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Thursday, July 24, 2008

From the "Figure That Out All By Yourself, Einstein?" file
Posted by Jill | 5:42 PM
The head of my current (until August 29 or I find another job, which ever comes first) department has been on a terrorist watch list for years. Every time he flies, he has to go through extra screening. He has a common name; not "John Smith", but something close to it. I believe he may have just been removed after years of trying, but for someone who travels a great deal on business to have to deal with this every time he flies is more than a mere inconvenience.

The TSA has only just now awakened to this fact that perfectly innocent people are being detained and set aside for extra screening because they have the same name as someone else, in much the same way that thousands of Florida voters were disenfranchised in 2000 because they had the misfortune of having the same name as someone who had committed a crime:

"Some airlines have elected not to do what we would like to see them do, which is take care of the innocent passengers and not inconvenience them," said TSA administrator Kip Hawley.

He told the House Aviation Safety subcommittee that airlines have not made the investment needed for pre-screening passenger name lists.

[snip]

While government auditors have put the total number of names on the government's terror watch list at 400,000, TSA officials say its list of people designated for enhanced screening or prohibited from flying contains about 50,000. Of them, Hawley said, "a very small percentage" are U.S. citizens.


A very small percentage? How likely is it that I, just one blogger, just happen to work with one of them? The TSA is just not credible about this.

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