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Terror Watchlist "Crippled By Technical Flaws"
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The database used by the government to generate lists like the No-Fly List is 'crippled by technical flaws,' according to the chairman of a House technology oversight subcommittee. And the upgrade may be worse than the original. Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) says that 'if actually deployed, [the upgrade] will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system in operation today.' It seems that the current database doesn't have any easy way to do plain-text matching, forcing users to enter SQL queries. That might not sound so bad until you learn that the database contains 463 poorly indexed tables. How long until there's a terrorist named Robert'); DROP DATABASE; —?"
That might not sound so bad until you learn that the database contains 463 poorly indexed tables.
This is not a good measure of how good or bad a database is. Its good to have a table for every type of data and every data type. Read about normalization. You can go overboard, but as long as your database is designed well, having 463 tables might be just fine.
I say this because once I heard consultant say something like "This web application shouldn't need more than 40 tables, when in fact they didn't know much about the details of the web app, which were quite sophisticated and the real application had more than 100 tables."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One could wonder whether the project was set up to adress terrorism OR it was setup to generate media-attention ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Only problem is that it actually affects people try to travel. If the US Gov want to be idiots, fine. But if they want to do it in my name like I somehow want this, there is a problem. If they want to treat me like a criminal in my own country for trying to travel in it, I have a problem. If they want to seize my laptop for no reason because I am trying to travel, I have a problem.
I like the idea of having a fly at your own risk airline where you can just "risk it" and not have all these so called "protections". I bet it would put the airlines with the TSA out of business in a week.
The worst part is that the government hasn't figured out that some contractors, with few exceptions, are just routinely bad and should be avoided at all costs.
What makes you think they haven't figured it out? There is good money, bad money, corrupt money, etc ... but the best type of money is *my* money, ie money in my hand. Frankly, if I was purchasing something that's of no benefit to me I'd hardly bother with quality, I'd just like to keep as much money in my hands as possible.
For example *ahem* if I was forced to purchase something (say, furniture) for ex-wife after she moved out, why would I bother spending money on anything more than patio chairs and a plastic table?
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Oh, come on! We all know to be terrified of letting 5-year-olds onto the plane (video). If they share a name, they're bound to share ideologies. And what better place to hide explosives than in a shitty diaper?
And that kid was only wanted by the INS! I can just imagine the hillarity ensuing when they clear an airport because another kid "made a stink bomb" in his diaper - we all know how much the TSA loves words like those.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
That could work.
Risk it airlines, where there are no security checks to get on board and the only security measures are to detect when a plane has been hijacked and once confirmed a killswitch is activated to simply blow it out of the sky. Might have to pay the pilots more but I'd travel on one of those.
In the comic, it's "DROP TABLE." In the summary, it's "DROP DATABASE."
I wonder if I'm the only SQL noob who had to look up the "drop database" command to see that indeed it is valid?
Granted, not everyone gets to play with their first database with the rights to even use the 'drop database' command...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Since he flew a lot for work, the unfortunate consequence was being FULLY searched EVERY time he went through the airport. He finally called up the TSA once and told them, "How about I just come into your office. If I am your man, ARREST ME! If I'm not, then get me off of this list!" to which they responded, "I'm sorry sir, but it doesn't work that way."
All in all, it took him over 3 years to finally get his name off. I think the criteria for being on the terror watch list are pretty well summed up here:
-If you have the same name, initials or hair color as a felon, you're on the list.
-If you've ever lived withing a 5 mile radius of a felon, you're on the list.
-If you've ever flown on an airline that a terrorist has ever attacked before, you're on the list. and finally.
-If airport security is bored, you're on the list.
Any thoughts?
"Thank you for using Stop-n-Drop, America's favorite suicide booth since 2008"
Err... yes. Just FEMA, the CIA, and nearly every other major department. Bush's loyalty test brought us the Katrina aftermath fiasco, and mass resignations at the CIA. He even tried to appoint his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court. As they say, "sh-t flows down-hill." When the man in charge is a complete moron, the entire government suffers.
Sorry, you were probably making a joke. A lot of us on this forum don't get sarcasm as easily as we should.
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
"Miller also alleged that some of the $500 million spent on Railhead already had been improperly used to renovate a facility owned by contractor Boeing."
Its easy to waste a lot of money when a department that has a virtually unlimited budget outsources with little to no oversight.
