On plane trips

[da]

31 hours after we left Ontario, we're back. It's beautiful out, huge snowflakes are falling, and both d. and I are exhausted. d's currently singing his 2nd of two concerts of this weekend; I'm doing a few errands like picking up the dog and making dinner, and we'll probably crash pretty early tonight.

In addition to discovering that the only substantially good thing about the city of Baltimore is the food, both d. and I have discovered that our names are on security Do Not Fly lists. So far, it's turned out to mean no more than 20 extra minutes at the start of each trip, as they called in our names and verified- I don't know what exactly, but they let us get on the planes both times. There's some sort of process we can follow to get... onto the Do Not Do Not Fly list? Fly List? I don't really care, so long as it works.

As far as I know, we're flagged by full name, and nothing else, though it's being difficult for me to find out for certain. The list seems riddled with errors, from what I've read online previously.

I did do an interesting experiment just now, which you can repeat.

Go to http://www.melissadata.com/cgi-bin/peoplefinder.asp and put in your name and any state. For my first and last name, and state of birth, it tops out at 100 responses, two with my same age and middle initial. There are at least one close match for most of the friends' names I've tried.

Why, oh why, didn't my parents name me Bartholomew?

Comments

[dpolicar]

There are 74 matches for me, but at least 6 of them ARE me, and I think all the rest are reasonably close relatives.

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

Wild. I wonder if they've ganked the lists of people who subscribe to certain mags, or is it just coincidence completely?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

Ya, it's a good question where they're getting that data. I'm not quite sure what you mean about coincidence- referring to which?

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

I mean, was it just that there was the coincidence that you share a name with someone who's on the No-Fly list?

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty certain they weren't actually looking for lil' old me, if that's what you mean. :)

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

D. and I both have remarkably boring last names. (Mine is even more boring than his, but they're both common.)

I'm just surprised that this hasn't happened before: it's been less than 6 months since we flew in the US, when my sister got married in July.

[arcticturtle.livejournal.com]

I was only there one day, but I thought Baltimore was really cool architecturally. I walked all over the central city and saw maybe two plain, rectangular boxes. I don't know enough to tell good from bad architecture, but I do know enough to tell "trying" from "not bothering", and I like "trying" better.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

There were a lot of elements that actually seemed to fit into the "trying" category- they're trying to have a viable light-rail system, which I keep trying to be enthusiastic about because light rail should be supported in cities, and the downtown core and Hopkins campus are pretty. And lots of new buildings going up, which is a good sign.

But the downsides tend to be serious and systemic- the light-rail machines seem to not take bills larger than $5, and the north-south line has sporadic payphones, which cost us close to an extra hour getting back to the hotel (out near the airport), and it ran three times slower in the evening as in the morning, for another 45 minutes on the train.

The downtown is pretty, but much like DC, the city consists of these "islands" of safe areas, surrounded by really unsafe areas ("really unsafe" as described by residents, as in, don't walk where you don't know where you're passing through, during daylight). Such as, don't walk the mile from Hopkins to downtown...

But you're right, there is some really neat architecture. I wish we had time to look at the Symphony Hall on this trip, it looked beautiful from the outside. And I like the convention center.

I don't know, perhaps I'll feel like going back in some number of years.

VERY glad to be home, and going on vacation soon. :)

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

I really want to like Baltimore: my parents fell in love when they were Hopkins students, and as such, it should be special to me.

But there are all of these things about it that give one pause. There have been roughly 270 murders in Baltimore this year, in a city of 640,000. In Toronto, it's something closer to 60 murders, in a city of 2.5 million, and that's a scandal. When we were deciding not to live in Baltimore, in 2000, the statistic that struck me as most worrisome was that Baltimore has the highest syphillis rate in the US. That is the case because there are a lot of people selling sex for drugs.

Parts of it really are pretty. Charles Village (by Hopkins) is cute. The art museum is great. And at its best, the food is superb. But I see more burned out people per capita in Baltimore than in any other American city. I find it amazingly depressing to be in.

[mynatt.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, we're flagged by full name, and nothing else, though it's being difficult for me to find out for certain. The list seems riddled with errors, from what I've read online previously.

I guess I haven't read enough about that list. I can't believe they would stop you from flying based solely on your name. Things like that make me glad my surname is quite rare.

And if melissadata.com really has access to the records they claim to, well, that's freaky. I understand that it's available, but I always assumed you'd at least have to pay some token fee to see that stuff.

[earthling177.livejournal.com]

Well, I am really sorry to hear you both had such trouble flying.

You are probably right that there isn't a lot of checking, like a social security number or anything like address, employment etc (that could easily be checked by the airlines) to separate the people (or aliases) they are looking for from you both. I think it's really scary that they either don't know or don't care to inform the airlines who they are really looking for. You would think that for an agency that claims to be looking for terrorists, having so many false positives is bad if nothing else -- even if we discount all the annoyance they cause to people like you -- because it makes it really easy for frazzled agents at the airport to let the real terrorists pass unchecked because "so many people are just normal decent people anyway" and it makes me think the entire system is seriously and dangerously flawed.

I suppose it won't be any consolation to y'all, but y'all are not alone. News around here a few months ago was that Senator Kennedy was in the no-fly list too. He told the newspapers that it was frustrating, because the people who saw him nearly everyday at the airports still had to go thru all the crap and it took him many weeks to clear his name from the list *and* he knew all the right people to pressure, a-hem, sorry, ask for help. Some newspapers around here ran the news as in "the newest republican thing is to harass Sen. Kennedy by putting his name on the no-fly list" or something to that effect. Maybe it was true, maybe not, but it took him some time and a lot of aggravation to clear it up, so I'm wishing you both good luck with it!

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it is kind of odd how badly they're doing this. It's similar to credit reporting: with a name as boring as mine, I'm guaranteed to look like I've declared bankruptcy 3 times, or not paid my phone bill, or whatever. It's more than a little infuriating that being tagged as a terrorist will occur comparably. Not for the first time, I'm glad that my name isn't Ahmed or Mohammed. As far as I can tell, this means I'm going to have to keep my passport with me on every US flight I take from now on. But that's no big deal: we need them anyhow.

The Kennedy case did get a fair amount of press here. We don't get all of the US news, but we do get quite a bit. (And I read the NYT, too.)