Detaining someone you *Know* is not a terrorist
Detaining someone for "flying while brown" is not admirable, but at least it tends to arise from some incompetent agent's erroneous belief that someone is likely to be carrying a bomb or planning to hijack a plane or otherwise a threat to transportation. The people doing the detaining are applying prejudices to risk assessment that cause them to make erroneous risk calculations.
Granting extraordinary authority to detain potential terrorists will, predictably, lead to incidents of detaining an international traveler and searching their stuff, and perhaps even confiscating their stuff out of ignorance.
Now, consider this scenario...
How about using laws enacted only with the assurance they are limited to interdicting terrorists at airports to detain persons that the authorities knew in advance are NOT carrying a bomb, are NOT involved in any plot to down aircraft, are NOT in any way affiliated with terrorist groups?
It is one thing to snare a dolphin with an overly broad tuna net, but what if a tuna fishermen saw a dolphin, chased it down and harpooned it?
Would anyone say that was collateral damage? Part and parcel of the cost of netting tuna?
Authorities knew that Miranda would be on a certain plane and pre-targeted him for arrest and detention while also knowing he was not going to be carrying a bomb, and knowing him to not be a terrorist or involved in terrorism.
This was not a case of an overzealous customs official not knowing that a thumb-drive is not a bomb.
The government of the conservative Prime Minister of the UK was involved at high levels in the decision, before the fact, to interdict, question, search and seize from a non-terrorist who was not wanted for any crime in the UK or USA, knowing in advance that that the act would not garner any information about any terrorist plot.
This point seems salient to me in thinking about the incident.
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