More proof that the No-Fly list is a worthless sham...
 

As if we needed more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...y.html?hpid=z2

As the government is still protecting a bunch of terrorists, can't say I am surprised. Some of the government-protected terrorists are going to be flying non-commercially -- at taxpayer expense -- if not allowed to fly commercially.

The no-fly list ought to be scrapped, including for reasons of conserving resources.

If a person isn't under LE detention or incarcerated and has never been convicted in court, then they should not have their movements restricted by administrative governmental action.

I am pretty certain that the Marshals Service is not really happy about this sharing agreement. They are exceedingly tightlipped about their witness protection programs, and the fact that breaches are almost non-existent, or are corrected so quickly that it barely causes a hiccup. This is yet another source of information, in another organization, that can generate problems for them. I expect that if a breach occurs due to this sharing of info, this may be revisited, with strong language attached to it.

But the people in the WitSec program are presumably cooperating with the authorities, and have traded information in return for their being protected. Why would we want to annoy them by restricting their movements, or allow them to be distinguished by being on the list? Unless the bad guys are gaming the system and are really moles in the program and need to have their movement restricted.

I have two big questions about the no-fly list:

- Would a Bad Guy never think to buy a ticket with a fake name, print a real BP with a fake name, use a computer to make a fake BP with a real name, use the latter to traverse the TSA, and the former to board the flight?

- Explain to me exactly how someone will hijack a flight now that we have hardened cockpit doors and policies to resist hijackers.

One line of reasoning is that many of the WitSec participants are not necessarily willing participants, having been compelled into the program by

1. Their own actions in the beginning
2. The actions of others that are ostensibly worse
3. The future actions they were planning/have information on are worse and they could be tied to them as an accessory.

Some are simply people that had information that was important, and were able to bring down baddies of one sort or another with that info - of their own volition. Others are middle managers in criminal/terrorist activities that turn on their cohorts to save their own skins. The ones that are turned under the weight of wrgonful things they have done are not always repentant, just looking for a way out, and may bear more scrutiny in this fashion. However, YMMV, that is simply one line of reasoning.

Maybe I'm dense, but I don't see why there has to be much information sharing here at all. Given that nobody knows how one gets on the NFL (much less how one gets off the list), I would think it would be relatively simple for the Marshal Service to provide a list of names to add to the NFL, without any linking information back to their original identities. Heck, there's no need to indicate any connection at all to WitSec, since the Marshal service does stuff other than WitSec ...

I agree that too much info is transferred back and forth, even though we both understand that some information needs to be shared. I think that the tons of info flowing back and forth now amounts to nothing but white noise and extra dead trees in the vast majority of cases. I agree that there should be some format of system that allows the names to be transferred without any type of attachment to WitSec, but then again we are fairly basic about *how* things should work. It seems that we ascribe to the "If A is the goal, take the shortest, most economic and realistic path to achieve it" - sadly, it does not appear that this is always the modus operandi in governmental circles.

That's how they would all do it, you're right. Unless the document checkers are checking against a real-time BP validation data base, photoshopping will succeed.The No Fly List, as I understand it as an outsider, isn't to prevent airline damage, but to annoy the Bad Guys and thwart their planning process. Makes it more difficult for them to attend their BG conventions, training sessions, and cell management meetings.

It's another mission creep for the TSA to be involved in this activity that has nothing to do with WEI passing the checkpoints. But it's a DHS process, not primarily TSA.