sbagdon

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...122904172.html

Each day there are 50 to 75 instances in which a law enforcement official or government agent stops someone who a check confirms is on the watch list, a senior official at the Terrorist Screening Center said. Such "positive encounters" can take place at airports, land borders or consular offices, or during traffic stops.

Share a name with someone on the watch list, and your next traffic stop could get interesting? Interesting...

It does appear they are working towards cleaning up the mess, specifically one record per individual (not one per alias), and diff-updates vs. complete copies of the list when updating agencies. Yet there still might be issues if you share a name.

goalie

This one part of the article scares the sh!t out of me.....

And who pray tell, makes that determination <shudder>

FriendlySkies

Somebody with a lot of experience

n4zhg

Someone with a chip on his shoulder who doesn't like "domestic extremists", defined as anyone who doesn't lick TSO badges.

eyecue

I finally got to see one of those clearance letters from DHS for a person that has the same name as someone on the watchlist. He has to show it everytime that he goes to the ticket counter in order to avoid the hassle that comes with the watch list. I asked him about it and he said that there is a white supremist living the south eastern USA that has his name and DOB and so the story goes.

Caradoc

THAT's the problem! They're licking the badges, when the DSO is expecting them to kiss something else entirely.

sbagdon

The story would get even better if the supremist were a different race, sex, and height.

Does the letter include a redress number?

Can they present a copy of the letter, to protect the original from damage?

And... are we really talking about having to present a clearance letter, just to be able to fly (without a multi-hour security process)?!

BubbaLoop

He could deal with this much more easily if he just entered a fake birth date when making the reservation and printed the boarding pass at home. Since dates of birth are not on the boarding pass, he can show his real ID at the check point and no one would know better.

The watch list is a great inconvenience to many people, and could only stop a terrorist who is dumb enough not to think of that, or to get a fake ID, or to hide any necessary materials with a friend, or inside his person, or to use checked luggage, or...

AArlington

Yes but maintaining the watch list supports an ever growing payroll of anti-terrorism "experts" recently out of college or recently retired from one Federal job (with pension) and now a contractor job maintaining the watch list.

Part of the economic stimulus.

eyecue

Cmon there are 8000 people in the hq at washington.

PhoenixRev

None of whom can figure out that John Smith from Topeka, KS who takes the same commuter flight twice a week to Chicago and has been for the last 20 years is not a terrorist.

exbayern

I am blessed to have a very uncommon in America first name and very uncommon even in Germany last name, combined with a very uncommon everywhere middle name.

I cannot imagine the frustration of having to carry a letter, and having to show it every time at check in, for no reason other than an accident of naming.

This is why the collection of fly over data makes me very nervous; if the list is so poorly managed for travellers within the US, why should I believe that it is going to be any better for people who have absolutely no intent to even land in the US.

John Smith of Ottawa, flying to Mexico for holiday, may find himself in a similar situation soon if this nonsense isn't stopped.

barbell

Ah, but the dirty little secret of how such a list is implemented in practice is that it is essentially useless to those who don't want to comply, such as actual terrorists. You see, as many of us already know, the entire TSA farce virtually leaves alone those who comply. This entirely new layer of behind the scenes farce makes such "compliance" even easier.

I have tested this system on several recent trips, without incident. Within the last 2 weeks, I have flown on 5 different flights. Each time, I gamed the entire (in)Secure Flight system, and was not hindered in any way. I happen to have a fairly common first/last name combination in America. So much so that through 2 different recent airline mergers where my addresses didn't match, it took considerable effort to find the dormant account and combine it. Were it to show up on a list, ala David Nelson, I'd have to deal with the same nonsense. Not to mention that the accusation of a forged letter could be leveled, and I'm surprised this guy hasn't had to deal with that.

Nonetheless, for each of these trips in question, the name I entered into (in)Secure Flight did not in any way match my name on the ticket. I also assign the incorrect gender to obviously gender-specific names (no Pats or Terrys on these occassions). The birthdates never matched my own birthdate, and all but one were from another century. My favorite was born in 1776, second only to one that had not yet been born, 2083. Not once, NOT ONCE was I prevented from checking in, and I never interface with a human at checkin.

Part of the problem with this system is that this information is stored as SSR, which in airline systems never has, and never can, reconcile with the passenger name field. I imagine, unless TSA does something more sophisticated, which I doubt, that a known terrorist on the NFL can purchase a ticket in their own name, matching the ID they present at the TDC, and enter separate information into the (in)Secure Flight SSR field that will not flag said list. Any person sharing a similar name could do the same, or has been noted in this very thread and elsewhere, change the DoB. Problem solved (or not, actually).

I am confident that TSA is so incompetent and dysfunctional as an agency that this particular function can't become a government approval to fly list, as some here have posited. Although I am vehemently opposed to it on principle.

FliesWay2Much

Let's say that I know something about the watch list. Virtually anyone in law enforcement, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, or a TSA employee (I don't categorically place them in any of these groups.) can recommend that an individual be placed on a watch list by simply inserting a line or checking a box on their individual agency's incident report. The individual could be a real suspect; someone under surveillance (warrant or not); a person interviewed, interrogated, or detained; or, someone who has been the victim of a TSA "incident report" based on refusing the NoS or because of an "interview" with a SPOTNik.

It only takes one or two levels of management above the intrepid line cop or screener to approve placing a person on the watch list, usually at one of the infamous "fusion centers." Removing a name from the list requires high-level approval. Only Nappy herself can remove some names and the delegation doesn't go down very far below her. Recommending that a person be placed on a list requires virtually no justification, and, there is a broad definition of who can be placed on a list. Petty criminals and individuals such as this white supremacist (who may not have ever committed a crime) are in the same category as a real Islamic terrorist.

There is absolutely no repercussion against an individual or an agency for recommending placing anyone on the watch list. There is certainly no oversight and very few standards. As a matter of fact, agencies compete with each other for submitting the most names. With a large amount of names comes prestige and DHS dollars. And, as we have seen demonstrated, even death do not part when it involves removing your name from the watch list.

This practice rubs the Constitution in the noses of thousands Americans, living and dead, and is so large and so cumbersome that it is a completely irrelevant counterterrorism tool.

HawaiiTrvlr

I am still waiting to see if I made it on the list based on my Thanksgiving interaction with some LEOs at DEN. He took my information (made copies of my ID) and said he was going to send a report to the FBI. When I pressed if I would hear anything else from the FBI he said "that's up to the FBI." I have no plans to fly any time soon regardless.