Readers suspecting the Democratic Party is really a claque of subversives were treated to a mountain of evidence last week. Not only was Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy outed as being on a government “no-fly” terrorist watch list, but John Lewis, a representative from Georgia, was fingered as well.
Okay, not the congressmen themselves, but no-goodniks who had used these names, and as a result caused both monikers to be placed on lists delivered to the airlines by the Transportation Security Administration. As a result, Kennedy and Lewis have been subjected to nearly a year and a half of hassles while attempting to board airplanes.
Now, Ted Kennedy is guilty of his share of questionable activities during his career. For instance, someone with the Chappaquiddick incident in his past should not name a pet Portuguese water dog “Splash.” (Yes, he did. Look it up.) But poor taste is not illegal in America, which is a good thing, because if it were few people would be left unjailed, and one of the free ones would be Martha Stewart. (Oh, come on. Her towels aren’t that bad.)
I strongly doubt that Kennedy, a septuagenarian Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, fits any current profile of a terrorist threat to the airlines. I suspect the airport folks who use the no-fly list are not trained data professionals, and the idea of demanding additional information - approximate age, or eye color, or anything at all that might substantially cut down the false positives -- is beyond them.
The final indignity is that the airlines don’t even have complete sets of the government watch lists. Why not? According to the New York Times, the complete set of names is classified.
If direct marketers were this sloppy in their targeting, they’d be out of business right quick.
There will be those readers who feel that with the stakes being what they are, it is better to have 100 false positives than one false negative. And they would be right, if the system weren’t easily manipulated.
Like Kennedy, congressman Lewis went through a number of channels to get his name removed from the list. But before it was taken off, Lewis found a very effective way of preventing being flagged at check-in.
He began making reservations using his middle initial (R). This rendered him invisible to the airline security databases. Gotta love those rigidly defined database query rules.
I know what name I’m flying under from now on....
To respond to the opinions in this column, please contact e-mail:rlevey@primediabusiness.com
