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False Positives, Few Matches Plague 'No-Fly' List
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."
That algorithm is so fundamentally broken as to be practically useless for anything but as an aid in simple searches. Why anyone would use soundex in a mission critical application designed to positively identify individuals is beyond me. What, was the 'No Fly' database written by 1st year comp sci major or something? Sheesh.
My journal has hot
So what's wrong with passengers hunting for the best deal? I thought that's what the free-market and capitalism were all about.
Ah. Yeah. No, neither of those are supposed to benefit mere mortals. Only the rich elite.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Screening for terrorists by name is a nice idea, and maybe eventually it will pop up one or two dumb ass terrorists travelling around the country by plane in a nation that's so paranoid that they're willing to sign away their most basic freedoms they've enjoyed for 200+ years. I think it's pretty stupid to throw the baby out with the bathwater though. Before 9/11 we had Timothy McVeigh and no one was hollering that rednecks shouldn't be allowed to drive trucks. So a terrorist gets on a plane, hopefully he'll be going home. If just make sure that the planes have security in place like police, cockpit doors, and some common sense I'm sure we'll all breath easier than if we've got Big Brother and his faulty software deciding who is a threat to society.
Heck, there's a guy on death row with the exact same name as me out there somewhere...I'd hate for this great idea of the government to lead to my law abiding ass getting thrown in jail even "just in case"
The situation is really bad if you are named David Nelson. Here is a sad but true story about no fly lists and the very common name, David Nelson. There was also a followup story to this one but I am unable to find a link.
But, you feel safe. Don't you?
I think the idea behind this scheme is not to catch terrorists, or even deter them. But to keep the public under a false sense of security, thinking "hell, if they are searching a lot of people, they must be getting the real ones too!" Although it never works out that way.
I think I will be flying private planes if they start looking into your credit. A credit check could be like "Well, you evaded child support and paying the bank $5,000, we can't let you board, if you have the money for a flight, you can pay them!"
They know they they won't be able to get this to work right, they are just pocketing money and putting out a crap system, but I think that it may have better use for private organizations, such as "Well, he evaded taxes and bills, but we see him having a one way ticket to (place), search for him there."
If you want to make sure your hijacking works fly around innocently as "Sam bin Laden" for a few months, get your name on all the "Fly lists," and then hijack a plane.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
The problem is that these false positives AREN'T being cleaned up, and in a lot of cases, the people are not allowed to fly, and don't get a refund on their tickets. And they have no real recourse.
This is only the tip of the iceberg, I fear. There are times when you need to ask yourself, what if? I did not live during the McCarthy era, but I feel this is one of those times. I may seem paranoid, but here is my "what if?" for the Bush administation's plan:
1) Use the term "terrorist" to refer to a small number of individuals that are a threat to peace and security in order to justify sweeping changes to policy and laws but more importantly as justification to begin developing a system to track every individual, everywhere (the system will, unfortunately, improve over time).
2) Once the necessary tracking infrastructure is in place (perhaps not perfected yet), change the term from "terrorist" to "criminal" . The justification will be that criminals are bad too, and they threaten peace and security just like terrorists, right?
3) Once the system has improved to the point that false positives are indeed negligable, gradually redefine the term "criminal" to discreetly include groups and individuals of the government's choosing.
Does this sound like an unlikely scenario? If you have an opinion, what social forces do you believe would act to reinforce or inhibit this scenario?
One might also discuss the similarities of the TIA (Total Information Awareness) and TCPA (Trusted Computing Platform Alliance). Both seek to create an environment that a person or an application, respectively, must be pre-authorized to enter. Without proper authorization, you or your application are not allowed to be a part of the system or interact with other authorized entities.
Eventually, I expect the "fly-list" to become the dominate list, and the "no-fly-list" to become increasingly obscure. You will then no longer be able to fly without identifying yourself to the system.
My greatest fear is that one will no longer be able to "buy or sell without the mark [of approval]", in the Biblical sense. What we see today certainly allows for that, especially if you take into consideration the infusement of funds by the government into bioinformatics R&D. The "mark in the forehead or right hand" easily translates into a retinal scan or fingerprint. When positive identification becomes cheap, efficient, and accurate, it will become ubiquitous, and we will all be rows in a (probably Oracle) database.
Thoughts?
terrorists took advantage of the airline system
Terrorists have been taking advantage of the airlines and hijacking planes for decades.
If you think that anyone is ever again going to be able to hijack an airplane armed with a box-cutter - I think you're sorely mistaken. They would be savagely torn limb-from-limb by 300 homicidal passengers before the pilot even knew there was a potential hijacker onboard.
>>Terrorists don't have "careers" anymore.
>Particularly suicide terrorists.
That was my point. It used to be that these people would take over a plane, force the pilot to land somewhere, maybe off a passenger or two, demand transportation for their escape, and maybe even put hoods over their heads and give a little press conference before leaving- presumably to hijack again some day. Afterwards we would figure out who they were, put their names on lists, and maybe even look out for them.
Now we have rookie terrorists committing suicide and mass murder with no explanation, and everyone is simply left to assume that it has something to do with Israel and Palestine. Our lists are useless. We seem to be looking for retired terrorists and punk rockers from the seventies, and if your name sounds like a name on the list you can't fly. The terrorists won!
We should go back to the system we had in 1965. You want to fly somewhere, you buy a ticket.
Personally I would prefer that this bizarre security not be applied to all air travelers- it should be considered an amenity. If you want to ride on a "terror-free flight" (and you're innumerate and stupid), you pay an extra $50-100, get there a few hours earlier, eat your in-flight meal with those plastic butter knives, and rest comfortably with the knowledge that punk rocker Johnny Rotten Lydon (rhymes with "Laden"?) is not on the plane with you. Also nobody from Priceline.
I'd not thought of that. It would have to be an extraordinarly threatening disease, although it would be an extremely effective tactic: comply or die.
Personally, I don't think RFID will be the tool used because it has already attracted an extreme amount of "big brother" attention. If one truly attempts to deceive "even the very elect", it won't be with something as invasive or obvious as RFID! Additionally, RFID (and UPC codes, etc.) can serve as a decoy to detract attention from the actual "mark" itself. That's why I am suspicious of the retinal/fingerprint method. It's very subtle, efficient, and accurate, and is becoming more economically feasable every day. There is no action on your part aside from submitting your biometrics for inclusion in a database (thereby marking you as "clean" in your example). It's a simple and innocent-sounding process. It's even becoming increasingly accepted by the public. There are several slashdot stories that make mention of the fact that grocery stores are using fingerprints to identify "shopping club" memebers. And this is just to save a few bucks!
There are religious groups today that oppose any sort of innoculations, and un-vaccinated children attend public schools in the face of state laws requiring vaccinations. This implies the current state of affairs is such that social and legal pressures to vaccinate your children against the worst of today's diseases is insufficient to infringe on one's liberty. It'll take something more dangerous than Anthrax or SARS to tip the scales.
The Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases is at the forefront of SARS research. Perhaps this is to bring the military into the public eye as a provider of the "cure" in preparation for "the big one"?
I so enjoy a good conspiracy theory discussion. :)
The military is just a government excuse to fleece the tax payers and take bribes!!!!