Remember Schneier’s point about expecting amateur results when using amateurs for frontline security? This is the result:
The couple says within twenty minutes, the door to the cabin opened and three, armed Port Authority police officers started walking down the aisle.
They stopped at aisle 23, where Chan and Serrano were sitting. One of them looked at Kathleen Chan.
“And he turns to her and says, ‘Do you have ID?’” Serrano remembered.
Chan showed her New York State driver’s license, with its photo ID and proof that she lived at the same address in Astoria that Serrano did.
In fact, the couple was about to mark nine years together, which included buying their Queens home in 2011 and refurbishing it.
[…]
“I asked him, ‘Can you tell me what this is about?’” Chan recalled. “He told me the flight crew had alerted the police that it was a possible case of sex trafficking. They thought I had not spoken any English, and that I was taking directions from Jay during the flight.”
Somebody on the flight crew saw something and decided to say something. Unfortunately the member of the flight crew wasn’t trained in any meaningful way to identify potential sex trafficking. So their reported ended up being a costly waste of time for everybody involved and needlessly terrorized an innocent couple.
If you see something, and you have no idea what you’re doing, just shut your mouth.