The Death of the Neo-Cons

ahenry-
I'm sorry, but your logic produces an absurd result. Your argument boils down to this:
"Those tens of thousands were NOT on the No Fly List. Somebody else was. These people are just TREATED as though they're on the List. But that's very different from them actually BEING on it."

Huh?
Rich
 
Come on Rich. I know you spend some time with law enforcement. Ask any of them what they do if they encounter an individual that appears to be a match to a “bad guy” record. They’re going to take the appropriate steps to ensure whether the person in front of them is or is not the “bad guy”. There is nothing overly intrusive about that.

You first asserted that these innocent individuals were on some list. They’re not. Then you claim that verifying these innocent travelers are not actually “bad guys” is overly intrusive. It’s not. Moreover, what is being done now is no different than what has been done by law enforcement for decades, although the length of time it takes to verify they're not is arguably excessive. The time delay is a valid complaint, and is valid enough to have changed the processes taken by both airlines and gov't officials.

Just what is your complaint here? For discussion purposes, spell it out nice and concise please.
 
ahenry-
"Law Enforcement" doesn't routinely go to the Greyhound station and check all Papers against a list of Names like "T. Kennedy" that were put on a No Bus List. If they did, I'd have the same objections.

My claim was, "Ask some of the tens of thousands on the No Fly list for the Crime of having the wrong last name." I'll amend that to "Ask some of the tens of thousands mistakenly identified and treated as being on the No Fly list for the Crime of having the wrong last name."

OK?
The practical ramifications of these two statements is obvious: None. Petty semantics, if you ask me.
Rich
 
Another attempt to explain my point by an example.

Suppose your stopped by a cop for speeding. You name is Richard Lucibella (I assume it’s Richard…). As SOP, the cope runs checks on your name and DOB and there is a warrant out from another state for a murderer with the name of Ryan Luci, with the same year of birth and a month/day flip from your DOB. It’s going to take some time to verify that the warrant isn’t actually for you. However, the fact that law enforcement is going to verify you actually aren’t the bad guy is hardly intrusive, is it?
 
Ask some of the tens of thousands mistakenly identified and treated as being on the No Fly list (original emphasis)
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How are they treated the same? Seriously, that is an honest question. Do they continue their trip? Do they board the plane? If they miss their original flight are they provided another flight at no cost (monetary) to them? Are they put in jail? Are they really treated the same as an actual no-fly? Buzz_knox provided personal examples of how he was subject to this type of action well before 9/11 or the PATRIOT act. You could make the claim that any of it is excessive, but to use the vetting process for no-fly’s to even pretend to suggest people are being subjected to greater intrusions by the gov’t post 9/11 is just wrong. The only difference is greater care is being taken to verify a person is or is not the bad guy. Well, that and there are more actual bad guys on the list.
 
ahenry-
For heaven's sake man, doncha get it? When a cop stops you it's because he has reasonable suspicion, to do so in the first place. Change your example to begin, "Suppose you're stopped by a cop for driving your car on the street." and you have a reasonable analogy for what's going on at airports.

But don't begin the with the citizen committing a crime and try to call that an analogy. It's a weak apples to oranges "what if", designed to justify Feel Good Papers Please Stops which have netted us how many terrorists at our airports?

Rich
 
Ok, you have a valid point. Was anything done differently pre 9/11? Were people still vetted against a no-fly list prior to embarking an aircraft before 9/11?
 
What I think is terribly funny about the whole situation is that the nation allegedly voted for change. And, there will be a change. There will be a change in the dialogue concerning such things as the Patriot Act and RealID, as the media starts discussing the value of such programs. There'll be changes, certainly as Gitmo is shut down and the detainees go home with our apologies and perhaps cash settlements. Some of the intel programs will come under FISA while others will simply go dark. But the majority of the programs will stay in place, because the Dems (many of whom voted for them when an election wasn't imminent) certainly see the value of these programs to achieving their own agenda.

The ironic thing is that if the Reps had stayed in power, the pressure would have remained to discard these programs. With the Dems in power, much of the pressure will be relieved. The more outraged people grow about the abuses, the more they will be relegated to the "fringe" as people become conditioned to understanding how these programs keep them safe, especially in the cosmetically modified forms the Dems offer.

The 100 hour agenda of the Dems has nothing to do with the "abuses" they claim gave them a mandate, and I doubt the 100 day agenda will either.

I've come to believe that the Hyper Libs might actually be the future of this country, because although what they offer is horribly destructive to the country, they are certainly more well organized and smarter in how they go about achieving it.
 
Was anything done differently pre 9/11?
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Affirmative. But the list was 16 persons.

Look, I'm not against TSA Screening or a No Fly List. But it is readily admitted that the list was hastily cobbled together from a dozen agencies, providing little or no physical identifiers and often partial names. It has grown geometrically, and there is no formal method for getting yourself a "cleared" status; you're at the whim and mercy of an Agency that believes simple accountability somehow undermines National Security. Glorified Rent-a-Cops playing "First Responder". Postal Worker mentalities, bored to tears and itching to use their authority to validate their image of themselves. Not all of them, but certainly enough to render the Agency a joke.

