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TSA Missed Boston Bomber Because His Name Was Misspelled In a Database
schwit1 sends this news from The Verge:
"Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the primary conspirator in the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people, slipped through airport security because his name was misspelled in a database, according to a new Congressional report. The Russian intelligence agency warned U.S. authorities twice that Tsarnaev was a radical Islamist and potentially dangerous. As a result, Tsarnaev was entered into two U.S. government databases: the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment and the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS), an interagency border inspection database.
A special note was added to TECS in October of 2011 requiring a mandatory search and detention of Tsarnaev if he left the country. 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer,' the note reportedly said. 'Call is mandatory whether or not the officer believes there is an exact match.' 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer.' Unfortunately, Tsarnaev's name was not an exact match: it was misspelled by one letter. Whoever entered it in the database spelled it as 'Tsarnayev.' When Tsarnaev flew to Russia in January of 2012 on his way to terrorist training, the system was alerted but the mandatory detention was not triggered. Because officers did not realize Tsarnaev was a high-priority target, he was allowed to travel without questioning."
A special note was added to TECS in October of 2011 requiring a mandatory search and detention of Tsarnaev if he left the country. 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer,' the note reportedly said. 'Call is mandatory whether or not the officer believes there is an exact match.' 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer.' Unfortunately, Tsarnaev's name was not an exact match: it was misspelled by one letter. Whoever entered it in the database spelled it as 'Tsarnayev.' When Tsarnaev flew to Russia in January of 2012 on his way to terrorist training, the system was alerted but the mandatory detention was not triggered. Because officers did not realize Tsarnaev was a high-priority target, he was allowed to travel without questioning."
That's a bomber, I mean bummer.
Table-ized A.I.
The most advanced systems in the world will never outpace human mistakes.
The TSA is operated by some of the most incompetent people the USA has to offer. They are the problem, not the hardware or software. I fail to see why they should get a "free pass" here on account of a bad database entry. Heads should be hung over this, especially considering the justifications thrown around for the continued existence of the TSA.
Doh!!!
BlameBillCosby.com
I've seen this story about Russia giving us warnings about the Boston bomber floating around elsewhere recently, why is this news now? We knew this back in 2013.
Despite the misspelling, the FBI interviewed him and determined he was no threat (unlike his friend who they interviewed after the bombing, and shot to death during the interview).
So what would it have mattered if airport security searched him after one of his trips to Russia? It's almost certain he wasn't carrying anything that would have got him arrested.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
soundex
Levenshtein distance
Hamming distance
More like this, can't be arsed to go looking them up, though. Those were three I knew off the cuff.
They would have "missed" Tsarnaev if he had a siren and a pink neon "TERRORIST" sign bolted to his forehead. Re: Nidal Hasan.
They only miss things they aren't interested in finding.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I think the tacit implication here is that if Tsarnaev had been questioned on exiting the country the Boston Marathon bombing might have been averted, but is there really any substance to this? Do we think he would have changed plans had he been questioned? Pressure cooker outlets would have been alerted to refuse to sell him cookware? What exactly would the outcome likely have been had he been questioned?
Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
News at Nine: transliterations of names can be tricky... Some parts of the world use different alphabets...
It was not misspelled, it was just transliterated differently. The original name is Cyrillic, and "Tsarnayev" is actually closer to how it is supposed to be pronounced, but "Tsarnaev" is the more usual letter-for-letter transliteration that doesn't distinguish two modes of Russian "e" (it's pronounced as "e" in general, but as "ye" after vowels and at the beginning of words), and is the one that's usually used in passports. I wouldn't be surprised if "Tsarnayev" was how it was spelled in the documents that they've got from Russia, because the person on the other side translated it phonetically...
Either way, this points at a glaring issue in all those databases. If they require a perfect match, they're going to be very flaky for all kinds of foreign names - ironically, Arabic ones especially, which I assume are the most commonly searched ones. Remember that whole Qaddafi vs Gaddafi vs Kaddafi in US press when Libya was on the front pages?
