Slashdot Mirror
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
This also happened when Cowboy Neal was mistakenly identified as Kh'alid bin Naoul.
I understand that the airline industry is a little tight right now, but that's just insane.
Unfortunately, the officials implementing a system such as this are going to get crucified either way. If they let a known terrorist onto a plane and a terrorist act happens, their heads are going to roll. Every journalist will be screaming that, "this terrorist has been on the FBI watch list for 2 years, a simple misspelling of his name allowed him to foil the multi-million dolar no fly system".
On the other hand, false positives are going to make the system useless as the boy who cried wolf one too many times found out. There doesn't seem to be an easy solution to this problem.
The more you know, the less you understand.
It should be obvious to anyone that any mechanism designed to target a small group out of a large group will would have to have an extremely small false positive rate to be of any use.
And the false negative rate had better be small, too.
Something 99% accurate is far from good enough; if only 0.01% of possible individuals are actual targets, you'll be getting 100 times as many false positives as correct positives.
Will I use my alias name which is Alain Williams, or will I use my real name which is Osama Bin Laden the next time that I book a flight to the USA ?
The trouble with this sort of thing is that it inconveniences Joe Public while doing little to deter a real terrorist.
The coolest voice ever.
Here's a good run down on soundex and ten problems with it.
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
Soundex gives each name a key using its first letter and dropping the vowels and giving number codes to similar-sounding vowels (like "S" and "C"). The system gives the same code, L350, for "Laden" and all similar-sounding names: Lydon, Lawton, and Leedham.
Boy, I'd hate to be a guy with a name like "Sam Lawton" or something. I wonder how many similarly-named middle-aged salesmen are getting red-flagged on flights... because you just never know, what if Osama Bin Laden disguised as a portly white guy from Milwaukee, and he never bothered to pick a false name that sounded sufficiently different from the original.
what's wrong with passengers hunting for the best deal?
Story: to catch deal-hunting passengers making duplicate bookings.
This means that people were using different travel agencies to reserve lots of seats on the same flight, and then simply going with the agency who quoted the lowest price. This means that the seats end up being empty, and the rest of us end up paying for them. Sorry, but even the "rich elite" can no longer make duplicate reservations. Almost all airlines now use software to automatically cancel duplicate bookings.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
This is unbelievable. Why reinvent the wheel, while there are at least 3 countries that have implemented similar restrictions and tracking systems succesfully for more than 10 years now (England, Israel, and Germany - that I know of).
This sounds like the work of some consultants with no idea of what they are faced with and fresh out of collage where they have analyzed a couple of algorithms... sorry - I have had way too much of these running around the office lately
If for once someone would just poke his head out and instead of trying to find a solution to an age old problem, look and see how others are handling it, we (taxpayers) would all be much more content (and safe...).
Just my 2c.
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 guess all US people would screem for such a "threat to your privacy" ;)
But at least in here in sweden basically anytime you book a flight you give your ID number (similar to a social security #)
Two benefits:
1. Name is just a courtesy, so doesnt really matter for security if somebody get my name wrong.
2. On checkin, it must be _you_ not somebody with a similar name
Of course IDs can be stolen or forged, but that is a problem regardles of how you ID your self.
Your point is very valid if there is a reasonable and rational discussion of the tradeoff's - You know kind of Type I and Type II errors. But the Bushies don't believe in that. Goebellian Ashcroft said that they are willing to use every legal tool available to them to achieve their goals - even if it means ignoring the spirit of the law, and reinterpreting the letters of the law to do whatever they want.
The willingness, in fact eagerness, to overlook collatoral damage is the Hallmark of the Bush Administration. They have rammed policies that wouldn't pass muster support anywhere. It is almost as if they are willing to kill 9 innocent people to prevent the 10th guilty one from escaping.
This mentality shows up in the No Fly list. It shows up in how the Arab immigrants were rounded up, and are now being deported by the thousands. It shows up in how to get to the Saddam "WMD's" they were willing to slaughter Iraqi's. Two or 3 Sept 11 bombers entered with Student visa's so everyone on that visa now gets grandly screwed.
So, logic applies only when the hysteria subsides. If you want you can never let the hysteria subside. And Donald Rumsfeld is a genius - almost lunatic - in that. Like he said in almost poetic form, on Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing, (which means that he could use the concept described in his "poem" below prove anything that he wants - it is almost like dividing by Zero.)
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Not every check shows up on your reports, it is possible to make an overall query that doesn't get mentioned. FICOs scores are done this way.
--- I do not moderate.
You US folks could really do with a constitution to stop this sort of crap happening. Oh wait, you do have one. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Land of the free indeed.
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."
...as long as they're barred from entering the cockpit. The success of the 9/11 attacks can mainly be credited to 1970s-era hijacking guidelines directing pilots to comply with the terrorists' demands, on the assumption that they were going to fly the plane to Cuba or something similar, rather than use it as a weapon. Those guidelines made sense in their time, but clearly, they're no longer applicable.
Here's an idea -- instead of inconveniencing millions of innocent passengers, how about securing the cockpits instead? So long as the pilots remain in control of the plane, it's a flying prison for anyone who commits any criminal act back in the passenger compartment. Let the cockpit crew notify the ground of a failed terrorist attack and land the plane at the nearest airport, with the police and FBI waiting. End of story.
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."
From the article:
Hate to break it to these guys but neither "S" nor "C" are vowels. Heck, they don't even make vowel sounds.Geeze, no wonder the system is broken.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Perhaps if airlines weren't so elusive about their pricing, potential passengers would be able to easily compare various flight options without having to do this. But obviously it's in the interests of the airlines to keep passengers in the dark.
I had to change a flight that I was booked for a couple of months back, and I couldn't even get them to give me a firm figure on how much it would cost to alter it until I'd committed myself to doing that. Now that is ridiculous.
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
John gilmore is suing for the right to travel anonymously(sp).
From the website:
He does so "because he believes persons have a right to travel by air without the government requiring that they relinquish their anonymity. No security threat is as important as the threat to American society caused by erosion of the right to travel, the right to be free from unreasonable searches, and the right to exercise First Amendment rights anonymously."
Check out the FAQ's, which are well written and explain the other reasons - including being subject to secret laws - he is opposing this.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
In the US, more people are killed in car accidents _every month_ than were killed in the attacks on the WTC. Even a tiny 2% decrease in the number of car-accident deaths would save more lives every decade than were lost in all terrorist attacks the US has ever suffered.
Over the last 10 years, an American's odds of dying in a terrorist attack are about 1 in 100,000. That's less than your odds of drowning in your own bathtub, less than your odds of drinking yourself to death, and less than your odds of accidentally suffocating in your own bed! (http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm)
Frankly, the current atmosphere of fear of terrorism is little more than hysteria. Why on earth aren't we showing the world we have some balls and are strong enough to not let a few terrorists make us live in fear? If you live in fear or give up freedoms, you've let the terrorists win!
X-raying shoes doesn't make for effective security, but it's intrusive enough to give the impression that at least something is being done.
Articles and editorials that call attention to the violations that come with the bogus no-fly list are essential components of the system -- they make everybody else experience it, vicariously. Everybody who is a little bit stupid (i.e. most people) feels a little safer for it. Sure it inconveniences some people, but not enough to make much political difference.
Even better than the impression of intrusive security, it leads to demands for what amounts to a system of internal passports, where you can't travel by air without registering, and getting -- and maintaining --- official permission. "What, no internal passport? Sorry, sir, I can't let you board." At first felons will have their passports pulled, then "suspected terrorists", then political undesirables of all sorts.