TSA Missed Boston Bomber Because His Name Was Misspelled In a Database 275
schwit1 sends this news from The Verge:
"Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the primary conspirator in the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people, slipped through airport security because his name was misspelled in a database, according to a new Congressional report. The Russian intelligence agency warned U.S. authorities twice that Tsarnaev was a radical Islamist and potentially dangerous. As a result, Tsarnaev was entered into two U.S. government databases: the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment and the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS), an interagency border inspection database.
A special note was added to TECS in October of 2011 requiring a mandatory search and detention of Tsarnaev if he left the country. 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer,' the note reportedly said. 'Call is mandatory whether or not the officer believes there is an exact match.' 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer.' Unfortunately, Tsarnaev's name was not an exact match: it was misspelled by one letter. Whoever entered it in the database spelled it as 'Tsarnayev.' When Tsarnaev flew to Russia in January of 2012 on his way to terrorist training, the system was alerted but the mandatory detention was not triggered. Because officers did not realize Tsarnaev was a high-priority target, he was allowed to travel without questioning."
A special note was added to TECS in October of 2011 requiring a mandatory search and detention of Tsarnaev if he left the country. 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer,' the note reportedly said. 'Call is mandatory whether or not the officer believes there is an exact match.' 'Detain isolated and immediately call the lookout duty officer.' Unfortunately, Tsarnaev's name was not an exact match: it was misspelled by one letter. Whoever entered it in the database spelled it as 'Tsarnayev.' When Tsarnaev flew to Russia in January of 2012 on his way to terrorist training, the system was alerted but the mandatory detention was not triggered. Because officers did not realize Tsarnaev was a high-priority target, he was allowed to travel without questioning."
Jeez (Score:5, Funny)
That's a bomber, I mean bummer.
Re:Jeez (Score:5, Interesting)
Hate to see the guy that was mistaken as the terrorist because of a wrong letter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film)
>One day he is assigned the task of trying to rectify an error caused by a fly getting jammed in a printer, which caused it to misprint a file, resulting in the incarceration and death during interrogation of Mr. Archibald Buttle instead of the suspected "terrorist", Archibald Tuttle.
Good movie.
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No, a Bimmer!
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Besides which you cannot possibly blame the TSA. They were faaaaaaaaarrrrrr too busy patting down 5 yr olds/senior citizens and running hot girls through the "porno scanner" to be bothered hunting for real terrorists.
I would say that all this shows how wisely spent all those billions were.
BULLSHIT - COVER STORY (Score:3)
They never tell you the truth. All assertion, no evidence.
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Buttle, meet Tuttle. I can't believe this hasn't come up yet on this thread.
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Sometimes they tell the truth; when it is in their best interest.
Limited Hangout:
"A 'limited hangout' is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting - sometimes even volunteering - some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further."
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Re:Soundex Algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
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if our names are soundex or Levenshtein Distance 3 similar,
"that's Levenshtein with an ei and Levenshtyne with a y" *
(*) my son, the terrorist
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How is that not probable cause for a warrant?
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How is that not probable cause for a warrant?
Police: Sir, open up, we're here to search your house.
/sarcasm
You: On what grounds?
Police: On the grounds that your name, Bill McGonigle, bears a striking resemblance to the known terrorist, Bill McGonicle.
Yeah, that is totally ok.
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Great, so now not only if we are a namesake with a wanted "enemy of the state", but also if our names are soundex or Levenshtein Distance 3 similar, we are going to get detained, cavity searched and otherwise.
If the feds aren't completely inept, and there's no reason to believe that they are because things have gone more and more their way over the years, they're using a scoring system of some kind already, and having a similar-sounding name will only increase the score a bit, not automatically flag you for an anal probe.
Re:Soundex Algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
But Obummer is keeping you safe!!!
Most people here understand that the issue of the creeping security state is not left or right, Republican or Democrat. The parties have shown us that they are both interested in increasing surveillance and curtailing our rights. Why have you not grasped this yet?
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True that.
I still note how the Democrats and Republicans are so divisive, but when it came to the "Military Enabling Act" (I forget it's official name) well, the Dems and Reps got together late on a Friday night and passed a bill that could make a person "not a citizen" based upon suspicions of un-American activity.
We all get swept up in the rancor of the Dog and Pony show, and behind the scenes, Congress can show quick, bi-partisan coordination. If it helps you and me; then it's going to be controversial.
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Indeed. I just tried it with Sql Server:
Select Soundex('Tsarnaev')
--returned T265
Select Soundex('Tsarnayev')
--returned T265
No. You do not get to pull this bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
The TSA is operated by some of the most incompetent people the USA has to offer. They are the problem, not the hardware or software. I fail to see why they should get a "free pass" here on account of a bad database entry. Heads should be hung over this, especially considering the justifications thrown around for the continued existence of the TSA.
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The TSA is operated by some of the most incompetent people the USA has to offer. They are the problem, not the hardware or software. I fail to see why they should get a "free pass" here on account of a bad database entry. Heads should be hung over this, especially considering the justifications thrown around for the continued existence of the TSA.
Yeah, and they will spin this concept to argue that they need more money so that they can hire:
1. better quality staff,
2. more training for the staff they have,
3. advanced software,
etc...
Re:No. You do not get to pull this bullshit. (Score:5, Interesting)
The TSA is operated by some of the most incompetent people the USA has to offer. They are the problem, not the hardware or software.
Not neccessarily. The problem is the political setup of this whole thing.
From top manager to front row goon: You're on the safe side as long as you never think and just follow orders. No mistakes will get you promoted at some point. But deviation from the rules will either let a terrorist slip through or earn you some re-training, if your manager sees it.
And it's the same at the top tier: New security theater rules can always be explained as "inconvinient but neccessary". But lifting even the most stupid rule of all is only a personal risk, if at some point in time after lifting a rule an incident is indeed happening.
So there is simply no incentive to be sensilbe.
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Not the moron who can't read and type at the same time.
Not the "experts" who dreamed up the procedures this agency follows.
Not the actual terrorist.
The guy watching the passenger queue. Blame him.
Homer Simpson says it best (Score:2)
Doh!!!
We already knew this way back in 2013 (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen this story about Russia giving us warnings about the Boston bomber floating around elsewhere recently, why is this news now? We knew this back in 2013 [bostonglobe.com].
Despite the misspelling, the FBI interviewed him and determined he was no threat (unlike his friend who they interviewed after the bombing, and shot to death during the interview).
So what would it have mattered if airport security searched him after one of his trips to Russia? It's almost certain he wasn't carrying anything that would have got him arrested.
Ellis Island Syndrome (Score:3)
we can require everybody to change their name. but we still end up with Anderson, Andersen, Anderssen, etc.
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Re:Ellis Island Syndrome (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, my Father in law spent most of his childhood writing his name wrong when his parents forgot how they'd spelled it on the birth certificate! He found out about it when he got his driver's license as a teen...
I mean, if a kid's parents can't be trusted to spell a guy's name right, how do you figure a secretary is going to get it right 100% of the time?
Helpful links for intelligence community devs (Score:5, Informative)
soundex [wikipedia.org]
Levenshtein distance [wikipedia.org]
Hamming distance [wikipedia.org]
More like this, can't be arsed to go looking them up, though. Those were three I knew off the cuff.
Re:Helpful links for intelligence community devs (Score:5, Funny)
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So, Mr oBama would have a Levenshtein distance of 1 with oSama then? Good job there.
If you were comparing only someone's first name to only someone else's last name, sure.
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If you were comparing only someone's first name to only someone else's last name, sure.
Let's just hope that all the names are dumped in as keywords. Then he's got two interesting names.
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So, Mr oBama would have a Levenshtein distance of 1 with oSama then? Good job there.
Apparently you haven't read the comments section of the weekly standard lately.
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A major problem with soundex is false positives. A terrorist named John Smith on the watch list would be hell on a lot of people... but if they were using soundex... he's now J500 S530. So Now Jan, Jim, Jens, Jon, Jaymee, Jayne, Jane cross product with Smith, Smit, Smite, Smithe, Smithee, Smythe, Smathe, Snuthe, Smothe...
all get caught in that web.
Similar problems exist for hamming and so on. There's a LOT of very different names a very short "distance" from each other in nearly any scheme.
But on top of all
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While you are raising valid concerns about algorithms like soundex, aren't they minor concerns? Yeah there could be a typo in the name. But in the case we're talking about, it wasn't a typo, it was an alternate phonetic spelling.
And regarding false positives, luckily there aren't many terrorists today named John Smith. False positives would be restricted to relatively small populations anyway, like Muslims and non-Western names. How many "bin laden/bin ladin/bin ladan/ben laden/etc" names are there in the U
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How many "bin laden/bin ladin/bin ladan/ben laden/etc" names are there in the US
bin Laden is, if i recall correctly, little more than "son of Laden"
Osama's full name per wikipedia is:
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden
Granted its not a common American name, but as a middle eastern name, it might as well be Tom O'Conner.
False positives would be restricted to relatively small populations anyway, like Muslims and non-Western names.
Yes. Small populations, like "foreigners". This is not a good plan.
The other
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you are trying to educate the morons who made the "No Fly" list using only *names* ??
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That's a bad way to evaluate the false positive rate because it assumes the distribution of terrorist names is the same as the distribution of names in Social Security. In reality there aren't many Muslims in the US, so the false positive rate for the general population would be much lower. (It may be high for Muslims though, especially since from what I recall soundex etc aren't really optimized for non-Western names.)
Not to mention, name matching is just step one of identification. I'm assuming there's al
Horseshit (Score:2, Troll)
They would have "missed" Tsarnaev if he had a siren and a pink neon "TERRORIST" sign bolted to his forehead. Re: Nidal Hasan.
They only miss things they aren't interested in finding.
Significance? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Apparently you haven't heard of the no-fly list, where they just say "Sorry, no boarding for you, go home, kthxbai".
transliteration (Score:5, Informative)
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It's a bigger problem than just that. There are multiple systems for mapping various foreign names into English, and many variant spellings. Then there are what you could refer to as a "fully qualified name" that may not map well into the first-middle-last convention in many places in European languages. In some areas the full name could include things like tribe and/or clan, geographic designations, additional honorifics, and other possibilities. The same person could use multiple names depending on wh
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It could be worse. Before the printing press, proper names were generally translated, not just transliterated.
It was not misspelled (Score:5, Interesting)
It was not misspelled, it was just transliterated differently. The original name is Cyrillic, and "Tsarnayev" is actually closer to how it is supposed to be pronounced, but "Tsarnaev" is the more usual letter-for-letter transliteration that doesn't distinguish two modes of Russian "e" (it's pronounced as "e" in general, but as "ye" after vowels and at the beginning of words), and is the one that's usually used in passports. I wouldn't be surprised if "Tsarnayev" was how it was spelled in the documents that they've got from Russia, because the person on the other side translated it phonetically...
Either way, this points at a glaring issue in all those databases. If they require a perfect match, they're going to be very flaky for all kinds of foreign names - ironically, Arabic ones especially, which I assume are the most commonly searched ones. Remember that whole Qaddafi vs Gaddafi vs Kaddafi in US press when Libya was on the front pages?
Yet another evidence that all this stuff is little more but security theater. It doesn't matter whether it actually works, so long as people are convinced that it does. Unfortunately, they actually let a real terrorist through this time...
Re:It was not misspelled (Score:5, Funny)
If only there were some kind of universal character set that included all these scripts
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I doubt having them type names in their original script would help matters. Cyrillic is easy, but how many DHS agents can input Arabic? Chinese? If anything, I'd suspect that the amount of typos would increase significantly.
What they need to do is proper phonetic match, tailored to the specific language in question (i.e. if it's an English name, use soundex or something along those lines, if it's Russian, use the Russian equivalent etc).
Of course, what they really need is to just drop all this bullshit and
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I doubt having them type names in their original script would help matters. Cyrillic is easy, but how many DHS agents can input Arabic? Chinese?
English?
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Yes, you have a point there. I suppose there's no reason why they shouldn't have the name in original script alongside the English transliteration, at least, and check matches for both.
Do current passports encode the native script in machine-readable format, though?
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Looks like it's basically ASCII, they have to substitute even German umlauts. Perhaps it's time for an upgrade.
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Re:It was not misspelled (Score:5, Informative)
The US is not some loser nation with massive budget restrictions upgrading from paper files to imported super computers in the 1970's.
The US is not some loser nation with massive budget restrictions trying to find staff with language skills in the 1950's.
This is not Korea or Vietnam in the 1950-60's where the US gov did have to play catch up.
The USA did great work tracking the KGB/GRU and others within the USA for many decades and that took spelling skills and complex shared database work.
The USA did great work tracking the KGB/GRU staff changes... and that took spelling and database work too.
If the USA is having issues with Russian names in a US gov database after 2000++ - someone has ensured a name is protected/free to travel.
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I doubt it was an accident either. Remember movie stores? If I got a big enough late fee I'd just go back to the store and use my given name instead of my nick name to get a new card. Charles or Charlie, John or Johnathan, etc... Worked every time.
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My understanding is that the misspelling did not originate with the guy himself. It's not like he has two passports, when he crosses the border it's his passport that'll be used to identify him, and the name as it is spelled there (and that would normally be "-ev" rather than "-yev"). The screw-up happened where they were compiling the no-go list, and the alternative spelling slipped in somehow - and if I had to guess, they just keyed it in letter by letter from the email or fax that they've got from Russia
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C'mon seriously that excuse is just total bullshit. It is the same as claiming they could not arrest John Smith because they could not identify him because there are too many John Smiths. This lame excuse is a red flag something decidedly worse going on. Reality check, it works like this, one entry in one data base and no one worries much about you and spelled right or wrong makes not much difference basically to claim such would also mean you didn't bother to add other details like appearance, location, a
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You assume some degree of competence. I don't think that is justified.
I mean, we're talking about the country where a top-secret "No Such Agency" intelligence gathering service has just let a rank and file sysadmin walk out with a dump of the entire internal network, including numerous classified and top secret documents, on his USB flash stick, and board a plane to another country under his real name with said stick in his pocket.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10... [nytimes.com]
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I can totally imagine how everyone and their dog have their own database, and a lot of those databases are not cross-referenced because no-one making these decisions even knows of their existence.
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Well contractor access to top secret data bases just smells to high heaven of plausible denial-ability. Basically under corporate direction the mass media channel that is the United States government was instructed to allow military industrial complex corporations full access to their top secret databases, as a ruse in plausible denial-ability this was provided upon the basis of lax security. The problem with that plausible denial-ability excuse is basically resulted in lax security that could be readily e
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So, for instance, if you have granted a Visa to a student and you later get an alert about this immigrant, you can look up and link the items together.
But how do you know that the alert that you have is for that immigrant? Do you think the letter from FSB is going to read, "this guy that you have in the CIA database under ID 12345 is a terrorist"?
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e.g. an image of the passport was found, details sent to the US.
Passport data is pretty standard and read by computer around the world everyday. Most countries even like to count/have reconciled passports entering, passports leaving.
A very easy way to find people who overstay or used different documents later or have stolen papers.
Such systems are decades old and most countries do n
soudex? (Score:2, Interesting)
haven't they heard of soundex?
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Or Levenshtein distance [wikipedia.org].
I knew a Mexican citizen with a green card who would be constantly harassed and held for questioning when entering from Canada because his name was similar but not the same as an alias used by someone on the 10 most wanted list. Apparently their matching algorithm is thrown for a loop by Slavic names.
I wrote anti-terrorist software for banks. (Score:5, Informative)
I've written about this before; I used to write financial software for a living, and one of the requirements for a US bank was to provide a mechanism to detect transactions by an unauthorized person.
In short, the govt. provides a list of bad people in a text file. One name per line, all upper case, like it came out of an old batch system. We then check to see if the sender or receiver of any transaction /EXACTLY/ matches that string, case insensitive. If it's an exact letter-for-letter match, there's a flag that's set and the transaction is delayed, but it appears to go through as normal(*). What happens after that is the bank's responsibility, but that's the whole of the complexity.
Whoever made the list usually has a few variants of spelling; OSAMA BIN LADEN or OMASA BIN LADEN or OSMA BIN LADEN, for example. But that's it. Just spelling your name slightly differently is enough to avoid the flag. We're literally not allowed to add anything else, like soundex matching or handling foreign letters.
This is ~probably~ also how the TSA no fly list works, and why you still hear about false positives from time to time. It's also probably how any security works until it's been around for 20 years and they hire a contracting company to make them really good software that does what they want, instead of what they think they want it to do.
It just takes a very long time for software designed by a legislative committee with no technical awareness to morph into something usable, but that's government for you.
* - most transactions are not sent out until the end-of-day reconciliation anyway, so it looks like it's accepted like most other transactions, probably in a 'pending' state in your online balance - unless you're paying for a wire transfer or something.
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You really don't understand the companies that are awarded government contracts, do you? Figuring out what the customer really wants is not part of their job description, and is most likely grounds for being put on the first plane back to India. You give the customer exactly what they ask
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And why David Jones can't order his parts from element14 in a timely manor. [eevblog.com]
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Looser name matching would increase false positives, but profiling would probably balance that out. Of course that would entail further invasion of privacy etc. If the authorities do it correctly, it would be pretty minor though. You have nothing to fear unless you start going to a mosque, etc.
Re:I wrote anti-terrorist software for banks. (Score:5, Informative)
Yes.
It's no longer making the news, but for a while it was a nearly-daily occurrence. It's just not a big media draw anymore, unless it impacts a politician or famous entertainer.
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Sounds like a good idea for terrorists.
Step 1
Have your group of terrorists change their names to John Doe and other common names.
Get them on the watch lists
Laugh at the hoards of innocent people getting extra rub downs by TSA.
Send your second group through while TSA doesn't have the resources to check everyone who matches the list.
Step 2
Have your next group change their names to politicians and famous people...
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I know you're just being funny, but terrorists don't have a goal of inconveniencing people, or interpreted loosely, throwing wrenches in the system. They are proud of who they are, what their ideology is, and they want to fight battles and win and be remembered for it.
The more hardcore the name, the cooler. Remember "Johnny Taliban?" Aka John Walker Lindh. He had a great undercover name. But he wanted to sound more authentic so he became Sulayman al-Faris.
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Not just misspelled, but misspelled *differently* (Score:5, Informative)
Neither "Tsarnaev" nor "Tsarnayev" is the correct spelling; the correct spelling is "ЦÐÑнÐÌÐÐ".
As another commenter mentioned, utility companies solved this problem decades ago with technology like Soundex. Our intelligence apparatus is apparently crippled by incompetence, laziness, haste, provincialism, or all of the above.
Re:Not just misspelled, but misspelled *differentl (Score:5, Insightful)
Spell That (Score:3)
His name was diabolical! (Score:5, Funny)
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Hey I knew that guy in college! Little Tommy Bin Laden we called him...
Get rid of the TSA! (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously, this entire organization encompasses everything wrong with the Federal government. Massive privacy overreach, complete incompetence, and a literal NIGHTMARE BUREAUCRACY! This is one of the worst aspects of the Bush legacy, and "The One" has not done anything to curtail its power: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL... [cnn.com]
Re:Get rid of the TSA! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also an enormous jobs program, employing 50,000 nut-cuppers and breast-gropers alone, without even getting started on air marshals, behavioral analysts, and of course thousands more management positions. Don't expect TSA disappear anytime soon, no matter who's in the White House.
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TSA was created not only a gigantic practical-joke on the middle class. It was also created as a means to mask growing unemployment. All for political points.
"Fiscal responsibility" indeed.
Shoulda used Google (Score:2, Interesting)
Agent: Tamerlan Tsarnev
Google: Did you mean: Tamerlan Tsarnaev
That would have solved the problem.
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Genius!
Just use a current search engine but with a future database and actch all terrorists! Why didn't anyone think of that?!
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new meme....deliberate misspelling (Score:3)
No, no . . . Archibald Buttle (Score:5, Funny)
As much as the TSA sucks... (Score:3)
No (Score:3)
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
They missed the Boston bombers because they are spying ON EVERYONE instead of focusing the spying, based on probable cause, on the correct folks.
Well, yes. But, paradoxically, failure earns the spy agencies more funding.
"If we had been provided with enough resources, we could have caught the bad guys!"
The solution is to limit (yet again) exactly who they can spy on. These children need to be spanked, not rewarded with ice cream.
1980s fuzzy search called (Score:2)
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"on his way to terrorist training"
Bullshit! I can't believe the Republicans are still sticking to that lie to try to scare the general public. That is a complete and utter lie. Besides the ones the CIA runs, there are no terrorist training camps. They're trying, and failing(!), to try to convince us that terrorists are a problem when the Republicans are the problem.
You are trying to be funny, right?
I know that to most of you, Republicans are responsible for everything from circles-that-can't-be-squared to bad breath, but really, I assure you that they didn't invent Muslim nutso bombers.
Re:More lies from the Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. This is clearly all Bush's fault. Glorious Leader Obamessiah never does any wrong.
Yes, actually you could argue it's Bush's fault, and the GOP's fault.
You see, they were too busy crying about Clinton's jizz on a Blue Dress to pay attention to some guy named "Bin Laden" who was blowing up embassies. They got so pissed at Clinton for launching cruise missiles at training camps that after he left office, Bush completely halted all operations against his network. Then they proceeded to ignore multiple public warnings and threats, and after the first airplane hit the tower Bush felt it was more important to finish reading "My Pet Goat" to some kids than it was to immediately ground all commercial air traffic in the region.
For the record, I'm a Conservative. But I'm not an idiot, either, and can do more than puke up "clever" insults I heard on Rush's nutjob radio show.
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Excellent point. I don't know why you've been modded as a troll. GP sounds exactly like Newsnight's Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels).. the Hollywood fantasy version of a conservative who is "fed up" with how "real" conservatives have no options because their party has been "hijacked" by nutjobs.
It is really transparent.
Re:Who says computers will take over.... (Score:4, Interesting)
The most advanced systems in the world will never outpace human mistakes.
If you type "Tsarnayev" (the way his name was incorrectly spelled" into Google, the first match is: wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_and_Tamerlan_Tsarnaev
So I'll call bullshit on your claim, and also note that the database entry error was only the last in a long series of events. (try reading the article)
The problem was not "human mistakes". The problem was a string of incompetent and corrupt police and FBI agents. Mistakes are accidents, the string of fuck-ups in this case were anything BUT mistakes.
Re:Who says computers will take over.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a clear case of "blinded by data".
Re:Who says computers will take over.... (Score:5, Insightful)
However, your example of googling this guy's name is a particularly bad one. Google's autocorrection algorithms are based on the popularity of terms and their similarities. Since the bombing, surely this name would have been googled millions of times.
Do you really suppose that Google would have made such an accurate correction before the Boston attacks that madetheir family name infamous?
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Garbage in, garbage out.
Re:Who says computers will take over.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have expected them to include the original cyrillic name and all the /obvious/ transliterations in their database, but that's apparently way beyond their capabilities.
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I've been and they scanned and typed quite a lot, so I don't know if they used my data from the machine or human readable zone.
But then again. It wouldn't be that easy. Your link states that the machine readable zone contains the ICAO transliteration. You may have that, but you can't check for any other transliterations unles you have the original name that you can try various transliteration systems on. Transliteration works like a hash function here: you can't run it backwards to see the original input. S