Fergie's Tech Blog

Every TSA Flavor Tastes Bad

Ryan Singel writes on Wired News:

The Mohicans are evidently now riding steel horses and the crack squad of anti-terrorist database builders have smartly add the namesake of their chronicler, novelist James Fenimore Cooper, to the database of "people too dangerous to fly without harassing them, but not dangerous enough to arrest," according to the L.A. Times's James Gilden.

One would think that stories about the inaccuracies of the Transportation Security Administration's two watchlists would have dried up, given that stories about watchlist matches have included a high-powered nun, toddlers, Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Ted Stevens's wife Catherine being flagged as Cat Stevens, a man with the same name as a guy already in Guantanamo, government employees with security clearances, and every David Nelson.

This time a man named James Fenimore Cooper, who may or may not be related to the author of The Last of the Mohicans, has been caught up by the lists -- no telling if he is on the selectee list or been confused with a name on the selectee list or no-fly list. (Selectee list means you *always* get an SSSS on your boarding pass and get hand-screened, while the no-fly list means you don't get to fly at all.)

So maybe someone at the TSA thinks the Mohicans are still scalping settlers and that James Fenimore Cooper's possible ancestor has been giving them material support by writing about them.

posted by Fergie @ 7/17/2006 10:06:00 PM