- A muslim airline pilot (an American Gulf War I veteran who converted) has lost his flight priviliges because he is on "some TSA list" and is suing
- James Robinson,
an airline pilot and retired National Guard Brigadier General
says he get hassled whenever he tries to fly
But there's one problem: James Robinson, the pilot, has difficulty even getting to his plane because his name is on the government's terrorist "watch list."
That means he can't use an airport kiosk to check in; he can't do it online; he can't do it curbside. Instead, like thousands of Americans whose names match a name or alias used by a suspected terrorist on the list, he must go to the ticket counter and have an agent verify that he is James Robinson, the pilot, and not James Robinson, the terrorist.
"Shocking's a good word; frustrating," Robinson -- the pilot -- said. "I'm carrying a weapon, flying a multimillion-dollar jet with passengers, but I'm still screened as, you know, on the terrorist watch list."
...
But although the list is clearly bloated with misidentifications by every official's account, CNN has learned that it may also be ineffective. Numerous people, including all three Robinsons, have figured out that there are ways not to get flagged by the watch list.
Denise Robinson says she tells the skycaps her son is on the list, tips heavily and is given boarding passes. And booking her son as "J. Pierce Robinson" also has let the family bypass the watch list hassle.
Capt. James Robinson said he has learned that "Jim Robinson" and "J.K. Robinson" are not on the list.
- The 9th Circuit has ruled that people have a right to sue to get off the no-fly list.
Maybe I'm not cynical enough, but I find the TSA's behavior vis-a-vis the watch list to be somewhat confusing. Here you've got a system that's clearly very inconvenient for a large number of apparently innocent people (even the low range estimates of the size of the watch list are 400,000 people) is trivial to bypass, and really has no evidence that it's useful at all. And rather than somehow quietly roll it back, TSA's response has been to dig in and make it extremely difficult for people on the list. Moreover, they threaten the airlines even for telling people they are on the list. Ordinarily, one can explain the TSA's behavior by recourse to Schneier's "security theater" model, and maybe it's just the circles I travel in, but I don't get the sense that the general public somehow believes this works. And even if they do, would they really be annoyed to hear that Capt. Robinson is slipping through the cracks? Actually, now that I've said that, there is a beyond cynical rationale here for why TSA is so intransigent about removing people: they like it when it comes out that some 10-year old kid is on the watch list. Sure, people realize it's nuts, but that's the evidence that TSA is doing everything it can; they care so much about your security that they'll even stop grandma from flying.