On the heels of the Garfinkel database post comes a particularly apropos story:
Retired Lt. Gen. Patrick Hughes, once the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a top Homeland Security Department intelligence official, said after he entered the private sector in 2005 he was denied boarding on a flight because his name was on the no-fly list. It has taken him ever since to clear up the confusion …
“It’s all about the name. I don’t see anything really subversive about Patrick …. Hughes, but it appears there’s an IRA guy out there who has the same name. Probably equally handsome,” he said.
Hughes’s was one of about 50,000 names on the no-fly list … Also snagged by similar name mix-ups have been Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and 1960s civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis. Such problems show the watchlist is poorly managed, critics say, but authorities call it a useful tool and say they have tightened procedures against such problems.
As Dr. Garfinkel pointed out; garbage in, garbage out. And in an application where security is paramount, a cr@p database managed by bureaucrats is a particularly blunt instrument.
But, as pointed out in an non-security-related book I’m reading, it is amazing how smart and effective people get when you give them a little authority. There is, for example, no reason why a properly trained air or TSA security staffer could not be allowed to over-ride the cold, likely incorrect, yet otherwise definitive database finding. The kindly, older gentleman with the retired general officer ID card is clearly not the real-life rendition of Sean Bean from Patriot Games. Its not that “Patrick Hughes” should not be on the list; its that certain “Patrick Hughes’” do not need to be prevented from flying. Granted, it is probably easier for a retired General vice an ordinary citizen to demonstrate at the terminal that he is not a wanted IRA terrorist, but the point remains the same; it is not necessary to be obtuse to be secure.
