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?

[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.

[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!