MetaFilter posts tagged with no-fly

Don't-Buy List

Kirth Gerson — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 13:10:21 -0800

No-fly list? Sure, we remember that. It's caused some inconvenience. Some people you wouldn't think of as terrorists are on it. Then again, some known terrorists are on that list. But that's old hat; now the government has a new terrorist list. it's almost all foreigners, but if your name or part of your name is on it, you might have problems.

Fly in the Fast Lane

digaman — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 09:24:00 -0800

Tired of standing in line at the airport? Worried that you might share a name with a known terrorist or subversive on the TSA's mysterious no-fly lists? Relax. Get fingerprinted and/or iris scanned. And pay $79.95 a year to become a Registered Traveler, and fly Clear in the fast lane. (And note how quickly conceptual art projects become indistinguishable from reality.) Meanwhile, the Feds settle an ACLU lawsuit over the no-fly lists... while revealing no information about them. [Lists recently discussed here].

Stealing Osama's Identity

rzklkng — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:26:06 -0800

Security, the TSA, and the No-Fly List You would think that our National Security apparatus would be like the TV series "24", with the most ingenious and sophisticated technology available. You would be wrong. Disclaimer: TSA is not an ~~intelligent~~ intelligence agency. Here's a blurb from the resume of the designer(Kenneth Mack) of the application the airline industry uses for *PDF* managing their employee data and the cross-checking them with the no-fly list:

- Sr. Developer: Developed a program [for Goddard Technologies] that uses the "No-Fly List" Excel spreadsheet, provided by the FAA and the database of badged employees to permute the name combinations. It takes into consideration multiple first and middle names, with Soundex and the various "initial" combinations. This program reduced the time for comparison from 3 days to 10 minutes.

The scary yet interesting part of all of this is that the No-Fly List is nothing more than a password-protected spreadsheet (see this PDF). One would guess our Government's geeks would know that it's a bad idea to send email attachments containing social security numbers and dates of birth, unencrypted, over the internets, even if they might be terrorists.

100,000 years is a long time

majcher — Sun, 08 Jun 2003 23:41:42 -0800

John Gilmore , co-founder of the EFF , is suing a couple of airlines, the FAA, the FBI, the TSA, the DHS, and a Mr. John Ashcroft. Why? May I see your papers, please?