When the Thomas family from Ohio embarked on a recent trip from Cleveland to Minneapolis, they were in for a huge, but unpleasant surprise. It appeared that 6-year old Alyssa Thomas’ name was on the Homeland Security no-fly list; a list that is used to prevent individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism from flying. The girl’s father, Santhosh Thomas, states that the worst thing his daughter has ever done, is probably been mean to her sister, but that this should hardly be a matter for the Department of Homeland Security.
The Thomases were eventually allowed to fly that day, but they were told to contact Homeland Security to clear up the matter. Now Alyssa just received a letter from the government, notifying the six-year-old that nothing will be changed and they won’t confirm nor deny any information they have about her or someone else with the same name.
According to the Transportation Security Administration, the body responsible for the Secure Flight List, it is likely that Alyssa never had problems flying before. The TSA used to check only international passengers’ names against the no-fly list, but since earlier this month has decided to check domestic passengers as well. To us data quality professionals, this very much sounds like a case of incorrect identity matching…. Could it be that Homeland Security is in need of some intelligent tools?
For more information realated to this subject, please read the blogposts Your name is too “common”…. and Attempted bombing Christmas Day could have been prevented!
Tags: anti-terror, Homeland Security, name check, name matching, no-fly lists
From my experience I must say that the quality of the sanctions lists (the EU list as well as the OFAC list or the Homeland security no-fly list) is very poor. In lots of cases only a name is provided. This could easily lead to a hit in case of high frequent names, while adding a date of birth would avoid these mis-matches. Only people with the same name and a more or less equal date of birth would then result in a hit.
Alyssa Thomas would never have been identified as a terrorist if decisions would have been made based on correct information.