By Sarah O'Brien
Originally published Baltimore Sun: May 28, 2006
My home town newspaper.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.terrorist28may28,0,2723012.story
"My husband is not a terrorist.
"He's not an ex-convict, a felon or on the lam, and if you don't count the occasional Post-it notes or paper clips that come home with him from the office, he's not even a petty thief.
"But so far, he's had trouble convincing the government of this.
"Every time he flies, regardless of the airline, he gets flagged when he checks in because he's on our government's terrorist watch list. As it was explained to us the first time it happened, something about his name, Michael Patrick O'Brien, creates the need for an airline manager to clear him.
Michael Patrick O'Brien, sure sounds Iraqi or Iranian or one of those other Middle Eastern countries to me.
Hasn't anybody told the Bush Administration that the IRA have disarmed. But you gotta admire their efficiency, if not their information or up to date-ness.
Rob
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My husband is on the government's terrorist watch list
Discussion is locked
KP: Perhaps they have
Dan: Then why don't they use that list?
KP: Did I say it was a different list?
Did you say it wasn't?
The wheels on the car go round and round.
because the British Secret Service keep a close watch on them as does the Irish Guarda. You see the way the IRA funded their operations was through bank robbery and kidnapping and the like in Southern Ireland. You want to hear vituperation, mention the IRA in an Irish pub anywhere but Dublin or the North.
I think Racial Profiling has to be a tool when 99.9% of the perps come from the Middle East. Hopefully facial recognition software will make this moot in about 3 to 5 years.
And while I'm a liberal, I am not an ACLU liberal.
Rob
informed about what the IRA is and is not doing. Of course.
I've never had a problem, nor anyone in my family.
But I'm sure those that takes an investigation etc to get cleard for a plane that just took off minutes before they were cleared have a problem.
The system isn't perfect. Doesn't mean it should be scrapped either. It does mean they should try to update it properly.
Roger
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com
government employees try to do anything.
Really. Somebody with the same name is a bad boy.
Don't know what the ranking is now, but some years ago there was a trivia piece in the Sunday paper that the surname White was the 13th most common in the USA. The given name Charles is surely common too. So there are more than just few Charles Whites out there who can't get on an airplane without a whole lotta rigamorole. When we fly as a family, we allow the recommended 2 hours for ourselves to get through TSA plus an extra hour for our son to stand in a different line for having the wrong name.
dw
a terrorist... he is so good.. even his wife doesn't know it...
If a secret agent (or terrorist) are known to other.. then what it is good for..
If he's on the list he shouldn't be on the plane. If they clear him to be on the plane then he shouldn't be on the list.
Dan
If the name is the same but the SS number (or some other identifier) can be used to clear an individual who shares that name, the person should remain cleared and should not have to go through hoops every time they want or need to fly.
DELETE FROM NOFLYLIST
WHERE NAME = NAME AND SSN = SSN
How hard is that?
That's the kind of strangling that will lead to more 9/11s. Maybe one of these days, a Democrat will actually be elected President. Then he or she can relax the security rules for airline travel. We'll see a renewal of attacks, and lay the responsibility where it belongs.
YOU have a social security number. YOU can be eliminated based on that even if you share the same name as a terrorist.
Get it?
Anyone can use my name and social security number. If that's the criteria for evading security, they will.
Get it?
They could scan a thumbprint and use it to assign an ID number that would exclude you. No terrorist can steal that.
You're saying fingerprint scanners cannot be defeated? I think you better tell that one to Hollywood where folks come up with a lot of creative ideas.
"24" is fun but it's completely ridiculous, you know. Much of the technology in "CSI" isn't real either.
The issue, Josh, is not whether the watch list can be designed to use enough reliable corroborating data about a person to include them or exclude them as terrorists. It can be, and probably is already sufficiently precise to know exactly who of the many persons with a similar name is the target. The problem is on the airline reservation side. Until airlines require every passenger to use their government certified ID number and secure thumbprint to both make the reservation and get on the airplane, the name is the only common data element between the airline reservation and terrorist watch list systems. When a similar name is used to reserve an air ticket, that person is shunted to a different line for additional inspection before being issued a boarding pass. As I mentioned in my subthread, that happens all the time to my son. He can't get a pre-issued boarding pass. At the airport, when he finally gets to the baggage checkin desk, he shows additional ID, they eyeball him, cheerfully and quickly give him a boarding pass, and everybody has a commiserating chuckle over it, because there is nothing anybody can really do about it.
dw
how good he is and well connected..
Or he may even a goverment agent that placed deep into terrorist organization ....
I do hope its a mistaken identity.. but who knows...
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