Patterico's Pontifications

8/8/2005

L.A. Times Publishes Deceptive (and Whiny) Op-Ed About the TSA’s Watch List

Filed under: Dog Trainer,Terrorism — Patterico @ 7:08 pm



The federal government maintains a Watch List for airline passengers. It’s inevitable that some people are going to share a name with an actual “person of interest.” And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy than the whiny, self-absorbed, deceitful putz who wrote this op-ed in today’s L.A. Times.

The op-ed is by a guy named John Johnson (aka Fenton Johnson). Why is he on the Watch List? I have no idea. Is there an actual potential terrorist named John Johnson? Or does the federal government just think that some moron foreign terrorist is likely to use a generic name like that? Mr. Johnson has a darker theory:

Why am I on the TSA list? Because I have a common first and last name? Because I snapped at a security screener who confiscated my nail clippers? Because I write critically of the administration? Because I vote Democratic?

News flash, John Johnson aka Fenton Johnson: you’re not that important. I never heard of you and I bet President Bush hasn’t either. And no, there are not 55 million people on the Watch List.

What terrible indignities has our hero had to face as a result of his sharing a name with a person of interest? Get out your hankies, because this is a tragic tale:

In the months since I learned I am on the list I have flown several times, and — so far — my greatest inconvenience consists of being denied use of the machines that dispense automatic boarding passes. Instead, I must wait in line for a clerk.

Comparing this inconvenience to the inconvenience of people flying airliners into skyscrapers, my conclusion is that John aka Fenton Johnson should shut the hell up.

Read on — if you can stand to:

By now I anticipate the situation, obediently line up, and watch for the clerk to react as I’m fingered by the list. After an ID check, I’ve been allowed to proceed, although some make clear their feeling that if the law has turned its spotlight on me then I must have done something wrong, and the sooner I’m sent to Guantanamo Bay the better.

It’s not long before our boy shifts from Whiny Mode to Deceptive Mode, with this dishonest paragraph:

I have visited the TSA website, where I was informed that on submission of notarized copies of my birth certificate, my passport and my driver’s license, I might find it easier to proceed through airport security — but that I will not be removed from the list.

I have to admit that when I read the article, that was the one part that bothered me. If this fellow can prove that he doesn’t belong on the list, then (whiny as he may be) they should take him off. But a little voice in my head said: “Don’t trust him. Check it out.” So I did.

Here is what the TSA’s web site actually says about removing yourself from the Watch List:

Please understand that the TSA clearance process will not remove a name from the Watch Lists. Instead this process distinguishes passengers from persons who are in fact on the Watch Lists by placing their names and identifying information in a cleared portion of the Lists. Airline personnel can then more quickly determine when implementing TSA-required identity verification procedures that these passengers are not the person of interest whose name is actually on the Watch Lists.

Clearance by TSA may not eliminate the need to go to the ticket counter in order to check-in. While TSA cannot ensure that this procedure will relieve all delays, we hope it will facilitate a more efficient check-in process for you.

In other words, if there is a person of interest whose name is contained on the Watch List, the government isn’t going to just take it off just because the person of interest happens to share a common name with a non-suspicious citizen. Instead, the government is going to do the only thing we could reasonably expect it to — take the Clean Citizen’s information so that they can be quickly distinguished from the actual person of interest.

That is not what I thought ol’ John aka Fenton meant when he said “I will not be removed from the list.”

I have no doubt that the Watch List is bureaucratic and nowhere near as effective as it could be. I wish I could read a good op-ed about those deficiencies, which identifies the real issues and suggests viable solutions. Instead, the editors give us this whiny, Bush-bashing, deceptive claptrap.

I’ve said this before about L.A. Times editors and it applies today: I am not surprised, but I am disappointed.

5 Responses to “L.A. Times Publishes Deceptive (and Whiny) Op-Ed About the TSA’s Watch List”

  1. Wait, you mean if my name is Osama bin Laden, and I can show I’m not THAT Osama, they won’t remove MY name from the list??? How stupid is that??? I mean, he’s the bad guy — why shouldn’t HE have to prove he’s the bad guy??? Why do I have to do all the work?

