There’s a cliché in detective dramas, where there’s a battle of jurisdiction. Say, the FBI swoops in and tells the local cops, “We’ll take it from here.” Bureaucracy always trumps justice. Well, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s a similar battle within the federal government’s security apparatus.
America’s no-fly list is so extensive and full of errors, that even Federal Air Marshals are being kept off planes.
False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem.
Federal Air Marshals (FAMs) familiar with the situation say the mix-ups, in which marshals are mistaken for terrorism suspects who share the same names, have gone on for years — just as they have for thousands of members of the traveling public.
Hey, at least they’re not being kept off because they’re carrying weapons.
But it’s nice to know that the people whose sole job is to protect passengers in flight are being kept off planes. Why, why, WHY can’t a Federal Air Marshal, showing federal law enforcement credentials get on the damn plane?
The no-fly list is still a disaster. How about this nugget:
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said this week that one major air carrier reports roughly 9,000 false positive hits on the watch list every day.
Let’s savor that one for a moment: One single airline has 9000 false positives. Daily.
And some of those might be Federal Air Marshals.
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May 5th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
And no one seems to think that this might indicate a problem with the list?
May 5th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
robert – No one at DHS. Plenty of travellers know there are problems with the list.
When you think about it, a 2% false positive rate per day, at just a single airline, is a horrendous error rate. Even worse when you consider that there cannot possibly be 500,000 people actively planning to bring down aircraft – ie the list is bloated to begin with and serves only to inconvenience the innocent.
The suggested fix, of adding date of birth to the information collected from travellers, is a nonsense. If it is that easy to get off the list (albeit only for each flight individually) then why cannot the travellers be removed permanently from suspicion? Further, wouldn’t any bad guys just fake their DOB?
In my opinion, the whole no fly list should be scrapped.
May 5th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
also, relying on a name spelled with english letters and using english phonemes is unreliable period. Not to mention insulting to non-english speakers.
May 5th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Time to get Chertoff on the list.