Yet another evidence that all this stuff is little more but security theater. It doesn't matter whether it actually works, so long as people are convinced that it does. Unfortunately, they actually let a real terrorist through this time...
haven't they heard of soundex?
I've written about this before; I used to write financial software for a living, and one of the requirements for a US bank was to provide a mechanism to detect transactions by an unauthorized person.
In short, the govt. provides a list of bad people in a text file. One name per line, all upper case, like it came out of an old batch system. We then check to see if the sender or receiver of any transaction /EXACTLY/ matches that string, case insensitive. If it's an exact letter-for-letter match, there's a flag that's set and the transaction is delayed, but it appears to go through as normal(*). What happens after that is the bank's responsibility, but that's the whole of the complexity.
Whoever made the list usually has a few variants of spelling; OSAMA BIN LADEN or OMASA BIN LADEN or OSMA BIN LADEN, for example. But that's it. Just spelling your name slightly differently is enough to avoid the flag. We're literally not allowed to add anything else, like soundex matching or handling foreign letters.
This is ~probably~ also how the TSA no fly list works, and why you still hear about false positives from time to time. It's also probably how any security works until it's been around for 20 years and they hire a contracting company to make them really good software that does what they want, instead of what they think they want it to do.
It just takes a very long time for software designed by a legislative committee with no technical awareness to morph into something usable, but that's government for you.
* - most transactions are not sent out until the end-of-day reconciliation anyway, so it looks like it's accepted like most other transactions, probably in a 'pending' state in your online balance - unless you're paying for a wire transfer or something.
"on his way to terrorist training"
Bullshit! I can't believe the Republicans are still sticking to that lie to try to scare the general public. That is a complete and utter lie. Besides the ones the CIA runs, there are no terrorist training camps. They're trying, and failing(!), to try to convince us that terrorists are a problem when the Republicans are the problem.
You are trying to be funny, right?
I know that to most of you, Republicans are responsible for everything from circles-that-can't-be-squared to bad breath, but really, I assure you that they didn't invent Muslim nutso bombers.
They never tell you the truth. All assertion, no evidence.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Great, so now not only if we are a namesake with a wanted "enemy of the state", but also if our names are soundex or Levenshtein Distance 3 similar, we are going to get detained, cavity searched and otherwise.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Neither "Tsarnaev" nor "Tsarnayev" is the correct spelling; the correct spelling is "ЦÐÑнÐÌÐÐ".
As another commenter mentioned, utility companies solved this problem decades ago with technology like Soundex. Our intelligence apparatus is apparently crippled by incompetence, laziness, haste, provincialism, or all of the above.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev- T-I-M-T-H-O-M-A-S. I am professional hockey player.
That fiend had changed his name to "Tsarnayev'); DROP TABLE Terrorists; --"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Seriously, this entire organization encompasses everything wrong with the Federal government. Massive privacy overreach, complete incompetence, and a literal NIGHTMARE BUREAUCRACY! This is one of the worst aspects of the Bush legacy, and "The One" has not done anything to curtail its power: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL...
Agent: Tamerlan Tsarnev
Google: Did you mean: Tamerlan Tsarnaev
That would have solved the problem.
Exactly. This is clearly all Bush's fault. Glorious Leader Obamessiah never does any wrong.
Yes, actually you could argue it's Bush's fault, and the GOP's fault.
You see, they were too busy crying about Clinton's jizz on a Blue Dress to pay attention to some guy named "Bin Laden" who was blowing up embassies. They got so pissed at Clinton for launching cruise missiles at training camps that after he left office, Bush completely halted all operations against his network. Then they proceeded to ignore multiple public warnings and threats, and after the first airplane hit the tower Bush felt it was more important to finish reading "My Pet Goat" to some kids than it was to immediately ground all commercial air traffic in the region.
For the record, I'm a Conservative. But I'm not an idiot, either, and can do more than puke up "clever" insults I heard on Rush's nutjob radio show.
john or jhon or joohn....... every one gets a different one.
