US Marine on No-Fly List

The US airports are now protected by the TSA. They run the security checks and also keep a no-fly list of people for extra checks. This list is lame because names are not unique and terrorists use aliases. Also the whole list is secret (which makes sense) but the policies of the list are secret too (which makes no sense). So if you find yourself on it, there's no good way to get off of it. And people do find themselves on it.

There have been plenty of stories of ridiculous stops because of this. Sen. Ted Kennedy was on it, if you can't recognize him, there's a problem. "TSA explained to Sen. Kennedy that there was a terrorist who once used 'T. Kennedy' as an alias. 'T' is not one of the Senator's initials; his full name is Edward Moore Kennedy." There was a report recently of an infant prevented from flying because his name was on the list.

The latest stupidity was the stopping of Daniel Brown. First off, that common a name being on the list seems like a really bad idea, but in this case it was worse. This Daniel Brown is a Staff Sergeant in the USMC Reserve. He had had his military ID card and was traveling in full uniform. Oh and if that wasn't enough, "he was traveling with the other members of his Marine Reserve Military Police unit, which was heading home to Minnesota from eight months of combat in Iraq."

"After attempts to stonewall under claims of 'security,' TSA spokesmen finally admitted that Staff Sergeant Daniel Brown was placed on the no-fly list, and ultimately detained, because they had detected gunpowder on his footgear -- not on this flight, but on a prior flight, which earned Brown a permanent place on the TSA's mysterious terrorist lists."

Keeping a list of names and checking passengers against that is just dumb. Why? Because criminals lie. Really. Notice how they've stopped asking the moronic "did you pack your own bag" questions? And how they've stopped asking you to show your id at the gate as you board the plane? Does anyone think we are less safe as a result? The no-fly list is a waste of money and an unnecessary inconvenience to every flyer. They wanted to make the system bigger, but fortunately, for now, that's suspended. TSA should work at preventing weapons from getting on board, and from reports they need practice at that.

Kudos to Brown's unit. Even though he was delayed enough to miss his flight, his whole unit stayed with him. "We don't leave anybody behind. We start together, and we finish together."