I’m glad my name isn’t…
…Asif Iqbal, for example. That’s the name of a suspected terrorist being held at Guantanamo Bay for over a year, and also the name of a guy who lives in New York and does a lot of business flying. He has to get clearance from the FBI *every week* when he boards planes, because he’s on the TSA’s “no fly” list.
Or at least his name is.
We’re seeing a host of problems with the new TSA list, which is only a precursor to the impending evil of CAPPS II. All sorts of people– grandmothers, teachers, even Pentagon consultants– have unfortunate names that tag them as terrorists in the database. The biggest problem, of course, is that once you’re on the list you really can’t get off. Letters to congressmen, the TSA, or the FBI don’t do any good. One government official suggested to one of the unlucky people that he should change his name. Whee!
At this rate, soon everywhere we go we’ll hear someone say (with an eastern European accent, of course) “Your papers, please.”