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False Positives, Few Matches Plague 'No-Fly' List

Posted by timothy on from the measure-twice-cut-once dept.

lindner writes "According to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle, the United States No-Fly List uses a soundex algorithm to match names. Designed 'to quickly summon passenger names or to catch deal-hunting passengers making duplicate bookings.' The system has only managed to rack up a slew of false-positives, including everyone matching soundex ("J. Adams") at one point in time. The problem has gotten so bad that there is now a "Fly List" for chronically misidentified passengers."

4 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. Heard about this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    This also happened when Cowboy Neal was mistakenly identified as Kh'alid bin Naoul.

  2. Man... by Faust7 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Many airlines rely on name-searching software derived from "Soundex," a 120- year-old indexing system first used in the 1880 U.S. census.

    ...and you thought mainframes were legacy technology.

    --
    The coolest voice ever.
  3. Re:Soundex??? by Old+Wolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    That's a bit insulting to first-years, don't you think?
    On my course, in the section on name recognition, we first learned Soundex, and then learned Obershelp, along with the fact that the latter is far more accurate, and Soundex is pretty crap.

    Perhaps it was written by people with no education..

  4. Re:The problem... by eyegone · · Score: 5, Funny

    Before 9/11 we had Timothy McVeigh and no one was hollering that rednecks shouldn't be allowed to drive trucks.

    I've been hollering that rednecks shouldn't be allowed to drive trucks (or anything else) since I moved to Texas in '96.

    --
    "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."