It should have been: Archibald Tuttle
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
if our names are soundex or Levenshtein Distance 3 similar,
"that's Levenshtein with an ei and Levenshtyne with a y" *
(*) my son, the terrorist
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
we can require everybody to change their name. but we still end up with Anderson, Andersen, Anderssen, etc.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
How is that not probable cause for a warrant?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Excellent point. I don't know why you've been modded as a troll. GP sounds exactly like Newsnight's Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels).. the Hollywood fantasy version of a conservative who is "fed up" with how "real" conservatives have no options because their party has been "hijacked" by nutjobs.
It is really transparent.
How is that not probable cause for a warrant?
Police: Sir, open up, we're here to search your house.
/sarcasm
You: On what grounds?
Police: On the grounds that your name, Bill McGonigle, bears a striking resemblance to the known terrorist, Bill McGonicle.
Yeah, that is totally ok.
They missed the Boston bombers because they are spying ON EVERYONE instead of focusing the spying, based on probable cause, on the correct folks.
Liberty.
Until somebody re-invents fuzzy search, this will remain a problem for transliterations between Roman and Russian alphabets.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Great, so now not only if we are a namesake with a wanted "enemy of the state", but also if our names are soundex or Levenshtein Distance 3 similar, we are going to get detained, cavity searched and otherwise.
If the feds aren't completely inept, and there's no reason to believe that they are because things have gone more and more their way over the years, they're using a scoring system of some kind already, and having a similar-sounding name will only increase the score a bit, not automatically flag you for an anal probe.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Good point highlighting how Slashdot still doesn't support Unicode in 2014 by the way...
You gotta love this rewrite of history. Let's go back to when the Soviet Union was invading Afghanistan shall we...
It was Saint Ronald Reagan in office who proclaimed those very same people who later did the attacks as "freedom fighters" worthy of illegally diverting funds for arms (look up Iran-Contra Scandal). Every republican loves to trot out that old red herring "Since 9/11 we haven't been attacked again." completely ignoring who was in power on 9/11, the anthrax attacks and the sniper attacks at the time. If the TSA was truly effective, then the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber and yes, even the 9/11 attackers themselves wouldn't have made their way onto those planes to begin with since everyone of them were supposedly on watch lists...
The TSA is, and always has been, nothing more than security theater. It is 100% reactionary to threats that either were successful or attempted. Someone tries to put explosives in their shoes, we all have to have our shoes off. Someone tries to get explosives in their underpants, we all have to go through invasive searches of our private parts. Someone uses a sharp object to cut the throats of flight personnel, they take away nail clippers because they can be sharp. It is rumored that explosives can be in liquid form so they ban all liquids, even unopened bottled water.
I will agree with you on one point though, it was a FULL Congress that passed the Homeland Security Act and the Patriot Act. It was the FULL Congress that renewed it too. So in that regard it was both parties that enabled this shit.
Fine. Present some evidence that the Department of Homeland Security, and that agencies under it's control aren't completely inept.
I'll wait. I'm sure there is something they haven't completely botched.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I have a US "Green Card". I had to fill out about 27 forms and the last three required me to print my name in block letters, one letter per square. Being British I have of course impeccable printing.
All the correspondence had my name spelled correctly but when I got the card - my name was spelled incorrectly.
"It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for" - Will Rogers.
Need Mercedes parts ?
That's "enema of the state" to the TSA.
Table-ized A.I.
Oh great, now the government will overcompensate by making the search logic even fuzzier, generating far more false positives. Is your name one letter off from someone on the No-Fly list? You're not going to be allowed to fly either. It was bad enough when the TSA was grounding flights when 8-month-olds matched the name of a terrorist, now you're going to have way more of that.
Don't believe me? After the Underwear Bomber was caught in 2009, Homeland Security decided to prevent it from happening again, by drastically increasing the No-Fly lists and broadening it to encompass flights to Canada and Mexico.