We had similar problems in Canada with the Long Gun Registry, which was a dumb idea to begin with. Then they outsourced it. All told it cost more then $1 billion to set up, and didn't work properly at first. (It does work now, though its still a dumb idea.)
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
One could wonder whether the project was set up to adress terrorism OR it was setup to generate media-attention ?
It was both and then some.
I'm trying to find the link of the guy who started this BS. It was a private citizen who, IIRC, was the one who was involved with Choicepoint. He wrote some code and his algorithm pulled up most of the 9/11 hijackers and then some. He had some false positives even then, but it was the Government's wet dream and it solved some of their problems (such as that pesky little Constitutional problem of spying on Americans. It's OK if a private company does it -Choicepoint.) and it makes great security theater and it creates some big fat Governemtn contracts for some big fat cats with Government connections.
Need more caffeine and I'm getting tons of false hits from Google trying to find the cite - it is over 7 years old, ya know.
No need, give every able adult a weapon upon boarding, they'll have plenty of incentive to deal with any problems.
So, the question that comes to mind for me is this: what if I were a database architecture guru who had been asked to build this system (or its replacement)? At first, my thought is that I'd refuse on grounds of my opposition to the whole thing...but now I'm suddenly wondering if some of the better options did just that, and then it got designed and built by the knob who would take the job. Unlikely, sure, but it's something that I've never thought about before. Is the ethical cost of not doing something like this (that's going to get done anyways one way or another) when you're the right guy for the job potentially higher than the ethical cost of doing it?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
A friend of mine is the security manager for a fairly large company. They have offices all over the world and business in many countries. He tells me that there are at least three "terrorist" lists. The EU list, the UN list and the US list. They are listed from poor to really shitty.
If a person or a company is on either of these lists then they aren't allowed to do business with them as they are suspected terrorists r terrorist backers.
The US list can contain things like "Muhammad, Saudi Arabia", or "Iqbal, Pakistan".
The lists are of no use to them and impossible to follow, but they are required to do so or risk sanctions from EU or the US.
Happy times!
This happened to one of the guys at the company I work at, who has a pretty common name and flew at least once a month. Every single time, he'ld be datained a couple of hours.
It took several years and several thousand dollars of lawyer fees to fix (company paid, I assume, since they needed him to travel).
My uncle had a similar experience to your relative when he was returning from Jamaica (he was there for his anniversary). He had the exact name (middle too) of a wanted felon and was detained in customs for hours before they finally figured out he was from the other side of the country as his evil name-twin. As he pointed out at the time, "If I was the person they were looking for, would I be quite so stupid as to travel under my real name with genuine IDs in my name?" It's not like the guy was just "suspected"...he was pretty much a known criminal/fugitive.
Risk it airlines, where there are no security checks to get on board and the only security measures are to detect when a plane has been hijacked and once confirmed a killswitch is activated to simply blow it out of the sky.
Or have a solid wall between the cockpit and the passenger area, or replace the killswitch with a forced-autopilot-to-the-nearest-airport switch.
Please do explain how data INTEGRETY is affected by the way you define indexes, as opposed to the ways in which you have denormalized tables for performance.
From the article, it would be good to see an explanation of just what they mean by "poorly indexed". That seems much more likely to refer to the need for more indexes for faster search results, rather than indexes done badly...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm sure somebody at the Justice Department decided that this database should be easy to build ("It's just a list!"), and rather than bring in some professionals to design it, they slapped it together on their own.
If you'd bother reading the report, available at http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/Staff_Memo_toBM_terror_watch_8.21.08.pdf, you'd see that Boeing is responsible for the current system. So, yes, a private professional company, employing experienced DBAs is responsible for the current system. If you'd spent much time consulting for private industry you'd know that this sort of thing isn't unique to the government. It's just that it's much more likely to come to light if it's a government project. I've seen many examples in private industry where companies, large and small, end up in the same same bind. This is what happens when rapidly evolving requirements are shoehorned into databases whose original designs could never have anticipated those requirements. Projects like this don't have scope creep so much as scope leap. Software messes that are difficult to migrate almost invariably occur.
Yeah! I fail to see the problem here. So, due to design flaws the terrorist watch list is difficult to do searches on. Maybe they can just get the California Cobol programmers to fix it.
