TSA says no 8 year old kids are on no-fly list, then they hassle one because he's on a list

[ck4829]

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.

Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.

Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.

“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.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

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

[HopeHoops]

1. The "Diaper Bomber" turns into the "Sponge Bob Square Pants Undies Bomber"

I know, I know. It is an old story, told for hundreds of years. You just can't be too careful, you know?

[gateley]

2. They're like the Keystone Kops -- embarrassing.

For the kids in the audience (from Wiki):

The Keystone Kops was a series of silent film comedies about a totally incompetent group of policemen.

[Rabrrrrrr]

3. Not surprised. Our airport "security" is a gooddamn joke. Smoke and mirrors,

with nothing of any real substance to help make us safer, but shitloads of stuff of Very Real Substance to make flying an inconvenient pain in the ass and that treats us all like criminals with all the rights of a cow at a slaughterhouse.

[csziggy]

4. If the system can be circumvented by simply changing or mis-spelling a name, it is useless

Mario Labbé, a frequent-flying Canadian record-company executive, started having problems at airports shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, with lengthy delays at checkpoints and mysterious questions about Japan. By 2005, he stopped flying to the United States from Canada, instead meeting American clients in France. Then a forced rerouting to Miami in 2008 led to six hours of questions.

“What’s the name of your mother? Your father? When were you last in Japan?” Mr. Labbé recalled being asked. “Always the same questions in different order. And sometimes, it’s quite aggressive, not funny at all.” Fed up, in the summer of 2008, he changed his name to François Mario Labbé. The problem vanished.

Several Web sites, including the T.S.A.’s own blog, are rife with tales of misidentification and strategies for solving them. Some travelers purposely misspell their own names when buying tickets, apparently enough to fool the system.

What happened to the use of bio-metrics, facial recognition or any of the other ways to use physical characteristics instead of a name that can be changed or faked?

[seabeyond]

5. kids = bad. tsa = good. tsa keeps us safe. and kids are little terrorists irritating us

adults.

seems to be on line with many on du.....

should see a lot of appreciate about the lengths tsa go to protect all adults from those irritating little "creatures, critters, monsters"