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posted by on Wednesday February 15 2017, @05:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-the-government's-data-already dept.

CNN and a a lot of other outlets are reporting that JPL engineer Sidd Bikkannavar, an American-born citizen, was detained at the border when returning from racing solar powered cars overseas.

The border guards demanded he turn over his government-issued NASA phone and its PIN and held him in their detention area.

Bikkannavar also was interviewed by The Verge:

"It was not that they were concerned with me bringing something dangerous in, because they didn't even touch the bags. They had no way of knowing I could have had something in there," he says. "You can say, 'Okay well maybe it's about making sure I'm not a dangerous person,' but they have all the information to verify that."

Bikkannavar says he's still unsure why he was singled out for the electronic search. He says he understands that his name is foreign — its roots go back to southern India. He didn't think it would be a trigger for extra scrutiny, he says. "Sometimes I get stopped and searched, but never anything like this. Maybe you could say it was one huge coincidence that this thing happens right at the travel ban."

Land of the free? Home of the brave?


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:25PM

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Wednesday February 15 2017, @04:25PM (#467437) Journal

    Yeah, but those words are almost NEVER sung. That's from the 3rd verse, which has basically been eliminated from almost all published versions of the song (not the poem itself, but the song as sheet music). The "Star-Spangled Banner" wasn't officially adopted as the national anthem until 1931, but it became popularized in the first couple decades of the 1900s, leading to standardized arrangements for public performance. Since the 3rd verse is mostly about degrading the British, it was dropped around the time of World War I (since the British were our allies), and it never really became standard in songbooks. The few that had it dropped it during WWII as well. (This verse gained attention in recent months for those who wanted to brand the anthem as "racist," though even if you read this passage to be racist -- and there's an argument for it -- the verse has basically never been part of the anthem as sung.)

    Typically, songbooks that carry more than the 1st verse generally have the 1st and 4th, or sometimes 1st, 2nd, and 4th verses.

    Isaac Asimov even has a short story entitled "No Refuge Could Save" about that 3rd verse, using it to root out a spy. When questioning a suspected spy during WWII, the interrogator said "terror of flight" in a word association, and the spy pretending to be American responded with "gloom of the grave." It is concluded the guy who responded with "gloom of the grave" MUST be a spy who studied up on Americanisms, because (1) few real Americans even know the words to the first verse of the anthem, let alone any additional ones, and (2) even if you might by chance encounter the other verses of the song, the 3rd verse was NEVER sung, and particularly it was eliminated during wartime.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Interesting=2, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5