Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.