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0 pointsreaperman2y ago0 comments

I got put on a watch list during my time in Saudi and Abu Dhabi. Didnt affect my banking but every plane ticket i got for years had “SSSS”[0] printed/sharpied on it and all my luggage would get a secondary hand-search at every stop immediately pre-boarding both domestically and internationally.

I am just average white US citizen who was working on oil rigs but most likely some of my whatsapp/facebook/iMessage contacts were related to families involved in dissidence against the Saudi government (because the oil region of Saudi is populated by a minority Shia group that is severely underrepresented in governance). Their mosques also had individuals with mental health issues who occasionally try to bomb the mosques in a very, very similar parallel to school shooters back home here in USA.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening...

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analyte1232y ago

Ah yes, I was wondering why NYT was reporting on this instead of Breitbart or perhaps Coindesk like you usually see, and it's probably because a bunch of people are about to get debanked for donating to various Palestine-related organizations.

A4ET8a8uTh02y ago

That actually makes sense. I did wonder about the timing of this piece myself. No one cared until now ( even with SARs related to Biden and Trump the process was rarely in spotlight ).

However, this means that something changed with regards to perception of Palestine. My initial thought was that someone too important got banned from Chase.

Scoundreller2y ago

I've heard when you get an SSSS ticket, you can make up some of the lost time by going to the first class security line. It's not like they're going to send you back to the regular line when it bings and alarms after they scan your ticket.

musictubes2y ago

Heh, yeah. I was "randomly" pulled aside for extra security screenings every flight. To be fair, I later learned that I was going to the same Arabic language school that John Walker Lindh did. I managed to avoid doing what he did though lol.

kylehotchkiss2y ago

SSSS isn’t related to having financial things. Booking a one way ticket transiting a middle eastern country to the US is often enough.

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