I fail to see how the terrorist watch list is ANY different from the communist black list of the 60s. All it takes to get put on there is a neighbor that doesn't like you. In order to get taken off, an agent has to be assigned to your case and you have to be investigated so that they are sure you're not a terrorist. With the current size of the list, good luck with that.
CNN has had several articles in the last few weeks dealing with the terrorist watch list. My favorite was about three people named "James Robinson". The article mentions that one of the Jameses would just get tickets using the first name "Jim" and he wouldn't be hassled. Another would just run his first and middle name together and it wouldn't get flagged. Of note from that article, "The TSA has said the problem lies with the airlines and threatened to fine airlines that tell passengers they are on the watch list." Yeah. Wow. They're trying to make it illegal to tell someone why they're being held and discomforted. If you don't want the information to get out, don't share it. Keep it to yourself.
Article V says, "[you can't be] deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..." This list deprives liberty (and sometimes property) and is missing a key element.
Article XI says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others by the people." Isn't that EXACTLY what's happening?
This post approved by Shampoo.
"On 23 July 1968, El Al flight 426 operated by a Boeing 707 on route from London to Tel Aviv via Rome, was hijacked by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine shortly after take-off from Rome-Fiumicino airport and forcefully diverted to Algiers. The hijacking ended after 40 days and is considered to be the only successful hijacking involving an El Al jet."
After all, since all terrorists use their real names when flying, it is sure to catch them all.
The irony of your post is that most of the perpetrators of recent terrorist attacks in the West had valid ID and were, in many cases, citizens of the country they attacked. Even with all the intrusive surveillance, vast databases and draconian security measures, they still got through, just by keeping a low profile until they were ready to attack. Which tells you exactly how much measures like the list we're talking about are actually worth in practice...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Hope these thoughts are useful:
(1) Contractors bid to get the contract. The lowest bidder able to perform gets the contract. They'll provide to exact spec, and not a bit more. They make their REAL money with change orders. Change orders are not bid out. Contemplate this.
(2) Government specs can suck. This is quite understandable, because the people who want to use the software may not know how the software works. This invites the change orders described above. (When a consultant is hired to write the specs, you magnify the problems outlined in (3) and (4).)
(3) At the outset, contractors usually know nothing about the nuts and bolts of the government business that they are writing software for. The BUSY government people have to teach them. Power and control issues also play a role here. Details can easily get lost.
(4) Interactions between the government and the contractor become really intertwined. How would the government ever prove to a jury that any defect is the contractor's fault when the final product is an inseverably intermixed product of both the contractor and the government?
Not only that, but the list is used for political dissidents too, not just terrorists or dangerous criminals.
ZOMG NO! The promised that they'd only use DHS/TSA authority to combat terrorism! They pinky swore!
If you can't trust a government pinky-swear, what can you trust? Man, I'm so disillusioned.
The enemies of Democracy are
Well let me give you my personal experience about it. I have a relative named "David Hall." Pretty common name huh? Well he was put on the terror watch list years ago because there is a suspicious person named David Hall. He was able to determine that the person they were after was many years older, had a different birthdate, SSN, and even lived in a state he had never been in.
Since he flew a lot for work, the unfortunate consequence was being FULLY searched EVERY time he went through the airport. He finally called up the TSA once and told them, "How about I just come into your office. If I am your man, ARREST ME! If I'm not, then get me off of this list!" to which they responded, "I'm sorry sir, but it doesn't work that way."
Yeah, I was on the watch list myself, in some relatively minor category I guess. "Chris Burke" isn't exactly an uncommon name. Despite not being hassled by security since a few months after 9/11 (obviously I fell into some random Scary Hippie profile that they grew enough of a clue to stop using), suddenly I started getting the super-search every time I went through security, and couldn't use self check-in, and other minor inconveniences.
I found out when I asked an airline ticketing clerk what was up. She said there must be an evil Chris Burke out there (hey, I thought that was me!), made a phone call, said it was all cleared up, and after getting the super-MEGA-search going through security, I haven't had any problem since.
So not nearly as annoying as the cases where it takes years to get off the list and requires some act of God -- I guess there must be different levels of watch list that you can be arbitrarily placed in -- but still stupid.
The enemies of Democracy are
Don't forget the Chinese terrorist
TRANSLATION ERROR
Having designed a couple of poorly-designed databases myself, I can understand how this can happen.
What I don't understand is why the hell there are 463 tables in this thing?