FBI Interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev 2 Years Ago http://boston.cbslocal.com/201... BOSTON (CBS) – Slain Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev had spoken to investigators prior to Monday’s bombing and subsequent manhunt. CBS News correspondent Bob Orr first reported, the FBI interviewed Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder brother of Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, in 2011 at the request of a foreign government to see if he had any extremist ties, but failed to find any incriminating information. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested Friday night after a violent manhunt in Greater Boston. The Tsarnaev brothers were legal residents of the United States. CBS News correspondent John Miller reports Tamerlan Tsarnaev was likely questioned because of suspected ties to Chechen extremists. Miller says Tamerlan Tsarnaev had a sit-down interview where they likely asked him questions about contacts and surroundings. CBS News reports although the FBI initially denied contacting Tsarnaev, the brothers’ mother said they had in an interview with Russia Today. Zubeidat Tsarnaeva said her son got involved in “religious politics” about five years ago, and never told her he was involved in “jihad.” Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a violent shoot out and chase with police Thursday night. His brother continued on the run until his capture in the backyard of a Watertown home.
Sorry buddy, but if you think that Obama is the center of all the problems your not seeing the big picture. It doesnt matter who the president is, the system is setup the way it is and one president will be the same as the other.
Since congress is landlocked in this crazy congressional drawn district and many of them are only challenged by even crazier people, the real problem is there.
In the end, this president, the former president and the next few presidents, plus the congress, supreme court and pretty much are entire government will go down as the worse of all time....but i would like to say, your singularly focus on one person means you will do nothing to help stop it because your fantasy land thinks that the president you vote for next time will fix it, but he/she wont..even if by some fucking miracle you get someone who truly wants to change it, you still got 435 idiots in one chamber, 60 idiots in another, then 9 idiots who are looking at them and paving the way for more stupid behavior (supreme court)
Obviously, still not everyone has read this yet.
Espescially it seems like we're talking about #1, #9, #30 and #37 and #38, while we're at it.
bickerdyke
All terrorist are now required to be named John Smith, if you are a John Smith then you need to change it because only terrorist can be called John Smith.
See, problem solved NSA style......
PS, NSA still needs to listen to your phone calls, make sure you are not a John Smith in disguise
Good point highlighting how Slashdot still doesn't support Unicode in 2014 by the way...
Slashdot BETA doesn't appear to support Unicode either, for that matter.
There's a web-page that can mangle names like what John Travolta did to Idina Menzel by calling her "Adele Dazeem" at the Oscars.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev comes out as Tristan Thompseen
Tamerlan Tsarnayev comes out as Tristan Thozomas
Great, so now not only if we are a namesake with a wanted "enemy of the state", but also if our names are soundex or Levenshtein Distance 3 similar, we are going to get detained, cavity searched and otherwise.
Trust me. It doesn't matter. I had to work with the OFAC data lists.
Osama bin Ladin's name was only given Fox-News style: "Usama". The Soundex algorithms we had were for English, not Arabic, where the same letter can be "O", "U", or "W", depending on context and other variables. Therefore an "Osama" bin Ladin would have barely registered above average on the scoring process.
On the other hand, people with the name Guadalupe Ortiz were constantly being harassed, including one or 2 cases that made the national news.
Apparently, Guadalupe Ortiz was the name of a Mexican travel agency involved in money laundering and thus had earned a place on the OFAC list. It's also, however, a not uncommon name for ordinary individuals.
Our system wasn't permitted to distinguish between names of persons, companies, or transport vessels. They were concerned that someone would use the alias of "Ford Prefect", or so I was told.
Sometimes they tell the truth; when it is in their best interest.
This. The story may or may not be true, but their willing and demonstrated duplicity in past Congressional reports makes it suspect. Here the story serves their interests by (1) making it seem like it's not really their fault they missed the guy, and (2) making it seem like should grab and harass near-matches and misspellings of peoples' names. It *ALSO* does not say *WHO* misspelled the name when entering it in the database. Because that person should probably be fired.
