a foreign language without learning words like bomb and kidnap?