Hacker News Reader

Comment by bleepblorp | Hacker News Reader

This is the kind of thinking that lead to the TSA putting infants, and even a US Senator, on the US no-fly list because their names matched those of "known terrorists."

The Washington concept of NATIONAL SECURITY<tm> is a brain-eating parasite that seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things, such as US Senators and IRA terrorists, or Serbian companies named Tardigard and products, sold by companies completely unconnected with Serbia, with descriptions that contain the word tardigard.

View on HN

> […] because their names matched those of "known terrorists."

As Bruce Schneier (IIRC) observed: these people are 'too dangerous' to let fly, but not dangerous enough to arrest.

Safe enough for firearms as well:

> In a 2010 report, the Government Accountability Office noted that "Membership in a terrorist organization does not prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives under current federal law," and individuals on the No Fly List are not barred from purchasing guns.[25] According to GAO data, between 2004 and 2010, people on terrorism watch lists—including the No Fly List as well as other separate lists—attempted to buy guns and explosives more than 1,400 times, and succeeded 1,321 times (more than 90% of cases).[26]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List

Stopping gun rights being taken away from No Fly people is the one time the NRA seems to potentially be of any use

I would think the weirdness is because there are constitutional Due Process requirements to being able to arrest somebody, charge them with a crime, or take away their gun rights. But the Feds can easily lean on the airlines to not let people they don't like board a commercial airliner. That'll maybe make us question a few things.

But then I think another part of the reason is that most of the international terrorist types that were originally expected to be blocked by the No Fly List were generally not in the US, and so not subjects to US Gov charges or even gathering evidence.

> seemingly renders compliance managers unable to tell the difference between categorically different things

Because it renders them liable. The whole system will turn against you if you give it an opportunity to nail you for using discretion.

And this happens everywhere in society after a certain size is reached due to the need to hold people accountable without actually being able to fully evaluate who or what is to blame (due to the situation being too complex or not having all the facts/data). But politically, someone(s) has to go down.

Only if there was some sort of cohort of people who would be able to judge actions to see if they are liable.

Perhaps we aren't scaling the judiciary system propley & allowed it to become overly complex so that only a certain subsect of the population can navigate it efficiently and an even smaller portion of that can litigate for others.

For some ideas, see http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Legal%20Systems/LegalSystemsCo...

Perhaps. Maybe if the same cohort of people who practice said laws weren’t incentivized to challenge existing laws and to make more laws there would be more resources to help judge.

Or because a false positive doesn't render them liable, or if it does, the punishment isn't harsh enough.

This would be a more compelling explanation if there seemed to be particularly high levels of holding people accountable.

It seems to me we build big opaque structures that prevent accountability. Your national internet provider rips you off? You'll probably be able to reverse the transaction, but good luck getting any information at all about what happened.

> Because it renders them liable.

Yep.

This is how you tell the difference between financial crime that the authorities don't care about and financial crime they do.

Look for personal liability.

Our six month old was on the list. It was a shock when we went to the airport, and they asked that he be taken aside for an interview with a TSA agent. We wrote a letter explaining the situation, and got a letter back acknowledging that our information had been received. They stopped asking 3-4 years later.

That they even requested that a 6 month old be taken aside is absolutely insane

Not only that insanity, but... you need a thing called "ID" these days. ID to fly.

If you can fake ID, and you're on some list, why on Earth would you use the same name? And if you can't fake ID, then it will be linked to, you know, ID numbers, birthdays, and more.

I can't even imagine how "just names" ended up on that list, as a match requirement. How many John Smiths are there?

Very, very strange. I don't get it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com