[HN Gopher] U.S. No Fly list publicly shared on a hacking forum,...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. No Fly list publicly shared on a hacking forum, government
investigating
Author : dotty-
Score : 183 points
Date : 2023-01-30 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
| omgomgomgomg wrote:
| Oh dear, yes we understand this is the world post 911, but many,
| many criminals will simply use entirelly fake identities.
|
| And the data hygiene and itegrity are horrible,there are dead
| people on it.
| capableweb wrote:
| Seems there is a blog post authored by the same person credited
| in the dump ("maia arson crimew") describing how the data was
| acquired here: https://maia.crimew.gay/posts/how-to-hack-an-
| airline/ ("how to completely own an airline in 3 easy steps and
| grab the TSA nofly list along the way")
|
| Discussed 10 days ago on HN (1024 points | 642 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673
| gala8y wrote:
| OT: You could write a PhD not leaving their (bleepingcomputer)
| cookie consent pop-up.
| skywhopper wrote:
| I'm very curious about this list and whether I'm on it. I have an
| extremely common Anglo-American first+last name and there was a
| period of years when I would regularly get my boarding pass
| stamped "SSSS" and pulled aside for the secondary screening
| almost every time I flew, which at the time was 5-6 times a year
| or more.
|
| Now, my name is truly so common that I have convinced myself
| there was something more than just that name triggering the SSSS
| designation. Otherwise, most major airports would have been
| patting down someone with my name multiple times a day. I suppose
| that's possible, but if so it would really damn the value of this
| sort of list. The extra screening did seem to depend on which
| airline and which airports I was using, so maybe there was
| something else going on. Or maybe some dude with my name just
| crossed some line he shouldn't have and me and everyone else with
| that name paid the price for a few years.
| lalopalota wrote:
| If you made it on to the plane, you weren't on the "no-fly"
| list. maybe some other list, but not this one.
| ding_dang wrote:
| Breached is the new site of the RAID Forum that was taken down a
| few months ago.
| metalcrow wrote:
| Link to the actual forum, since it's not provided for some
| reason: https://breached.vc/Thread-TSA-NoFly-List-Database-
| Leaked-Do...
| baybal2 wrote:
| [dead]
| triyambakam wrote:
| I'm disappointed in how immature many of the users there seem.
| Why did I expect different?
| capableweb wrote:
| Keep in mind that many people purposefully change writing
| style drastically if they are assuming different identities
| online, as it becomes harder to link together profiles that
| way. Doesn't mean they are like that in real life. Doesn't
| mean they aren't like that in real life either, as well.
| gggggg5 wrote:
| In the case of this particular forum, it's primarily
| because they're children.
| from wrote:
| Human psychology. Refer to: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103
| 671/characters/nm0351225#qu...
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I can't register because my email isn't whitelisted. Does
| anyone here have the file?
| gggggg5 wrote:
| Here you go https://temp.sh/MPTAc/TSANoFly_BF.7z (link should
| be valid for 3 days)
|
| I guess the most interesting observation is that Mr. Test
| Test is nowhere to be found on this list.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| Even if you register you have to pay "credits" (which you get
| by paying for a subscription) to actually get the file.
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| Anyone has a link to someplace where this can actually be
| downloaded?
| bojangleslover wrote:
| Which can only be paid with crypto...
| from wrote:
| Were you expecting participants in a criminal conspiracy
| to take Amex?
| notch898a wrote:
| I'm no lawyer but is this even a criminal conspiracy? I
| thought the 1A covered third party distribution of most
| stolen secret government information. The media does it
| and profits and apparently legally.
| from wrote:
| I guess criminal conspiracy might be the wrong word.
| There is no prohibition on sharing hacked data as far as
| I can tell. There is "unauthorized access device" like
| having CC or SSN numbers but that's only if you have an
| intent to defraud. Maybe they could argue stolen
| property? There is potentially copyright infringement in
| some cases but this is a government database so that
| doesn't apply here.
| gggggg5 wrote:
| There's the raidforums indictment, but as I remember it
| does not directly address the "intent to defraud"
| question wrt access device fraud
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-
| release/file/1493586/downl...
|
| FWIW I think a bigger reason for lack of card payments
| would be the chargeback rates.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I believe you are right, but then, what is government law
| enforcement investigting?
|
| Anyway, the forum it's hosted on is, I'd guess, used by
| people for all sorts of less legal things, and they
| probably do not welcome this visibility and interest.
| patientplatypus wrote:
| [dead]
| bioemerl wrote:
| Now that's a file download I will not be clicking.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Just get a VPN in Russia. And I'm only half joking.
| [deleted]
| TheCaptain4815 wrote:
| Site seems to be down.
| gggggg5 wrote:
| It's not.
| [deleted]
| scohesc wrote:
| Too bad there isn't a "reason" column showing even a summary of
| why they ended up on the no-fly list - probably because the
| reason is too sensitive for the people who regularly access the
| list to see.
|
| "Matters of National Security" and all that jazz.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Isn't there a bullshit reason for that? Something like if they
| say why they're put on the list, it becomes an accusation of a
| crime and then punishment without a trial, but maintaining a
| list of people who can't fly is somehow OK.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Wonder how many people would be on there out of retaliation for
| something personal, like their wife leaving them.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A bunch of information like that (along with citizenship and so
| on is redacted), probably before the TSA gives it to the
| airlines. that way they can truthfully say they don't know why
| their computer said no. The ID fields for the entries start at
| 1 and run upwards chronologically thought not monotonically
| because people get removed from the list.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Our industry is still not, in general, an industry that employs
| licensed professionals. Subsets of it, to be sure, but there is
| no such thing as a "computer engineering license" in the same
| sense as a "civil engineering license," for example.
|
| If there were, using production PII in the test infrastructure
| would be grounds for license revocation.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I'm honestly surprised it's taken this long for one of these
| lists to be _leaked_. Many businesses are required to pull this
| and many other lists into their applications to approve /deny
| people and this is not just airlines. For the longest time these
| lists were on an unencrypted FTP server with a simple
| username/pw. I only had to deal with this because one of our
| firewalls did not play well with FTP. I tried to convince them to
| use HTTPS or SFTP. Hopefully they have at least done that by now.
| O__________O wrote:
| Assuming this list doesn't include anyone who's on the Secondary
| Security Screening Selection (SSSS) list by default:
|
| - https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_Sele...
| advisedwang wrote:
| The article mentions a separate SELECTEE.csv presumed to be
| SSSS list.
| dotty- wrote:
| Discussion for original blog post detailing how the leak
| occurred: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34446673
| stackedinserter wrote:
| List like these must be publicly available to anyone, like credit
| history/score. Also, there must some justice process for getting
| in and out of this list.
|
| I still don't understand how societies accepted no-fly list,
| civil forfeiture, de-banking, de-platforming people and other
| clearly totalitarian practices in or "democratic" and "free"
| countries.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They accept them because they think it will never happen to
| them (most people would be right), and think it only happens to
| "people who deserve it".
| anonporridge wrote:
| The trick for these kinds of anti civil rights programs is to
| keep its application limited enough that not enough people
| are directly or indirectly affected to raise hell over it.
|
| Keep the affected individuals at <1% (I don't know the real
| number) and it's a small enough set of people that they'll
| silently fall through the cracks. Be careful to not
| accidentally use it against people who are part of rich and
| powerful families, because they'll make a stink. Use it only
| against the poor, immigrants, or otherwise socially
| disconnected and you can keep doing it in perpetuity.
| pc86 wrote:
| Honestly even if it was "accidentally" used against someone
| rich and connected, they would just make a phone call and
| have it fixed. For something like the no fly list it would
| probably get corrected in time for them to make the flight.
| Teever wrote:
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/20
| 15/...
| giantg2 wrote:
| The funny thing is, they are expanding it. It's still
| probably below the 1%, but it seems society has an appetite
| for expanding civil law to circumvent the (limited)
| protections dound in criminal law, like proof beyond a
| reasonable doubt or access to an attorney. Red flag laws
| and the TX abortion law are some recent evidence of this.
| Animats wrote:
| In one area, they don't, at least in the US. It was proposed at
| one point that the "no fly" list also be used as a "no gun"
| list. The gun nuts screamed.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The gun nuts scream at everything, anything, and sometimes
| when it's nothing.
|
| The no fly list still shouldn't be used for gun control. If
| we want gun control, we should look to do it in a way that
| doesn't further entrench the horse shit the USA implemented
| after 9/11
| matt3210 wrote:
| People criticize China for doing this but the USA did it first
| but just kept it secret
| godelski wrote:
| Americans also criticize America for this. I mean just look
| at this thread. Why would it then be surprising that they
| criticize China for it? That seems like consistent beliefs.
| Even before we bring in the reality that there's nuances and
| the two systems aren't identical and would be absurdly naive
| to believe they are.
| vkou wrote:
| It's different here, only bad people end up on it.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Bad according to who?
| tremon wrote:
| According to the list, obviously.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >I still don't understand how societies accepted no-fly list,
| civil forfeiture, de-banking, de-platforming people and other
| clearly totalitarian practices in or "democratic" and "free"
| countries.
|
| Look at all the disgusting and "inconsistent with your values"
| behavior you, or if not yourself then the other people who
| support your causes, will turn a blind eye to, minimize or at
| the very least object less to when it benefits your cause(s).
| Now scale that behavior up to all the diverse groups and causes
| that exist across a nation of 330+mil. That's how.
| com2kid wrote:
| > List like these must be publicly available to anyone, like
| credit history/score.
|
| Devil's advocate, but the point of the no fly list is to stop
| someone carrying a flagged ID->person mapping from getting
| onboard an airplane. (Because fake IDs exist, IDs are not 1:1
| to people!)
|
| If the no fly list was public, then people who wanted to get on
| an airplane and cause devastation would see if their current ID
| is blacklisted, and if so, go get a new ID under a different
| name. Hard but not impossible, especially with RealID
| constantly being delayed.
|
| If America had verified identifying documents that couldn't be
| easily forged, this wouldn't be a problem, but that isn't the
| infrastructure we have right now, and it _really_ wasn 't the
| infrastructure we had when the no fly list was implemented.
|
| Without biometric IDs, the no fly list is essentially a
| blacklist of IDs.
|
| How the list is used in practice is a separate discussion from
| the threat modeling exercise of should the list be public.
| jhawk28 wrote:
| The eighth amendment should make the no-fly list illegal.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| "Cruel and unusual" has always been a very conceptually-
| flexible term.
|
| Regarding flight: nobody is assumed to have a right to fly,
| so the privilege of access to flight is easily revoked.
|
| A "no crossing state lines" list, in contrast, is heavily
| mediated by the judicial system and the burden generally only
| placed upon those intimately and immediately entangled in a
| legal action.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Here's what I don't get:
|
| 1) At some point, if you are on the list, they will have to
| tell you. If you were on the Selectee list, they could try to
| pretend that the additional screening was random/risk-based,
| but if they don't let you fly at all, they have to tell you
| that.
|
| 2) Aren't most of the people on the KST (know/suspected
| terrorist) list non-US citizens? If so, they have no chance of
| legally entering the US, so if they are flying here, they must
| be using a false identity. I'm not sure what the point of even
| having them on the list.
| spuz wrote:
| > Aren't most of the people on the KST (know/suspected
| terrorist) list non-US citizens? If so, they have no chance
| of legally entering the US.
|
| I'm not following here. Why would being a non-US citizen give
| you no chance to enter the US?
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Because if the government even thinks you might be a
| terrorist, they are not going to give you a visa/allow you
| to enter. And those checks are far more thorough than the
| checks to board a plane.
|
| The only exceptions I could see would be some of those
| people might be allowed in as representatives of a foreign
| government, and there might be a few people who already
| have green cards and the US doesn't have enough evidence to
| remove them.
| post-it wrote:
| They can just get turned away at customs when their
| passport is scanned.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| de-platforming isn't a state operation. it is a community
| moderation and liability management tool among private entities
| in a shared space. I think its a false equivalency to say that
| "not being allowed to spew hate speech on twitter" is the same
| as "having your house stolen by the government". Also twitter
| has an appeal process and most of the time they just ask you to
| delete a tweet.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This was shown to be false in the twitter files
| greenhorn360 wrote:
| You're going to need to be more specific than that.
|
| I read them and you're making this up.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| I guess you missed this one:
| https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613932017716195329
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| one congressman complaining to twitter about some content
| (some of which does break TOS) and _sometimes_ getting
| his way is still not the same as being blacklisted by the
| state. "The Twitter Files" isn't some bombshell report
| on goberment control under threat of violence, it's a
| bunch of political agents doing what they do best:
| Complaining. I cannot stress this enough: government
| repossession of assets and freedoms like air travel are
| enforced under threat of violence and imprisonment.
| Emailing twitter execs because you dont like content is
| largely toothless and twitter can refuse or sue at any
| time.
| darkarmani wrote:
| Didn't that tweet say that twitter refused to take it
| down?
| greenhorn360 wrote:
| A staffer of one politician asked Twitter to take content
| down and they refused. That sure doesn't look like a
| state level operation to me.
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| >6.Even when Twitter didn't suspend an account, that
| didn't mean they didn't act. Schiff's office repeatedly
| complained about "QAnon related activity" that were often
| tweets about other matters, like the identity of the
| Ukraine "whistleblower" or the Steele dossier:
|
| https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613932028784742400
|
| >7.Twitter policy at the time didn't ban QAnon, but
| "deamplified" such accounts. About the batch of tweets
| that included those above, Twitter execs wrote: "We can
| internally confirm that a number of the accounts flagged
| are already included in this deamplification."
|
| https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1613932028784742400
| drak0n1c wrote:
| The FBI did send tweets and accounts to specific Twitter
| employees and repeatedly emailed them about those tweets
| and accounts asking for a follow-up on their status. The
| FBI said it was only notifying Twitter of censorship
| candidates, and allowing Twitter to make any decision it
| wanted, but the agency has a history of thinly veiling
| its coercive pressure on private individuals.
|
| https://www.thefire.org/news/yes-you-should-be-worried-
| about...
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-responds-twitter-
| files-...
| lamontcg wrote:
| Animal Farm was Orwell's critique of communism. 1984 was
| Orwell's critique of liberal democratic capitalism.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I generally agree but...
|
| Remember: the alternative of (non-government required)
| deplatforming is that anyone can do anything they want on any
| platform. Want to flood knitting forums with porn? Well they
| cannot refuse you! And that just makes it impossible for anyone
| to actually organise anything without constant trolling...
| mrguyorama wrote:
| That knitting forum won't exist because if you upload child
| porn the website owner goes to jail, so they don't let you
| upload anything.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| At least for the no-fly list (because I'm old enough to have
| watched the change happen):
|
| 9/11 caused an existential panic in the US public that made
| them willing to accept several new things in the name of safety
| against a threat model they did not understand. Once those
| things were in place, (a) burden of proof that removing them
| doesn't jeopardize our safety rests on those calling for their
| removal and (b) the average citizen can see the list doesn't
| impact them so they have little opinion on keeping _or_
| removing it.
|
| In short, it was a sticky-bit that once stuck, is hard to un-
| stick because people don't, generally, _feel_ less free (day-
| to-day) with it in existence.
| slackfan wrote:
| >existential panic in the US public that made them willing to
| accept several new things in the name of safety against a
| threat model they did not understand
|
| I'm old enough to have watched the change happen. There was
| no existential panic, but a straight up propaganda campaign
| waged by a collaborative media and government to ensure that
| this would be accepted, and that dissenters would be seen as
| "the other" to be feared and reviled, and potentially
| targeted for law enforcement action.
|
| Seems very familiar, but history rhymes.
| triyambakam wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're alluding to this, but I think much
| of the same has happened during coronavirus
| shadowgovt wrote:
| It's both. There's no doubt the ruling party invested time
| and effort selling their solutions to the public, but the
| public was also buying because all of a sudden, men armed
| with automatic rifles standing in the airport security
| lines was a comforting sight, not a terrifying one, for
| many, many Americans.
|
| ETA: Regarding effects on the American psyche,
| https://www.webmd.com/balance/features/american-psyche-
| post-... summarizes some of the post-9/11 research.
| Probably most of interest is that 21% of Americans studied
| by a researcher at Carnegie Mellon believed they would be
| the victim of a terrorist attack within a year. That number
| proved to be a way-outsized overestimate, but I think it's
| easy to see how people accept new curtailments to freedoms
| (especially _someone else 's freedoms_) if 1-in-5 of them
| believe they'll be personally attacked.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _all of a sudden, men armed with automatic rifles
| standing in the airport security lines was a comforting
| sight, not a terrifying one, for many, many Americans._
|
| Once again, because of the media amplifying the terrorism
| over and over, repeatedly playing it on every screen and
| telling everyone that they were under attack. Just as
| you're arguing that popular opinion shouldn't be ignored,
| neither should the centralized actors driving that
| opinion. They feed into each other, and downplaying the
| involvement of one category of actors only serves to hide
| their share of the blame.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| No disagreement. When Americans panic, they look for
| people to explain the problem, even if those explainers
| are ignorant, and for people offering solutions, even if
| the solutions are bad. It's a recurring historical
| pattern.
|
| It's worth noting that since the American news model is
| fundamentally capitalist, one can assume, once a panic
| starts, that cognitively-dissonant news will be
| downsampled. I don't know how to disambiguate "the media
| caused / fed a panic" from "people weren't interested in
| hearing 'everything's okay and nothing has fundamentally
| changed' when there was a crater where two skyscrapers
| used to be." Did the media feed a panic, or did the
| public tune out cool heads?
| slackfan wrote:
| Socialist media is no better in this regard.
| mindslight wrote:
| The same way we disambiguate what's right versus what's
| commercially expedient across the whole gradient of
| (soulless, dodgy, unethical, malpractice, fraudulent). It
| does not matter that people want to hear garbage that
| reaffirms their lazy beliefs - if you are in a position
| of power and take the easy/lucrative road of base
| affirmation, rather than the harder route of actually
| leading people somewhere productive, you are a bad person
| and you should feel bad. And people that know better
| should condemn you for that, rather than tacitly
| accepting your sold out self interest.
|
| Also if I'm reading your comment correctly,
| characterizing potential leadership as "cognitively-
| dissonant news" is a bit weird, especially with
| "cognitive dissonance" commonly referring to the
| rejection of criticism in the larger run up to the war on
| Iraq. With both points it feels like you're nominally
| agreeing, but still trying to push this framework that
| the news media and other leadership is inherently
| blameless.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't think either the federal government or the media
| are blameless (that's a federal government that
| authorized torture; they're obviously not blameless). But
| I also think we like to pretend the American public got
| duped or are blameless when it's (a) Americans who elect
| the government and (b) Americans who buy the newspapers
| (especially in that era, when online advertising hadn't
| yet eaten the printed word). There's a certain minimum
| "citizen's responsibility" that nobody gets away with
| just dodging in a country where they're obligated to
| choose their leadership and hold their own press
| accountable.
|
| > Also if I'm reading your comment correctly,
| characterizing potential leadership as "cognitively-
| dissonant news" is a bit weird
|
| Because Americans elect their leadership, they have the
| advantage that many (ideally, most) voted for them and so
| are inclined to follow them. But they also have the
| disadvantage that Presidents are not thought of as
| infallible rulers with any kind of mandate from heaven,
| so when things get tough their position is a lot more
| fragile than many would assume. You can easily see this
| play out in how an untrusted executive failed to handle a
| pandemic recently; it didn't matter whether they were
| right or wrong, much of America had that President and
| his administration pegged as "nominally and legally in
| charge, but too stupid to follow" and discarded federal
| guidance the minute it inconvenienced them unless force
| of law (often and mostly: state law) prevented them from
| doing so.
|
| In the run-up to the Iraq War, the cognitively-dissonant
| news was media suggesting Saddam Hussein's administration
| was not involved in global terror. True or false, it
| didn't fly because Americans wanted someone to blame that
| they were confident they _could_ kill (as opposed to the
| guy who 'd successfully evaded capture in Afghanistan)
| and Hussein was a very easy-to-believe target because he
| was already one generation's default bad-guy.
|
| (But to be clear: the executive in charge during 9/11
| _did_ orchestrate a hell of a lie to get the US into
| another war in Iraq; that scenario is well-documented and
| involved multiple overt fabrications of information. I
| may assert that a more skeptical public that wasn 't
| having a panic may not have bought those lies, but that's
| not intended to downplay the responsibility of the
| liars).
|
| I think the takeaway from this sub-thread is "Scared
| Americans and power-hungry leadership make for a bad
| combination." But the larger point I wanted to emphasize
| is that the consequences of those changes to American law
| aren't as reversible as just declaring "Well those guys
| were monsters;" bits like the no-fly list are sticky even
| if the people who implemented them were bad-faith actors.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >There was no existential panic, but a straight up
| propaganda campaign waged by a collaborative media and
| government to ensure that this would be accepted, and that
| dissenters would be seen as "the other" to be feared and
| reviled, and potentially targeted for law enforcement
| action.
|
| I'm also old enough to have seen the change happen, and
| maybe it's just that you and I lived in separate bubbles,
| but I really don't agree with this. I absolutely did see an
| existential panic in the general population, we were in an
| insane frenzy, and I don't get the sense that the media or
| government needed a propaganda campaign to get this sort of
| shit passed. Aside from a very small number of dissenters
| (including myself), we were all out for blood and there was
| no such thing as too far. Hate crimes against People Who
| Look Vaguely Like They Might Be Muslims shot through the
| roof, in spite of the government trying to quell that sort
| of thing. Giant flags the size of New York City were being
| flown on peoples' cars left and right. Normal Americans
| were absolutely NOT acting normal and didn't need any push
| towards supporting insane policy ideas.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| None of the things you mention are incompatible with a free
| democracy, just so long as the process by which people get on
| (and off!) these lists are transparent.
|
| But unfortunately that is often where things break down.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| In theory the process of getting off the list is transparent.
| In practice you can't be told if you are on the list in the
| first place.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| What's the theoretically transparent process for getting
| off the list? DHS TRIP isn't very transparent.
| brewdad wrote:
| Apply for a redress number. If it's granted, you are all
| set. If it's denied, well you have your answer as to
| whether you were really on the list or not.
| Lev1a wrote:
| Civil (asset) forfeiture is literally license for the
| executive branch to rob people for practically anything they
| can think of with almost no recourse [0] and pad their
| department/agency's pockets.
|
| [0]: "the accused is/are the asset/s not the person/entity
| robbed by the police/TLA"
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| Yeah I agree, that sounds pretty disturbing. I left out a
| critical part, that is the rules should not only be
| transparent but also agreed upon by most people.
| pc86 wrote:
| Some of these are perpetrated by a government or agent of a
| government and shouldn't be tolerated at all.
|
| Some of these are perpetrated by private companies and it's a
| much more gray area whether or not it's ok. "De-platforming"
| gets a lot of press but Twitter, Facebook, et al are under no
| obligation to let any particular person or group use their
| platform, nor should they be.
| exabrial wrote:
| > Also, there must some justice process for getting in and out
| of this list.
|
| This is backwards: there should be a justice process _for
| getting onto_ said list in the first place. The US Government
| has 0 authority to remove a right from a US citizen without a
| trial.
|
| The US Constitution is silent on whether or not this applies to
| non-citizens unfortunately, but my recommendation is handcuff
| the government's power whenever possible.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Is flying a right?
| naasking wrote:
| Aren't freedom of association and trade rights? Isn't the
| government restricting the airline's freedom to associate
| and offer services to any customer?
| simple-thoughts wrote:
| Yes, freedom of movement is a human right.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I feel like people have tried to use this as
| justification for operating a motor vehicle without a
| government-mandated license without much success.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Do you need a passenger's license to board a car?
| notch898a wrote:
| False equivalence. The no-fly is about boarding the
| airplane at all, not operating it. And AFAIK there are
| only the narrowest of methods of preventing someone from
| riding in a vehicle, almost assuredly associated with
| criminal proceedings.
|
| And, even if you don't have a license to drive it's
| illegal for them to even check unless there is RAS you've
| committed a crime to initiate a stop. Meanwhile TSA
| searches you on no RAS.
| exabrial wrote:
| I mean, breathing or eating isn't listed in the
| constitution... are those rights?
| Hamuko wrote:
| Would the "right to eat" also mean the "right to food"?
| notch898a wrote:
| Positive right to be given food is different than
| negative right to not be stopped from obtaining food.
|
| Blocking someone from riding in a common carrier
| ordinarily open to the public falls under the "negative
| right" which is the variety of rights usually ascribed.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| There are two opposing groups:
|
| 1) Power comes from the people. It is centered in churches,
| families, and limited local city governments.
|
| 2) Power comes from the government. The federal government has
| the _most_ power and the power decreases all the way down to
| the local level, which has the _least_ power.
|
| The second group, obviously, has become richer and more
| powerful. It has also done a good job of capturing the minds of
| the richest and smartest people in the country, who have been
| convinced that problems require government solutions.
|
| There are a lot of people who _don 't_ accept these sorts of
| things, but they're called racists, white nationalists, nazis,
| and all other sorts of horrible (and usually illogical) things.
| To people who aren't politically active or don't have a good
| understanding of political philosophy, these accusations are
| very effective.
|
| "What you oppose a national list of people who are standing in
| the way of our great society? What are you a _nazi_? " etc.
| PentelicoMarble wrote:
| I'd love an example of a person from the first group who was
| called a white nationalist because they think power comes
| from the people and not the government.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Every single person who participated in the truckers rally
| in Canada.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Ah, so the Nazi flag had nothing to do with it?
| thepasswordis wrote:
| The Nazi flag was there because somebody was _calling
| Trudeau a nazi_. As in: the thing they were there
| protesting they thought was similar to Nazism, and _they
| think that is a bad thing which is why they are there
| protesting_.
|
| There was as far as I can tell _one_ instance of somebody
| doing this, and they were _immediately_ denounced and
| told to stop. I agree, btw. Trudeau is an authoritarian,
| but he isn 't a Nazi.
| jnovek wrote:
| The problem I have with #1 is always "churches". They are
| very powerful institutions and have disproportionate leverage
| wherever the government doesn't step in. E.g. Catholic
| hospitals that won't prescribe birth control.
|
| Government, for better or worse, is secular. I don't have to
| be concerned that I am subject to the rules of someone else's
| faith when I need help from an organization larger than
| myself.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >The problem I have with #1 is always "churches".
|
| Participation in church is voluntary. Participation in
| state government is not. That's the difference.
| jnovek wrote:
| If you're down on your luck, participation in an
| organization willing to support you is not voluntary.
| Right now, if you need help in America, your options are
| either the government or faith-based organizations.
|
| I know from experience, I'm just getting back on my feet
| after my own run of bad luck.
|
| I'm not in love with the government by any means. It is
| inefficient and incentivizes corruption. If all the money
| that moved through faith-based organizations instead
| moved through secular organizations, I would be
| interested in "small government" reforms.
| blacklion wrote:
| > Government, for better or worse, is secular.
|
| Are you sure? How much US Senators are openly atheists? I
| was shocked about 5 years ago, when I learned, that (about
| 5 years ago) answer was two. Yes. Two.
|
| Look at anti-abortion laws in USA: they are all religious-
| based!
|
| And it is not only USA. Poland. Russia. Greece. Some places
| in Germany. Not to mention Iran, Afghanistan, UAE, Qatar,
| Yemen...
| jnovek wrote:
| The U.S. government itself is a secular organization. It
| just happens to be run by people of faith. The
| distinction is important.
| lm28469 wrote:
| These things are mostly abused in shady countries and the US
| (aka the freer of free countries). For example in France:
|
| - having a bank account is a right
|
| - civil forfeiture exists but is heavily regulated, nothing
| even close to the US style abuse
|
| - there is no no fly list
|
| - there is no credit score
|
| Deplatforming is a private business thing, I though freedom
| advocates loved the right of business to serve whoever they
| please ?
| anonporridge wrote:
| > there is no credit score
|
| This isn't good.
|
| The alternative to credit scores is that some banker, most of
| whom grew up upper middle class or upper class, meets you in
| person, nods at your firm, masculine handshake, and decides
| they like the cut of your jib, complexion of your skin, and
| accent of your voice well enough to give you a loan and/or a
| reasonable rate. The inherent discrimination of this process
| is a huge part of the reason we shifted to credit scores in
| the 80s.
|
| Credit scores are objective, algorithmic measures of credit
| worthiness that anyone can game upwards by following the
| rules. The alternative is subjective measures that are
| applied erratically by different human minds that will always
| be riddled with bias.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| > The inherent discrimination of this process is a huge
| part of the reason we shifted to credit scores in the 80s.
|
| Citation needed. It's in the bank's interest to offer loans
| based on credit-worthiness and not on the superficial
| things you described.
| mindslight wrote:
| Or the alternative is that we have much less credit, the
| prices of assets become a lot more affordable, and wealth
| remains better distributed throughout society rather than
| being sucked away into the financial industry by the
| servicing of perpetual debt.
| mattpallissard wrote:
| Eh, I don't know if I agree with that. I know a few people
| who have gone the alternative route; proof of utilities
| paid, lack of back rent, etc.
|
| From the outside looking in it seemed to be a bit more hoop
| jumping, but overall more palatable than 3 private firms,
| who don't give damn about you, aggregating your financial
| history with financial institutions' best interests in
| mind.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Credits scores for loans make sense. But increasingly they
| are being used as proxies "general trustworthiness" which
| they are not well designed to support, even if there is
| some rough correlation. They shouldn't be used a gate to
| employment, or rental housing (some of the factors apply,
| being able to afford rent, or prior payment history are
| relevant ... but the scores are still abused beyond those
| factors).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _there is no credit score_
|
| The French consumer credit system resembles the U.S. no-fly
| list. Bankers have discretion on making loans and sharing
| consumer records, which are absolutely maintained. But
| consumers don't get to look into the black box.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > But consumers don't get to look into the black box.
|
| Nor your landlord, nor the shop in which you'll go buy a
| new bicycle, &c.
|
| Also, it's much harder to get a credit in France, you don't
| get on the list randomly. So all in all it's completely
| different thing since it won't impact your day to day life
| for simple things such as renting a flat.
|
| Ah, and you can still fly, you just can't get into more
| debt.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _shop in which you 'll go buy a new bicycle_
|
| I've bought bicycles in America. Nobody checks credit.
|
| > _much harder to get a credit in France_
|
| If you aren't rich, yes. If you have a personal banker,
| credit flows.
|
| > _you don 't get on the list randomly_
|
| You do if you're my friend and a SocGen clown mis-reports
| your mortgage as in default to the BdF.
|
| Both systems, the U.S. no-fly and French consumer credit,
| share common impetuses. They're necessary, particularly
| for the elites. But they're ideologically distasteful. So
| a system is maintained, shrouded in secrecy and, ideally,
| kept clear of the hoi polloi.
| azov wrote:
| I honestly don't understand the use case. Let's imagine the
| list is public and the process is transparent. Who would you
| put on it and for what purpose?
|
| Who are those people dangerous enough to never be allowed on a
| plane (despite being searched, xrayed, water bottles and
| corkscrews taken away from them), yet not dangerous enough to
| roam free everywhere else?
| jeffwask wrote:
| This is one of those terrifying security and operational
| scenarios. Sure the TSA can say nothing on our end was
| compromised but if the data is readily accessible to download and
| accessed by every mom and pop carrier with a 3 person IT staff
| that can barely keep the lights on is anything actually secure?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It's a weird concept that doesn't make sense: "Nobody can see
| it but every single company that interfaces with airline
| booking NEEDS to see it".
|
| The only way around this would be for DHS to host a web
| endpoint that took a name and answered whether they were on the
| list. This still has some problems like being able to enumerate
| over time.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The US already has that for non-citizens and non-Canadians:
|
| ESTA and visas.
|
| I guess lack of those doesn't stop them from flying out.
|
| Maybe codeshares are supposed to enforce the US no-fly list
| even if you're not flying to/from US. Dunno.
| htag wrote:
| > This still has some problems like being able to enumerate
| over time.
|
| 1. There are eight billion people. Even if you had everyone's
| first name, last name and DOB you couldn't ask for more names
| (or more foreign names) then the size and location of your
| airline would allow without raising red flags with the wrong
| type of people. You would never get the complete list this
| way.
|
| 2. If you ask a DHS server if someone is allowed on an
| airplane, and they say no, there's a good chance that
| eventually someone at DHS will start to investigate. It's
| going to look a little bad if you don't have a reason for
| looking up the name. It's going to look very bad if this
| happens many times.
|
| 3. I wonder if an end user of an airline webportal could try
| to purchase tickets in someone else's and then see if it's
| denied to check if someone is on the no fly list.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Why would it be suspicious for an airline to use a system
| designed to check the flight status of an individual?
|
| Sure, it could be suspicious for an airline to make
| requests that didn't line up with likely prospective
| passengers, but that isn't at all how you phrased your
| second point.
| htag wrote:
| On the second point it's not the airline that it
| suspicious but the individual on the list. Their actions
| might be under investigation, and that might include
| attempting to buy an airplane ticket. What happens if
| they never actually tried to buy the ticket, but someone
| was trying to recreate the list? Wouldn't this type of
| event occur many many times, and the airline might begin
| to standout.
| ar_lan wrote:
| This is basically how public housing records work, right?
|
| You basically cannot buy a house and keep your address
| private unless you route it through a trust or LLC. Even
| though the county won't up and tell you "Oh, Mr. ar_lan lives
| at 1234 Hacker Way", you can certainly just scrape all the
| data you want and construct a DB that then becomes searchable
| by name.
|
| Seriously - unless the government steps in and has some sort
| of tunnel just between the user buying the ticket, and
| preventing them, without an airline employee somewhere in-
| between, this will just basically never be secure. I guess
| there could be some super severe auditing on the employeees
| w/ access - but that means these employees are now the
| ticketing agents, as well.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I mean, it's even more absurd than that. The data itself is
| rife with errors. Senator Ted Kennedy had to have himself
| removed from the list several times[0].
|
| [0]https://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/no-fly-mistakes-
| cat-...
| eddsh1994 wrote:
| You could detect that enumeration and would require a list of
| _everyones_ name - maybe add a DOB and a price per API call
| and it 'd go down.
| orev wrote:
| Enumeration doesn't have to mean using a brute force
| search. One could simply make the api call and then update
| a local database with the result. That local database would
| then become the potentially exposed data.
| xwdv wrote:
| Let me tell you about the No-Rent list. Oh yes, if you fuck up a
| rental car or boat or do any kind of chargebacks for the rental,
| you will be immediately and automatically added to the No-Rent
| list for that company. Sometimes these lists can be distributed
| to central repositories where other rental companies can choose
| to follow the suggestions and not rent a car to you due to your
| status as high risk. One of my earliest jobs involved working on
| a system with such a list. I've had quite a bit of experience in
| engineering solutions to keep people in check.
|
| I suspect there might be something for real estate, but more
| fragmented. You could end up on a no-rental list and be banned
| from renting property. I am certain Airbnb has such a list as
| well.
| Cyph0n wrote:
| Great, as if dealing with car rental companies wasn't already a
| nightmare.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The way the no fly list was shared, it was absolutely inevitable
| that this would happen. A much more secure way to handle this:
|
| 1. Airlines are each given a no fly list that only includes
| tokens, e.g. each person's name hashed with a secret key that is
| specific to the airline, on a periodic basis.
|
| 2. When the airline wants to check if a user is on the list, they
| hit a government-owned service that returns the user's token
| (again, the token will be unique for each airline because each
| airline gets their own secret key).
|
| 3. The airline would then check the token against their revoked
| token list.
|
| The benefit of this is:
|
| 1. The full token list by itself is useless
|
| 2. Even if the airlines API credentials are stolen, the response
| from the government-owned service is useless on its own.
|
| 3. So a bad guy would need to steal the token list AND the API
| creds to get any value, and even then it would be easy for the
| government to detect unusual access patterns to their service.
|
| Remember back in the late 90s when we all used to store passwords
| in plain text? Yeah, we know how that turned out, and in this
| case, storing the list not only in plain text but sharing it to
| tons of different companies willy nilly is a million times worse
| if you expect it to stay secret.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| Momentarily ignoring the myriad complexities of name matching,
| unfortunately you get no points for coming up with potentially
| technologically superior solutions for these sorts of problems.
|
| The people involved in maintaining this system certainly knew
| that there were better ways to do it.
|
| It's an organisational / people problem. The real skill is
| making anyone listen to you, and pulling airlines away from a
| legacy system, and dealing with the inevitable claims that the
| government owes them $100mil a pop for "having to comply with
| increased compliance requirements".
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Maybe the government could also make this service available to
| parents, who can query it to find out if they should pick a
| different name for their baby?
|
| Seriously, using names for a no-fly-list is falsehood 21.
|
| https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Happens in Canada too. A 6 year old ended up on the list.
| Four years later; they were still on it with the government
| promising a fix the next year...
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-no-fly-list-kids-
| mee...
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/no-fly-list-
| canada-1....
| dosethree wrote:
| Sounds similar to how do not call lists are handled
| bastardoperator wrote:
| The names are almost exclusively middle eastern.
| willmadden wrote:
| The OFAC/Sanctions list is also overwhelmingly middle eastern.
|
| The OFAC list is public. The "nofly" list should be too.
| baybal2 wrote:
| [dead]
| kristofferR wrote:
| Interestringly the spreadsheet includes the columns
| SID,CLEARED,LASTNAME FIRSTNAME,MIDDLENAME,TYPE,DOB,POB,CITIZENSHI
| P,PASSPORT/IDNUMBER,MISC, but only LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME, DOB is
| populated.
|
| And there are some guys from 1911 and 1912 there.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I wonder if they got the list from crimew or if they followed the
| directions on her blog. You'd hope the offending airline would
| have fixed the issue over the past few weeks but who knows.
| rozab wrote:
| She said the data would be shared with journos, researchers or
| human rights organizations with a legitimate interest.
|
| https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/No_Fly_List
|
| If she really didn't do any pre-disclosure then it seems
| inevitable other people managed to grab it directly. I doubt
| she had much desire to share it after the long uncomfortable
| phone call she must have had with the FBI right after the post
| went live.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > the long uncomfortable phone call she must have had with
| the FBI
|
| Maia is Swiss. She doesn't have to answer when the FBI calls.
| super256 wrote:
| > Maia is Swiss. She doesn't have to answer when the FBI
| calls.
|
| According to her Wikipage "her parents' home were raided by
| the Swiss police at the request of United States
| authorities" a while ago.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_arson_crimew
| openasocket wrote:
| What are the ethics of publishing such a list? The act of doing
| so exposes people and damages their reputations, and because
| there isn't a just procedure for adding people to that list that
| damage is likely unfair. It's not like this is the registry of
| sex offenders, where at least there was an actual court case to
| determine their registry and there are well-defined procedures
| for removal in case of mistakes or issues. Shouldn't we advocate
| for there to be a fair, just procedure for adding and removing
| people from the no-fly list before making it public?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's unethical to poke around on computer systems that aren't
| yours, unethical to steal from them, and unethical to give away
| what you stole.
|
| At least he supposedly gave the information to legitimate
| journalists.
| rwmj wrote:
| Since every airline has a copy of this list you can be pretty
| sure that anyone who wants access sufficiently already has
| access. Every government, including enemies of the USA, every
| security agency, any airline IT employee. I would say
| distributing it in public is fairly neutral.
|
| > Shouldn't we advocate for there to be a fair, just procedure
| for adding and removing people from the no-fly list before
| making it public?
|
| Absolutely there should be this advocacy, but I don't see how
| that's connected to whether it is public or not.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Most innocent people on this list wouldn't have standing to get
| removed from this list because they wouldn't have been able to
| prove they were on it before it was leaked.
| openasocket wrote:
| I did some googling and couldn't find any examples of that,
| or any legal commentary suggesting that is the case.
| According to this ACLU page there is a standard process for
| you to determine whether or not you are on the list:
| https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/what-do-if-you-
| think-y... . At least if you're a U.S. citizen or lawful
| permanent resident that provides you official recognition of
| whether or not you are on the list. And even if you aren't a
| US citizen or lawful permanent resident, would a leaked list
| actually hold up in court?
| notch898a wrote:
| The courts seem to have no problem accepting hearsay when
| it works against you so hey, why not.
| banannaise wrote:
| The entire point of leaking the list is that the ways people
| are added to the list are unsupervised and unjust. Being on the
| list isn't a sign you've done anything wrong.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| If you're on the list and are harmed why not sue? Has anyone
| sued?
| openasocket wrote:
| Yeah, but is the average person going to interpret it that
| way? I think the average person is going to think "you're on
| the no-fly list, you must be suspicious in some way". They
| shouldn't, but that's going to happen.
| photonbucket wrote:
| How does the no-fly list work in practice? Are they just told
| 'no, go away' when they try to board a plane, or are they
| arrested?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Are they even able to book a ticket online or in person if they
| give their first + last name?
| notch898a wrote:
| It's a civil limitation AFAIK. Those on the no-fly can still
| buy a gun lol. Probably can charter your own flight as well or
| fly your own private plane.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > Probably can charter your own flight as well or fly your
| own private plane.
|
| If I'm that rich, I'm sure I could rub elbows and get my name
| removed.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It depends on your name. These lists are literally a name
| match.
|
| If you're "John Smith", it's likely you're on multiple lists
| and will get separately hassled by multiple entities. A guy I
| grew up with had an FFL and would get flagged for followup
| when buying guns at retail because of his common name.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| FFL?
| tyler_sf wrote:
| Federal Firearms License
| rwmj wrote:
| For those not in the US you wouldn't get as far as the plane
| because your ESTA would be denied first. Then your visa would
| be stuck in "Administrative Processing" forever.
| notch898a wrote:
| Don't need ESTA for guam / saipan. Wonder what happens if
| they board foreign carrier. Probably just get booted when
| they reach customs.
|
| Also as fucked up as it is US citizens end up on the TSC and
| no-fly as well. No ESTA needed for them.
| yabones wrote:
| The airline probably lets you buy a ticket but "technical
| errors" prevent them from printing a boarding pass when you go
| to check in. Then a circus of head scratching ensues while the
| desk staff stall for time until your flight leaves without you.
| Then, weeks later when your refund case is handled they tell
| you in cryptic terms that they are unable to process your
| reimbursement transaction but not why.
| carrja99 wrote:
| I have always imagine walking through airport security like a
| normal person, then out of the blue you are tackled, arrested
| and charged with "illegal attempt to board a plane" and
| sentenced to twenty years in a federal prison.
|
| An over-reaction to be sure... I expect no less from modern US
| laws enforcement.
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| That's quite the imagination. You get denied a boarding pass
| if you are on a no fly list, asked to leave the airport, and
| told to contact DHS. If you are on the terror watch list, or
| have active arrest warrants from a court, you will be
| arrested. If you attempt to evade and resist arrest, then
| yes, you will probably get tackled and tuned up.
|
| People usually confuse the terrorist watch list with the no-
| fly list. The former being a list of persons known to having
| some involvement in terror activities in groups designated as
| terrorist groups by the US State Department.
|
| The No-Fly list is generally full of criminals, unruly
| passengers, and people who have gotten violent on flights
| with crew or other passengers. It is also imperfect, with
| false positives occurring with people who have the same name
| as another listee.
|
| It should be noted that the US government may not use the No
| Fly List to prevent U.S. citizens or permanent residents from
| returning home to U.S. territory, since doing so is a
| violation of the 14th amendment.
| notch898a wrote:
| What's the basis for arresting someone for just being on a
| watch list? That sounds unconstitutional.
|
| I was added to a watch list long ago that results in me
| being tossed in a cell and "detained" for up to 24 hours
| every time I go through customs but they always make it
| exceedingly clear I'm not under arrest (granted while
| sitting in immigration holding cell it doesn't feel much
| different).
|
| It really gets annoying just being told by CBP "you know
| what's next" while never being able to find out what list
| you've been put on. I hope more of these lists become
| public.
| from wrote:
| I assume the #1 indicator is frequent travel to Syria
| Iraq Iran Lebanon. Have you ever gone to those places?
| [deleted]
| ianhawes wrote:
| Your comment is mostly wrong.
|
| The terrorist "watch-list" is a database of people that the
| US government considers at-risk of committing acts of
| terrorism. Whether you believe that is another story.
|
| The no-fly list is a subset of the terrorism watch list.
| Criminals, unruly passengers, and violent offenders are
| specifically NOT on the no-fly list unless they're also on
| the terrorism watch list[0].
|
| Unruly passengers are sometimes added to a no-fly list for
| a specific airline, but there is no national no-fly list
| that private companies are eligible to add to[1], and
| despite being charged federally with a crime in the air,
| you are not eligible to be added to the no-fly list for
| that reason.
|
| [0] https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/terrorism/tsc
|
| [1] https://news.delta.com/delta-ceo-ed-bastian-why-we-
| need-nati...
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The no-fly list is reported to have 1.5 million names on
| it. (the public didn't know how many names were on it
| until it was leaked).
|
| If this is a subset of the "terrorist watch-list", then
| that terrorist watch list must have even more names on
| it? I think you're implying many more? 5 million? 10
| million? People that the US government "considers at-risk
| of committing acts of terrorism," really?
|
| There are, what, a couple dozen acts of terrorism a year?
| (I don't know whether we're talking about in the US or
| globally or what). But millions of people the US
| government "reasonably" considers at risk to commit them?
| This seems... odd, no?
| themoonisachees wrote:
| Anecdote: my father (swiss as long as the family tree
| goes back) lived in Lebanon for a year in his teens,
| accompanying my grandma who was a translator. When my
| brother came to the US to become a cook there, he was
| turned away at the airport (and subsequently had to buy a
| return ticket) and that was the stated reason.
|
| Its really not that hard to imagine the US gov. adding
| every person from the middle east that has ever flown in
| a plane to that list.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| From snowden's leak I think, we know that the NSA does
| have "lists" that you get catalogued into through various
| actions. One example was that anyone who had visited the
| Tor website (like the place to download the Tor browser)
| was on a list. IE, most tech professionals are likely on
| many lists.
|
| It's likely (though conjecture) the "lists" you are on,
| really the buckets you are in, are used as an input to
| some sort of "is a terrorist" qualifier, which sorts
| certain people into a priority queue to be tasked to
| other NSA agents to look into your details and pass you
| off to someone else if you seem sus, basically like
| companies that sell credit card fraud prevention.
|
| Or you know, some sort of score that represents your
| social, let's call it "credit". Except you aren't allowed
| to request this score once a year.
| simple-thoughts wrote:
| Why would that be odd? It is perfectly consistent with
| the history of state actors generally and USG
| specifically.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| So at the link that ianhawes helpfully provided, the US
| government describes the terrorist watch list as
| "[having] information on people reasonably suspected to
| be involved in terrorism (or related activities)."
|
| I don't think we knew how many people were on it before.
| But if it's a strict superset of the no-fly list, then we
| now know it's at least 1.5 million people.
|
| I guess the only odd thing is that a lot of people seem
| to believe the USA government's line that more than 1.5
| million people are "reasonably suspected to be involved
| in terrorism or related activities", when there are maybe
| a few dozen terrorist attacks a year. ("reasonably"!
| "related activities" huh?).
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| The fbi.gov page you helpfully link to (thanks!) actually
| says:
|
| > In fact, the vast majority of people who have disputed
| travel and appeal to the Department of Homeland
| Security's Traveler Redress Inquiry Program are not on
| the terrorist watchlist.
|
| > Most people on the terrorist watchlist are still able
| to fly within the U.S. A very small subset of people on
| this list are on the "No Fly" list.
|
| Wow, so 1.5 million on the no fly list are a "very small
| subset" of (also from that page) "people reasonably
| suspected to be involved in terrorism (or related
| activities)", who have met "specific intelligence-related
| criteria", and which "Internal and external auditors
| regularly review... to ensure all laws and policies are
| being followed and that the information on the watchlist
| is accurate."
|
| If 1.5 million people is a "very small subset", the whole
| list is... 10 million? 50 million? 100 million?
|
| Something definitely ain't right.
|
| I wonder if this clue as to the size of these lists can
| help organize some opposition, because it seems to
| indicate things are not what they say.
| westmeal wrote:
| I think you get detained and sent to the shadow realm. OK the
| shadow realm part I made up but I'm sure there aren't good
| things that can happen to you once the government detains you.
| jrockway wrote:
| > good things that can happen to you once the government
| detains you
|
| I think they have to charge you with a crime within 24 hours.
| All of the corner cases that you read about in the media are
| things like "but what if they're fighting in Afghanistan and
| they magically end up in Cuba on a military base, do we still
| have to arraign them?" That's apparently a tougher question
| (even though the answer is obviously yes), but if you end up
| in central booking in some random US city, some judge will
| have to spend 10 seconds looking at your case and decide
| whether or not you can get bail.
|
| So you're not going to get disappeared to a shadow realm if
| you buy a plane ticket and you're on this list. You might
| still have an extremely shitty day, though. The criminal
| justice system is not fun.
| alistairSH wrote:
| On the US side, you get "turned away" (or at least taken for
| additional questions) at security screening. It happened to Ted
| Kennedy years ago (apparently, some criminal/terrorist once
| used "T Kennedy" as an alias, so Sen Kennedy, along with ~7000
| other Americans, would have been flagged).
|
| On the international side, I assume you get stopped somewhere
| between check-in and boarding (but not sure if it's up to local
| security or the airline agents). If not that, you'd be stopped
| at immigration once on US soil.
| samstave wrote:
| If you are on a no-fly, one should be notified that at the
| time they attempt to purchase a ticket, and before payment is
| taken for said ticket. No exceptions.
| ianhawes wrote:
| You can obtain a Redress Control Number[0] from the DHS
| which acts as an identifier if your name matches that of
| someone on the no fly list. Most airline reservation
| systems support this as it has been around for ~10 years.
|
| [0] https://www.dhs.gov/redress-control-numbers
| alexose wrote:
| Thanks, I always wondered what this was for. Guess I
| should have expected it was a kludge!
| samstave wrote:
| >> _can obtain a Redress Control Number[0] from the DHS
| which acts as an identifier_
|
| PRE-SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS!!!!
| soulofmischief wrote:
| This would allow enumeration of the no fly list, or at
| least still benefit criminals who can pre-check before
| taking a risk.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Surely they must do something more sophisticated than just
| simple string comparison of the name /s
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Yes; the interrogation is that something. The simple string
| comparison starts the process.
| barbazoo wrote:
| What an annoying inconvenience I imagine, having to
| interact with that security theatre, possibly multiple
| times...
| idontpost wrote:
| [dead]
| bradly wrote:
| You can get a readdress number to use when booking if you
| are a false positive.
| robocat wrote:
| What a fucked system. A passport number is surely the
| right thing to use. Linked to a document that is hard to
| forge and if a terrorist can forge a passport, well, they
| will use a name not on the list eh?
| brewdad wrote:
| Domestic travel doesn't require a passport. Hence the
| redress number.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Thank you, I didn't know that.
| brewdad wrote:
| There's probably some typo matching too. Like T Kennnedy.
| sschueller wrote:
| What security benefit is there for this list being secret? Sure
| privacy may be an issue but I should have the right to know if I
| am on it as I see absolutely not benefit if this list being
| secret other than the government having another reason to put
| people in jail.
|
| Also if you know you are on it you can save the airlines and
| everyone else a lot of trouble by not trying to fly in the first
| place.
|
| Does the list even state why you are on it?
| Spivak wrote:
| Good Faith: Bad guys would know to find someone different if
| they knew who could and couldn't fly.
|
| Bad Faith: Fear. You better stay in line or one day you'll be
| trying to get on a flight and suddenly can't. It's your
| "permanent record" for adults.
|
| Bad Faith: Accountability. Not having it exposed means the
| gov't can pretty much put anyone on there for any reason
| without having to worry about silly "public pressure" and
| "questions about why so many middle-eastern people are on it."
| You know the ACLU would be all up on that list researching
| every single person on it and calling them on their bullshit.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm guessing the official position is something like "If a
| suspected terrorist know they are a suspected terrorist, their
| behavior might change in order to hide easier, and sometimes we
| put suspected terrorists on the no-fly list, so if they could
| see that, they could figure out we now suspect them of
| something.". But that's just a guess, maybe there are better
| reasons out there.
| skywhopper wrote:
| And yet, if they are on the selectee list and get pulled for
| SSSS screening every time they fly, they'll probably know.
| naasking wrote:
| If the list were public they could know this in advance
| though, and send someone who hasn't yet been flagged and so
| attacks would be harder to thwart. This is only
| hypothetical though, and given the size of the list I'm
| skeptical it's all that reliable to begin with.
| capableweb wrote:
| Maybe they handle it the same as if you trigger the anti-
| fraud system for the various IT companies ie they don't
| tell you anything but "I'm sorry but we cannot accept
| payments from you and I can't tell you why".
|
| To be honest, the whole thing sounds like a farce, just
| trying to get some understanding from perspective I don't
| myself hold.
| sschueller wrote:
| So airlines actually make the effort to contact the
| authorities when someone on the list tries to book a flight?
| Are we sure they do this?
| aestetix wrote:
| I hope the list is made public soon. The TSA needs to be
| abolished.
| pg5 wrote:
| What would be the alternative?
| ChickenNugger wrote:
| Why do we need an alternative? Air travel existed for decades
| without it. Here's a more in-depth article on it:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellistalton/2019/01/28/is-
| the-t...
| johngladtj wrote:
| Not having it.
| mikecoles wrote:
| The previous solution.
| hadlock wrote:
| Same as the rest of the world, metal detector and possibly
| luggage scan of larger luggage. US airline security is a
| ridiculous jobs program for the most part. People have been
| using the phrase "security theater" since the TSA was
| invented, and with good reason. Taking your shoes off at
| security is outrageous, no other country requires this on a
| regular basis.
| somebody78978 wrote:
| We don't need an alternative. I've never understood why we
| need to go through security to board an airplane, but not to
| board a train.
| jxramos wrote:
| probably the likely outcomes of terrorism. On a plane the
| whole thing is demolished in a crash because of the kinetic
| energy involved in colliding with the earth. For a train
| probably not the same degree of destruction is attainable
| unless you like bomb a bridge or something of the sort.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > _More than thirty buildings in Lac-Megantic 's town
| centre, roughly half of the downtown area, were
| destroyed, and all but three of the thirty-nine remaining
| buildings had to be demolished due to petroleum
| contamination of the townsite. Initial newspaper reports
| described a 1 km (0.6-mile) blast radius._
|
| Not terrorism, just negligence -- but a train can do a
| lot of damage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac-M%C3%A9g
| antic_rail_disaste...
| jxramos wrote:
| wow, yah if you're carrying hazardous material that
| changes the calculus for sure.
| sangnoir wrote:
| 9/11.
|
| If anyone ever uses a train to ram into the Pentagon,
| expect the security / security theater for trains to be
| scaled up as well.
| Arainach wrote:
| Security theater has no impact. 9/11 had two important
| outcomes: locking the cockpit door and making passengers
| aware that hijackers will crash the plane rather than
| detour it to South America, ensuring that they will never
| again assume that sitting back and letting the hijackers
| do what they want is acceptable.
|
| THOSE things made air travel safer. Body scanners and
| confiscating pocketknives did not.
| 93po wrote:
| To describe the current behavior as "confiscating
| pocketknives" isn't even accurate - third party testing
| of how well the TSA actually detects and confiscates
| items like knives, guns, and (fake but real looking)
| explosive devices shows that they miss the vast, vast
| majority of items. Like more than 90% of them.
| gpm wrote:
| Assuming someone managed to hijack a bunch of planes
| again, I doubt they could reproduce 9/11. The government
| would shoot them down.
|
| Sure they could kill everyone on the plane, but a train
| has more passengers than a plane, and a determined
| terrorist could probably kill everyone on a train.
| blep_ wrote:
| Notably, there are ways to do so _without being on the
| train_ , which probably increases the number of people
| willing to do it.
| from wrote:
| > Assuming someone managed to hijack a bunch of planes
| again, I doubt they could reproduce 9/11. The government
| would shoot them down.
|
| They don't really need to hijack planes, they just need a
| few hundred thousand dollars and a NetJets account. Also,
| if you read some of the BlueLeaks documents you can tell
| the government is very worried about vehicle ramming
| attacks. The unfortunate truth is that anyone with a
| little bit of money and willingness to die for a cause if
| coordinated can cause massive amounts of damage. We are
| lucky that most terrorists aren't that smart.
| htag wrote:
| It's strange that every commercial airplane passenger has an
| interaction with a federal employee. This isn't true for
| busses, trains, ferries, cabs, or any other mass transit
| system. It feels like something more appropriate for an
| airport employee, with local PD on premises.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| The politicians will never abolish a multi-billion dollar jobs
| program because having such a program to control gives them
| power. Being able to appoint someone somewhere, make rule
| changes in favor of this or that group, those are political
| currency and get exchanged as such in DC.
| chucksta wrote:
| Nope, they're getting more power
| https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2022/10/18/tsa-issue...
| hackeraccount wrote:
| That's not what you want. If that happened whatever the TSA is
| doing will be done by the FBI or some other agency.
|
| I don't know what you want; maybe a less intrusive trip to the
| airport? If that's the case fine - but what you want is for TSA
| to be more respectful of civil liberties. The way you're saying
| it sounds like you just want the country to be more dangerous.
| There's no audience for that.
| lamontcg wrote:
| If anyone wants to kill a lot of people, disrupt air travel,
| disrupt the economy and spread fear they can just set off a
| suicide vest in the middle of a TSA screening line. We're not
| any safer by having a planeload of people all standing in
| line to be screened.
| ifyoubuildit wrote:
| > The way you're saying it sounds like you just want the
| country to be more dangerous
|
| It's hard to know what dangers they're actually alleviating.
|
| And on the flip side, they create other dangers, like having
| things in your luggage stolen, causing you to miss the
| occasional flight, normalizing intrusive government begavior,
| and in general just adding unnecessary friction and indignity
| to travel (ok maybe that last one is a stretch to call a
| danger).
|
| Maybe you value these things less than the feeling of comfort
| that TSA may provide, but I think I'd count myself a part of
| gp's audience.
|
| Edit: not to mention the opportunity cost of all of that tax
| money. Though there is something to be said for providing
| jobs... but you can probably think of plenty of jobs programs
| with a better ROI.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| Including the birthdate would be an improvement. Here in Canada,
| there's babies that get put through enhanced screening for having
| a flagged name, but there's an IT contract out there for many
| millions to provide something like redress numbers.
|
| ChatGpt could likely generate the SQL for well under a million.
| mabbo wrote:
| One time I went on a work trip and brought my intern along- we
| were meeting the people his intern project would be used by in
| person. Fun trip all around.
|
| When our flight landed back in Toronto I said something like
| "Grab a coffee after customs and then head home?" and he's like
| "You go ahead. I have one of those names and I'm going to be
| here for a while."
|
| "Come again?"
|
| "There's someone out there who has the same name as me and
| because of whatever he did I now have to spend an hour in
| customs every time I come back to Canada."
|
| Sure enough, he texted me later saying "Alright, I'm through-
| you still at the airport?". I was at home, getting ready for
| bed.
| shwoopdiwoop wrote:
| Is this not what re-dress numbers are supposed to solve? Once
| you get one assigned, you can enter them at the time of
| booking to prevent problems that might occur by sharing the
| same name with a known no-fly individual.
| yawboakye wrote:
| i was contacted on twitter by the journalist at dailydot who
| broke the news (https://twitter.com/davidcovucci) because i have
| java code on github from ~10 years ago that reads a certain
| 'nofly.csv' file (https://gist.github.com/yawboakye/3888617). the
| interaction was short and i wondered what he was looking for
| exactly. well, it was joke code, written as part of introduction
| to java. all this makes me wonder where 'super-secret-nuclear-
| codes.csv' could get me
| nebula8804 wrote:
| wow so some journalists have found the search bar on github. I
| knew it wasn't going to last but I wish it remained a hush hush
| thing longer.
| croes wrote:
| Maybe just google search
| pphysch wrote:
| Given the revelations about massive fraud in "Russian bot"
| detection (e.g. Hamilton 68) I'm inclined to believe the
| mainstream media is still wholly incompetent at anything of
| this sort. Probably because the laymen don't know any better.
| milsorgen wrote:
| Knoll's Law is a heck of a thing:
| https://effectiviology.com/knolls-law/
|
| Even though I'm aware of this phenomenon I constantly catch
| myself believing what I read until I remind myself to
| double check. Of course that leaves huge swaths of things I
| don't deem important enough to double check. I really wish
| there was a way to bring about, maybe not more
| accountability in media, but more faith that a news org or
| journalist is putting forth their best efforts to
| communicate correct information. It really is a tough nut
| to crack in terms resources available.
| FredPret wrote:
| You need multiple experts in a given topic to give a
| briefing to know what is going on.
|
| But now we need multiple experts in every single field,
| and layers of other people to verify that the former are,
| in fact, experts.
|
| The problem of accurate news is unsolvable.
| robocat wrote:
| > Knoll's law
|
| Commonly known as Gell-Mann amnesia - from a quick search
| it looks as though Knoll's law came first.
|
| https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect
| says "In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term Gell-
| Mann amnesia effect".
|
| https://www.everything2.com/title/Knoll%2527s+Law+of+Medi
| a+A... says "Jan 25 2001: Everything you read in the
| newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story
| of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge."
|
| Although I would be sure the idea is much older.
| [deleted]
| freitzkriesler wrote:
| If a politician ran on eliminating the nudie TSA scanners and
| this silly list, I'd vote for him in a heart beat
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