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lawnchair_larry

Is there a reason to doubt the official explanation of a name collision? This is not uncommon.

A case of someone getting even worse treatment, including strip searches. He was white.

https://www.thestar.com/news/crime/2010/10/08/acton_man_repe...

A white woman sharing a name with a black male convict even had issues:

https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Technology-issue-at-...

There is often a common theme reported in these experiences. Customs cannot seem to properly “remove” flagged individuals. Or if they do, something keeps re-adding them. It sounds like many different source databases synchronize with each other and it’s difficult to prevent bad data from being reintroduced.

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Is there a reason to doubt the official explanation of a name collision?

The fact that the saga went on for months at the same border post despite complaints?

People like to distinguish between incompetence and malice but there is not much point in it; in either case the outcome shows that people in charge are not capable of performing their duty and should be relieved.

Also, what's the point of SENTRI if not to obtain a more reliable and detailed database entry? Shouldn't that information somehow take precedence over a too-broad query of some other database?

Even if the official explanation is true as far as it goes, something is seriously broken here.

Exactly- with Sentri you have an id number that has your personal and vehicle info

How would the automated system scan the card, the face and the license plates and then do a name lookup?

> One time, an officer told me, which I wrote down: Just because you say you work at the consulate does not mean that you are not smuggling drugs into the country. I asked him to explain. He responded, I don’t know, but I do know what drug dealers and smugglers look like. He stepped forward, crossed his arms, looked at me up and down, and said: You know what I mean.

> When I asked him why I was being sent to secondary, the officer told me that it was a computer-generated random inspection.

But I’d been watching him the whole time. The officer wasn’t in his booth as I approached, so he couldn’t see his computer, which means that he didn’t see my SENTRI card, and couldn’t have known whether his computer had tagged me randomly for secondary inspection. It seemed that as soon as he made eye contact with me, the officer decided to send me to secondary.

The trouble is that a name collision isn't bad data. It's good data, and it sucks to have that name.

If a bad person can simply clear his name by sending a same-name person to complain, we have a security bypass.

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