The government doesn't hold people in such positions that accountable. Rather, the US government employee in charge of denying permission to travel as booked after reviewing the PNR feed probably needs but one plausible excuse on why the denial of transport to the US was supposedly justifiable and any discomfort with "too many Muslims" in a related travel party on a single flight won't even be addressed seriously.

DHS really has to be made to stop being able to hide behind "privacy" when the subjects of DHS action want the matter hitting them discussed, discussed publicly and are explicitly willing and able to give the DHS a pass to discuss the private details of their individual situation so that they and others can be better informed about what has transpired.

At least one of these passengers was denied an attempted visit to Israel. I do have to wonder if the increased UK-US data-sharing in recent weeks -- not all of which may actually be legal -- was a contributing factor to the denial of transport after check-in, but it could also be a matter of a disagreement about whether or not a form was completed "properly". For example, answers about other citizenship and about refusal of entry are not always understood the same way by everyone. But the denial of transport was after the ESTA was approved. Either way, something is rotten when it comes to how DHS operates.

The argument is that they can't tell people why their status has changed because of security reasons, but an evildoer will already have a good idea why so telling them won't risk security and someone who is innocent needs to know in order to clear their name.

If the goal is to cut down on the number of "flying while brown" passengers who happen to have so-called Muslim-sounding names, the public-posturing that relies upon ambiguity and "privacy" works to do just that -- no less so when the expenditure on the trip is a financial gamble where the money spent may not even get fully refunded.

A family or two each losing US$6,000+ of post-tax-income per household isn't exactly something that a lot of households would welcome hitting their own finances. Financially-dissuade enough people from "flying while brown" with so-called Muslim-sounding names, and the result will be rather predictable in terms of the future trend of such passengers flying to the US.

It really is long overdue for the UK and EU (jointly and severally) to monitor US demands to deny transport from the EU to the US of otherwise properly ticketed passengers.

The US has a history of excluding Israel from the US VWP, supposedly because of concerns about Israeli discrimination against some American minorities. Sort of ironic if the UK and EU data collection efforts were to show the UK and EU that the US is doing something not so different from that which has been a supposed sticking point when it came to Israel and the US VWP.

I fully understand that government employees are not held accountable for their actions. All we need do is look at DHS, IRS, VA, and the rest of federal government to see that there are no standards of accountability nor integrity in far to many federal workers.

Edit to add:

Let us not forget the Department of State and the previous Secretary's attempts to hide her communications from oversight and more recently Secretary of Defense doing the same thing. How many others?

Disclosing more information enables more discrimination. Europe should not have accepted divulgating more info to the USA through ESTA, API and other methods. Now every small country wants to implement their own ESTA and API programs.

If Norwegian won't issue a refund. The family can chargeback back them to hell.

ITV is implying a Facebook account linked to someone at the family household may have prompted the refusal to travel

Since taliban means student and al-qaeda means base, I'm not exactly surprised if an off-color joke like that would be made by someone with a clue about what the words mean and supervising a bunch of little kids at a house. That said, the Facebook account info and email issues that made the rounds were supposedly also being disputed at some point, but I'm not sure what to make of that.

And the US is trying to increasing the information it legally wants transmitted to from the UK/EU about passengers but even more than just passengers.

When you see talk of increased information-sharing under legal agreements, beware indeed of what it may mean.

FWIW, the Telegraph article on this says the airline invlved is Virgin Atlantic,

Virgin Atlantic was involved in one FWB incident this season, but Norwegian was involved in another this month. One out of LHR and one out of LGW; the latter being Norwegian which had the family end up denied transport and the former being VS and involving an imam with a B1/B2 visa that was revoked.

Thank you for the clarification. I suppose the small sliver of sunshine on this is that people didn't fly across the pond only to immediately be sent back. That is, hwever, very small consolation for the disruption and disrespect these people attempting to visit have received. I imagine that these situations are generating quite a bit of ill will.

The long-term consequences upon societies of children who feel targeted by authorities -- their own governments' authorities or supposedly allied governments' authorities -- on the basis of their largely inherited ethnic or religious identity, even as governmental claims circulate about equality/non-discrimination? Not good, and that is probably far more problematic longer term than adults/parents having to deal with the same issue -- with perhaps the exception of most parents not really being that well prepared to respond to children when a government messes them over too.

I'll admit to not knowing that and only know them for their more common association - so thank you for highlighting that. I suspect you might be reading some of the same articles I am and it is difficult to know where the truth actually is.

Reported Facts
- Two adult males travelling with their 9 children ages 8 to 19; no adult females travelling
- The two adult males were brothers
- Facebook account connected with the family address references taliban and al-qaeda
- One of the adult males had been previously refused entry in to Tel Aviv and deported


The mail online is also reporting some 'facts' i've not read elsewhere and I only include them for additional reference;

- Email sent from 'family' computer sympathising with Al Qaeda
- The brother was actually detained in Tel Aviv for 8 days before being ejected from the country

Not sure that the family group that didn't get Norwegian to transport them had no adult females involved too. Rather the wife of one of the brothers was also issued an ESTA at around the same time as her relatives. Keep in mind that PNRs have passenger maximums.

Lots of Facebook accounts of non-terrorists reference the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. And the creation of fake pages after early press reports doesn't really take genius.

As I indicated above, even the US has been concerned about Israeli discrimination and the consequential denial of entry to people based on (largely) immutable characteristics arising from conditions of birth.

Even Putin and Cheney have been "sympathizing" with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as of late, if only to have certain militant extremist outfits fight against each so as to see the greater problem actors taken down faster.

It will be interesting to see which reports hold up, which don't and what else comes out (whether true or not). The ambiguity and it's exploitation is why a family that doesn't want DHS to hide behind the privacy excuse should be publicly given an explanation of denial of transport by those involved in the denial.

Here's an Aegean Airlines (A3) pilot doing it right: http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/greek-flight-delayed-as-israelis-out-arab-passengers-over-security-fears

A lot of passengers wanted two Israeli Arabs -- one an Israeli citizen of Arab origin and the other an Israel-residing Palestinian -- to be offloaded from the plane to TLV, but the A3 pilot refused to play into the game and basically indicated that those who don't want to fly with the passenger-targeted Arab passengers should get off the plane themselves if they don't feel safe. The Israeli Arab and Israel-residing Palestinian gave in to the racist hecklers and decided not to fly. They were re-accommodated by the airline and seemed to be thankful to the airline and its pilot for standing up for them.