Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

[X_Digger]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14watchlist.html

“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.

The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

<snip>

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

And this is the list that Lautenberg wants to use to deny a constitutional right? No due process, no way to get your name removed, but the list doesn't include the most dangerous suspects because then they'd know they were being watched.

Talk about security theater.

[onehandle]

1. I cannot believe that Lautenberg wants to deny Michael his constitutionally protected consumer item.

Let this Cub Scout have his rights, Senator!

[X_Digger]

2. Had you read the article..

.. you'd know that Mikey's dad has the same name.

The stupid, it burns.

[Tejas]

5. ouch!

That was cold!

:rofl:

[onehandle]

8. Yes I did.

Cub Scouts must be armed to fight terra!

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

3. This is why you can enter your SS# on a 4473.

[ManiacJoe]

4. Unrec for bad reporting.

It took nine paragraphs, but we finally get:

"It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States."

Someone tell mom to send in the correct paperwork...

[PavePusher]

7. I call shenanigans...

It is NOT the families burden to clear their name, it is the governments responsibility to provide enough information on their "list" to preclude the frisking of an 8-year-old child. If they can't manage that insignificant task, they should be (metaphorically) burned at the stake and their empire-building agency disbanded.

[ManiacJoe]

9. The airport personnel are certainly playing shenanigans.

Everyone who deals with the no fly lists knows that there are no children on the lists. The lists already provide a wealth of info about the listed adult. All the child needs to do is present himself for visual confirmation to the airport personnel. After that airport folks are just overstepping their authority.

The government also provides procedures for getting government documents that show a person, with a similar name to someone on the list, is not that person on the list. Fill out the request and mail it in.

[PavePusher]

10. Not to beat a deceased equine...

but an individual should not have to expend the time to clear him or her self due to government ineptitude. That is the governments responsibility.

[ManiacJoe]

11. I think you are missing the point.

The database contains all the needed info for clearing a person. Standing in front of the airport personnel is all that is usually required. The optional government docs just speed up the process. If the process is not working that easily, the airport personnel are at fault, not the government.

[Tejas]

6. Will this "list" ever be expanded to

include activities beside air travel?