Obligatory XKCD comic...
http://xkcd.com/327/
Seems like the misspelling shouldn't have mattered.
So, I guess only people who blindly agree with every policy and excuse every stupid mistake made by every Conservative administration are allowed to call themselves Conservatives?
No true Scotsman, indeed.
But Obummer is keeping you safe!!!
Most people here understand that the issue of the creeping security state is not left or right, Republican or Democrat. The parties have shown us that they are both interested in increasing surveillance and curtailing our rights. Why have you not grasped this yet?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
How is that not probable cause for a warrant?
How is it?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Fine. Present some evidence that the Department of Homeland Security, and that agencies under it's control aren't completely inept.
The ongoing erosion of our rights. What, you thought they were there to do something for you? trololol.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
While most of your post is spot on there is no way for the TSA to have stopped the 911 attacks since it was formed 2 months after that happened.
I can't figure out why that isn't obvious to everyone. I've even seen it rendered into an "easy to forward to all your paranoid friends on facebook" picture captioned "When a boot is on your throat it doesn't matter if it's the left one or the right one" and still there are people so wrapped up in their side being the correct one that they can't see past "Obama" or "Fox News". This is bigger than both parties.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Which reminds me of when I was trying to track down the likely parties involved in that missing $8.7 billion in Iraqi oil funds (kept on account at FRBNY, or the New York Fed, the government contractor was JPMorgan Chase, and the funds, although tenuously overseen by the Ex-Im Bank at Baghdad, were really controlled through the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA---Iraq), ascertained that Timothy Geithner was chair of the NY Fed at that time, while his old college roomie and best-friend-forever, Daniel Zelikow was the managing director at JPMC in charge of that contract, while it took quite some time to deduce that Reuben Jeffery III was the CPA guy, as his name was consistently misspelled in government files, reports and sites (Reuben Jefferies, or Reuben Jeffrey, or Jeffrey Reuben, etc.).
Timmy Geithner moved on to be Treasury Secretary, while Danile Zelikow is back at Goldman Sachs and Reuben Jeffery III (former Goldman Sachs dood) became CEO at Rockefeller Financial (replacing the previous CEO who died by suicide, of course, quite a few "suicides" surrounding that entire affair, especially the most bizarre "suicide" of Philip Merrill, who was head of Ex-Im Bank at that time in Iraq, and was about to meet with a journalist?
True that.
I still note how the Democrats and Republicans are so divisive, but when it came to the "Military Enabling Act" (I forget it's official name) well, the Dems and Reps got together late on a Friday night and passed a bill that could make a person "not a citizen" based upon suspicions of un-American activity.
We all get swept up in the rancor of the Dog and Pony show, and behind the scenes, Congress can show quick, bi-partisan coordination. If it helps you and me; then it's going to be controversial. If it empowers them and helps their benefactors -- it happens quickly and without a fight.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
No you don't have to blindly agree, nor agree to everything. Blaming the GOP for 9/11 is really dumb though. Are you seriously defending that argument?
The left wing is conservative. The right wing is liberal. The parties have flipped-flopped so many times, it doesn't make sense to use "liberal" or "conservative" to apply to either, as often it depends on the specific issue.
And nobody needs to try to make the conservatives look bad, they do plenty good of that on their own.
Learn to love Alaska
Indeed. I just tried it with Sql Server:
Select Soundex('Tsarnaev')
--returned T265
Select Soundex('Tsarnayev')
--returned T265
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Every time you make a mistake the errorists wins.
Well, Soundex has only been around for almost a century, we can't expect government programmers to be up on the latest technology. Even though every major relational database supports it. Even though most programming languages implement it. Even though you could write your own implementation without too much difficulty.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
How is that not probable cause for a warrant?
Heaven help us when somebody named "John Smith" blows up a bus.
Actually, I haven't seen much evidence of their effectiveness. They cause a lot of people a little trouble and a few people a lot of trouble, but every time a real terrorist has come up, they've choked.