    Kevin Murphy (6a7945)

  2. “It’s inevitable that some people are going to share a name with an actual “person of interest.” ”

    I’ve heard they use soundex, which means a lot of people. Then again, I’ve also heard that changing your middle name or initial will get you not noticed.

    “That is not what I thought ol’ John aka Fenton meant when he said “I will not be removed from the list.””

    He said he would more easily move through security. Thats what TSA says. I wonder how quickly this process works.

    I’d like to know what TSA’s policy is if they did make a mistake. If its not a shared name, but actually this one particular name — and person. Would they then remove it, or are you permaban once you’re on?

    actus (a5f574)

  3. We don’t yet trust you with the advanced options

    NIF – yet another stunning edition of everything you don’t realize you need to know.

    NIF (59ce3a)

  4. I did not see where a placement, lower down, on the O.K. part of the list had any utility for the listee. Such a placement was only a CYA for the TSA.

    I wonder what the false positive ratio is with that TSA watch list; one hundred thousand to one; one million to one? Have they ever caught an evildoer through the use of the list?

    It seems to me that the TSA has decided that millions of citizens have been made permanently suspect, and are thus, correctly of course by their lights, subject to bureaucratically imposed time and opportunity seizures. It won’t be long: Increasing numbers of federal and local police officers, with increasingly fat pay checks, and increasingly fat pensions, are going to make sure that they “check ‘em often (the citizens), check ‘em hard, and make sure that their (the officers) cushy jobs are not in jeopardy: Civil servants morphing into civil predators.

    Some future we are brewing.

    RJN (02a337)

  5. Four weeks ago, around noon on July 12, 2005, my wife and I stopped at the McDonald’s just north of the last toll booth on I-90 northbound from Chicago. This is in the vicinity of South Beloit, Illinois and near the Wisconsin border. We were returning home from a funeral in Chicago, and I was still dressed in a dark suit with a tie. My wife said I was handsome and distinguished looking with my recently trimmed silver and grey hair and beard.
    I was sitting at a table facing the coffee and condiment table while my wife, who was undecided about her choices, was doing the ordering. A man stepped into my sightline as I was looking, past the condiment table, at a large map of Illinois and southern Wisconsin which was on the wall separating us from the take out window. The man was about 5’-8” tall, weighted about 145 pounds, was fit and in his late twenties, and was very Mideastern in appearance. I saw him in left profile as he was gazing through a window between me and the condiment table.
    I then saw him clench his jaw and winch, with some exaggeration, indicating that he had made a decision. I don’t know if he was putting on a show – could be. He turned to look at me, as though he had been aware I was sitting there, and approached (five feet) and began asking me about Interstate 39 and Madison, Wisconsin. Interstate 39 is unusual in that it seems to be only in northern Illinois and Wisconsin. I-39 joins I-90 at Rockford, Illinois, just south of where we were, and shares its pavement for about 100 miles north into Wisconsin and past Madison.
    His inquiry was made with a very Mideastern accent and left me wondering if it was forced, or was English such a struggle for him it resulted in my ambiguity (which I had and still have) regarding his origins (he could have been Israeli, by sound, tho I think not). He wanted to know if I-39 went up to Madison, and then where it went with respect to some place he could not, or did not, say clearly. I told him that he need not worry about losing I-39 until he was north of (past) Madison, and that then the road signs would make it clear when I-39 left the I-90 roadway. I thought I was responsive and polite; I certainly was friendly, and did not have any animus in me, so I am sure I did not show any.
    He then terminated his inquiry, and our conversation. He smiled, but with some baggage in it. It is possible that I came across as a garrulous old fool, attempting help without actually delivering any, but I don’t think so. He walked behind me and sat down with a companion, a man, that I had not noticed. I went up to the large map and verified that what I had told him was valid. It was. As I returned to my table he was watching me and I smiled; his response was a look with some contempt and malice in it. The end of a true story.
    Who do we profile? There may be nukes moving around the USA. Why waste our time, and accrue animosity toward our agents, by laying the burdens of profiling on everyone. It isn’t really profiling if everyone is under suspicion. If I may stretch your patience once more: Occasionally jailing an innocent man in this country is a bad roll of the dice for him, but persistently harassing large numbers of innocent citizens, in this country, is a police state.

    RJN (b4c72d)


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