I mean, what all information do they need in there? Names, maybe a list of known addresses, social security numbers, phone numbers, other identifying information?
Perhaps a reason why they're on the watchlist at all? List of evidence putting them there? Political activities they've been involved in, letters to congress they've written? Types of books they've checked out of the library?
Maybe a list of all flights they've taken, and notes on how much trouble they've given to the TSA people when going through the checkpoints?
OK, that's three tables. What on earth are the other 460 for??
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
Was this built in-house or by a contractor?
I ask, because I've been involved with government contracting work, specifically for the FAA. One aspect of the relationship I've repeatedly seen is private business' efforts to cripple the in-house engineering and software expertise of government agencies they do business with. We'd hire their key people away and call the legislators we owned to get funding for in-house projects killed just to drive the work out to us. Once the agency fell on its face a few times, political pressure would grow to quit wasting money and contract it out. To us. For big money.
Back when I was still in that biz, the Australian government's equivalent of the FAA, CASA, had undertaken a project to build some advanced air traffic control systems in-house. The attitude of our management was rage. "If this had been the United States, we'd have had them shut down."
If you need work done fast, you need people who can do it on the inside. Even if it goes out for contract, you've got to get the requirements written down correctly.
Have gnu, will travel.
Whats sad about all this, is it never ever ever will get on green, If every single terrorist in the world was wiped out, it might, might get down to Blue, but I doubt it. Personally I'm shocked to find its at yellow.
I think the best solution is to lock the pilot's door before boarding. Then the pilots are instructed to not open the door under any circumstances.
and what about meals? or are there going to be pre-stored meals that they need to heat up and eat? shall we then include a toilet as well? coffee machine? i think u get the point.
unfortunately, everytime they open the door, it's an opportunity for a takeover.
anyways, i like the idea of an always-locked door.
I was for a while. I apparently got taken off of it a few months before they publicly admitted its existence.
It was fun. During my time on it, I flew 37 times. I got "randomly" selected for the extra search all 37 times. I ran the numbers for a TSA agent once who insisted it was purely random, and came up with something like one in a few hundred quintillion chance of that actually happening if it was truly random. Still failed to convince the agent it was not, though.
It was great when I had to fly out of LAX. Unlike most airports, that one had a special line for the special searches. So, instead of standing in line for an hour and a half to walk through the metal detector in ten seconds like most people, I waited in line for five minutes, then spent another 2-3 getting searched.
Most airports made me wait in line with the non-terrorists, though.
I'm still not sure what it was that got me on the list, whether it was carrying a knife onto the plane, twice, or the rather obvious joke I made while taking off my shoes. ("It's a good thing that that guy didn't put the bomb in his underwear").
Did you know that it's illegal to even say the word "bomb" in an airport? TSA explained this to me at great length that day.
(The knife, by the way, was a cub scout pocket knife, and it had already been through three searches without being noticed. Four if you count my checking the bag before I left to make sure I didn't leave anything in it.)
Anyway, at some point I got dropped off the list. I don't know why. Maybe it got too full, or maybe they decided that after 37 flights I wasn't a threat, or perhaps they were cleaning up the database before they publicly admitted its existence.
Before I dropped off of it, though, I purchased one-way tickets for a couple of friends who'd helped me move to another state. (We drove out, they flew back). They've both been pulled over for the extra "random" searches now, too.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
...when the watch list hit 1,000,000 names...
Holy crap...that's like one in three hundred Americans on the watch list. Think about that for a second. This means on any given airliner, chances are the government considers at least one of your fellow passengers a person of interest.
Me thinks the signal to noise ratio of this list is mighty, mighty low (not that I expected much, but still, 1:300).
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
First, let me unequivocally state taht teh No Fly list, in form an execution, is a retarded disaster, causing more problems than it cures.
However...
I just read today about a female suicide bomber in Iraq who was detained prior to the explosives going off. She appeared to be drugged, and didn't know exactly what she was doing. Apparently she had just gotten married, and her husband's female relatives fitted her up with the vest and sent her out. She is 14 or 15.
We can argue about who is to blame about terrorism, and what should be done, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that proxies are being used by terrorists, and those proxies don't fit the regular "profile". I'm not sure what to do about it, and the No Fly list certainly is no help, but saying that we should ignore folks that "don't fit the profile" isn't the answer.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson