In 1988, I fled college without having graduated, saved a little bit of money and got on an airplane for Taiwan. Martial law had just been lifted and back then, to enter on a tourist visa, you had to show a return-trip ticket. So that's what I bought, even though I had no intention of returning to the US after my three-month-one-time-renewable stint was up. My plan was to sell my ticket to someone else and use the money to buy a ticket to wherever I was going next. So I put an ad in a local English-language paper and a young American guy responded to it. He paid me half the money up front, with a promise to pay the balance after I went to the airport with him and checked in – since the ticket was of course still in my name.
On the day of his flight, the American guy and I took the bus out to Chiang Kai Shek International Airport. I took the ticket up to the airline counter, checked myself in, and then handed him the ticket and he handed me the rest of the money. We were both familiar with airport procedures back then: Once you had checked in, you would not ever have to show identification again. There were no long security lines, no invasive pat-downs, no full-body scanners. You walked through a metal detector and then on to your gate. He took the ticket, we said goodbye and I never heard from him again, so assume that he made it all the way to Los Angeles.
Imagine trying to do this in today’s world. Imagine what would happen to the hapless souls who even attempted to pull off this kind of mutually beneficial exchange that harmed no-one else. Very likely, they would both find themselves accused of plotting a massive terrorist attack and be thrown into a military prison, detained indefinitely, perhaps never to be released.
By today’s reasoning, the airports should have been on full alert back then. 1988 had been one of the worst years in terms of international terrorist attacks since 1972. With 456 incidents, the year had the highest number of terrorist attacks since 1985, and was within a cluster of the worst five years to date at that time. Full story...
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On the day of his flight, the American guy and I took the bus out to Chiang Kai Shek International Airport. I took the ticket up to the airline counter, checked myself in, and then handed him the ticket and he handed me the rest of the money. We were both familiar with airport procedures back then: Once you had checked in, you would not ever have to show identification again. There were no long security lines, no invasive pat-downs, no full-body scanners. You walked through a metal detector and then on to your gate. He took the ticket, we said goodbye and I never heard from him again, so assume that he made it all the way to Los Angeles.
Imagine trying to do this in today’s world. Imagine what would happen to the hapless souls who even attempted to pull off this kind of mutually beneficial exchange that harmed no-one else. Very likely, they would both find themselves accused of plotting a massive terrorist attack and be thrown into a military prison, detained indefinitely, perhaps never to be released.
By today’s reasoning, the airports should have been on full alert back then. 1988 had been one of the worst years in terms of international terrorist attacks since 1972. With 456 incidents, the year had the highest number of terrorist attacks since 1985, and was within a cluster of the worst five years to date at that time. Full story...
Related posts:
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