If it wasn't sad, this would be seriously funny. OK, it is still seriously funny, but I do feel for the kid.The Link
According to this article there is. They've been petitioning for seven years or so. Apparently it's easier to simply start misspelling your name when you buy a ticket.
Having an 8-year-old on the watch list is silly. But, there are people on this site (and apparently about 95% of the people on the texags site) who seem to have no problem inconveniencing entire groups of people who meet a particular profile. Now, the "profile" that those folks want used is based on race and religion. Are those criteria really more accurate than a profile based on the actual name of a terrorist? Well, there are over 1 billion muslims on the planet. I don't know what percentage are terrorist. But, how many Michael Hicks and Mario Labbe's are there? I would think that the % of muslims that are terrorists must be incredibly high if it is greater than the % of Mario Labbe's that are terrorists. To some extent, it starts to feel like a "I want profiling that inconvenience people so long as one of those people is never someone that looks like me" argument. Plus, if a Mario Labbe engaged in a terrorist act but we didn't catch it, people would be having a fit that we had the name of the guy (albeit a different Mario Labbe) and we didn't even question him. All that said, the system obviously isn't perfect and there must be a way to connect a person's name to his/her SS# or other record so that this 8-year-old is recognized as a different person than the actual suspected terrorist. ____________________________________________
maybe his Dad complained to the US officials that his son wasn't eating his vegetables. OK, he goes on the list!
Well, I guess to try to solve the problem in my own mind I have to look at it like this: Fact: There are terrorists out there that want to kill innocent air passengers. Fact: The majority of those terrorists that want to kill American air travelers today are Muslim, and there have been successful attempts. Fact: There have been attempts foiled recently in which the potential terrorists were Muslim, and in many cases of Middle Eastern heritage. So now to the "sucks for me/them argument" If we are extra vigilant in trying to foil those attempts and save lives, somebody might be inconvenienced. There are regular well meaning folk who will unfortunately get "inconvenienced" because some others who have similar beliefs/origins have committed those acts. Scenario 1 "We are sorry ma'm we are going to unfortunately temporarily inconvenience your son on this trip because we are being cautious for everyone on board, I know it doesn't seem fair, sux for you" or scenario 2 "We are sorry ma'm your son was killed on this trip because we failed to be extra cautious because it wasn't politically correct. I know it seems unfair, sux for you" The system needs to be improved, but I don't need someone telling me that we should just ignore the facts because it might inconvenience someone. In the goals of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit Happiness" One's Pursuit of Happiness might have to be temporarily inconvenienced to insure that another's more basic right of "Life" is protected, not the other way around. Having a similar/same name as a criminal or terrorist would really suck. That being said, surely they can get this 8 year old boy scout off the "High Risk" list.
I'm more disturbed by the fact that I someone on the list can simply change their name and never be troubled again.