There are better ways to do this list. Such as, if they have no biometrics on the person, the name should not make the list. It's worthless info. If there is some confusion, that person should be granted a "Cleared by TSA" card for future use. Why continue to take up TSA resources to re-investigate the same innocent repeatedly? And why allow any Agency to treat US Citizens as cattle, without any downside to their behavior? Answer: Because we're in a War on Terror of undetermined duration and people will just have to "get used to it". Horse Hockey.

Rich
 
And why allow any Agency to treat US Citizens as cattle, without any downside to their behavior? Answer: Because we're in a War on Terror of undetermined duration and people will just have to "get used to it". Horse Hockey.
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This preceeded the War on Terror. It's an element of control by the gov't that didn't begin with neo-cons, and won't end with Hyper Libs.
 
This is a 2-year-old article, but I didn't realize how bizzare this stuff was. I was searching for details of when the lists used began incorporating middle names and initials when I ran across this article.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18735-2004Oct8_2.html

First, the airlines do the comparison of the names on the tickets to the names on the lists. BUT, they really don't compare NAMES, they use a "phonetic-code concept."

Now you know.

John
_______________

"Passengers are falsely flagged by the lists in such large numbers because of the kind of technology airlines use to compare the reservation lists to the watch lists, according to experts in name-matching technology. Each airline conducts the matches differently. Many major carriers use a system that strips the vowels from each passenger's name and assigns it a code based on the name's phonetic sound, according to the Air Transport Association.

The name-matching technology is "too simplistic for a very complex problem," said Jack Hermansen, co-founder of Language Analysis Systems Inc. in Herndon, a company that has a competing name-matching technology that factors in a name's cultural origin. "It's these accidental matches that cause the big problem."

The phonetic-code concept is traced back to a program called Soundex patented in 1918, which was used by Census Bureau officials to help sort out names that sounded similar but might be spelled differently. The name "Kennedy," for example, would be assigned the Soundex code K530, which is the same code assigned to Kemmet, Kenndey, Kent, Kimmet, Kimmett, Kindt and Knott, according to genealogy Web sites that use the technology. Today's systems are more sophisticated than Soundex, but they grew from the same origins, experts said.

"The reason this technology is used is you're really trying to protect against typing errors," said Steven Pollock, executive vice president at TuVox Inc., a company that sells speech-recognition software. "When someone types in a name, the problem and the challenge is people will spell names incorrectly. . . . Names are definitely the toughest things to get
, no doubt about it."

But the phonetic coding systems tend to ensnare people who have similar-sounding names, even though a human being could tell the difference. Earlier this month, for example, Rep. Donald E. Young (R-Alaska), said he was flagged on the "watch list" when the airline computer system mistook him for a man on the list named Donald Lee Young. "​
 
Rich,

Look, I'm not against TSA Screening or a No Fly List.
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Ok, so it’s fair for me to say that we are in agreement that it is entirely reasonable for the gov’t to verify air passengers boarding a plane are not actually terrorists?

But it is readily admitted that the list was hastily cobbled together from a dozen agencies, providing little or no physical identifiers and often partial names. It has grown geometrically...There are better ways to do this list. Such as, if they have no biometrics on the person, the name should not make the list. It's worthless info.
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I don’t disagree with this view, although I don't think it's as bad as you think it is. As an aside, if you know a FAM you might want to talk to him/her about that. That’s not a brush off, just a comment that since FAM’s are the “holders" of such info, they know what they can and can’t say.
you're at the whim and mercy of an Agency that believes simple accountability somehow undermines National Security. Glorified Rent-a-Cops playing "First Responder". Postal Worker mentalities, bored to tears and itching to use their authority to validate their image of themselves. Not all of them, but certainly enough to render the Agency a joke.
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So really your complaint in all of this isn’t that gov’t is taking away American’s rights (the original claim you made), since as you stated above, you are “not against...a no fly list”. What you really have a problem with is the agency, TSA. That’s a fair enough complaint and one that I can get on board with.
If there is some confusion, that person should be granted a "Cleared by TSA" card for future use. Why continue to take up TSA resources to re-investigate the same innocent repeatedly?
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Such things do exist. They aren’t cards, but the concept you’re getting at is being done already; actual innocent individuals are able to avoid being "vetted" multiple times.
And why allow any Agency to treat US Citizens as cattle, without any downside to their behavior? Answer: Because we're in a War on Terror of undetermined duration and people will just have to "get used to it". Horse Hockey.
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Now you’ve gone and done it again. You told us all that a no fly list was acceptable, and by inference, that verifying travelers are not a known threat is an acceptable thing for gov’t to do. But now you say an agency is treating US Citizens like cattle. What are they doing that treats US Citizens like cattle?
 
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