
FBI Checks Wrong Box, Places Student on No-Fly List - rosser
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/02/no-fly-list-bungle/
======
busterarm
Let's be real here. The only "bureaucratic mistake" here is an agent filling
out a form improperly in a way that victimized someone. Everything that
happened after that is both deliberate and malicious.

If a mistake was made, it should be easy to correct and not be followed by
years of fighting to not only keep it from being corrected but to keep it a
secret. They've successfully kept most of it a secret, even though the direct
victim had their suffering eased.

The indirect and ultimate victims of this, our individual rights and society's
ideals, are still suffering.

~~~
Mithaldu
This is a very important detail of the whole dreary affair. As surprising as
the cause of the whole matter may be, the government after that willfully lied
to anyone and everyone, including the judge of the court case, ignored legally
binding orders and probably broke several laws. The Paper's Please blog has an
excellent timeline of this case:

[http://papersplease.org/wp/category/papers-
please/](http://papersplease.org/wp/category/papers-please/)

~~~
busterarm
What's amazing is that I'm well familiar with the details of this story, but
Wired's reporting of it was so dry and disinteresting that I didn't associate
the names or facts with the case I was already aware of.

What's sad is that I didn't even need to know the facts to agree that what you
said was true.

------
beedogs
> Attorneys working pro bono spent as much as $300,000 litigating the case and
> $3.8 million in attorney’s fees.

So it costs about 4 million dollars to recover from the United States
government accidentally, arbitrarily ruining your life.

What a sad and terrifying place America has become.

~~~
powertower
> What a sad and terrifying place America has become.

1 human error is not a statistic, nor does it represent the system in any way.

I still like America and I'm okay with this happening... The system took some
time, but it ultimately worked. Which is a credit to it, and not a penalty
against it.

~~~
beedogs
You're "okay with" someone being in travel-limbo for seven years, effectively
a prisoner in their own country, due to a _clerical error_?

Wow.

This is about as far as you can get from "the system worked", by the way.

~~~
powertower
I can't even phantom how many travelers make trips without making it on this
list by mistake.

Millions of success events vs. 1 human error has no conclusions except that
the system works.

~~~
shangxiao
I think you mean "fathom"

I doubt you'd measure success exclusively by the number of false positives but
you'd also need to factor in the impact of a false positive.

For eg: There was an x-ray machine [1] with a software bug that would
accidentally deliver a dose 100 times the intended dose. I'm sure the machine
operated correctly thousands of times however there were "at least 6
accidents" and 3 deaths (worst case scenario). One would not say that this
system works.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25)

------
rwg
Her daughter, an American citizen, was also denied boarding on a flight from
Malaysia to the US. She was trying to take the flight in order to appear in
court as a witness in this same trial.

[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131208/00164525497/witnes...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131208/00164525497/witness-
no-fly-list-trial-who-was-blocked-flying-to-trial-shows-that-doj-flat-out-
lied-court.shtml)

~~~
teraflop
Interestingly, there's a section of Judge Alsup's ruling regarding this
incident, nearly all of which (paragraphs 72 through 76) has been redacted.

~~~
e12e
[edit: formatting to conform to intended dramatic effect]

I find especially the conclusion hilarious (hilarious because I'm not a US
citizen, I suppose I should find it tragic):

(...)

C. The government must inform Dr. Ibrahim that ███████████ █████████████████

(...)

IT IS SO ORDERED

[edit2: It just occurred to me that Dr. Ibrahim would probably risk being
placed back on the no-fly list if she made the full ruling public...]

------
ilamont
A string of incidents starting not long after 9/11 revealed to me what a farce
the system is.

The first was seeing old men in their 80s being frisked at TSA checkpoints.

The second was a close friend, mixed race and wearing a beard, who was
repeatedly stopped for "random" in-terminal personal questioning and searches
(that is, beyond the checkpoint). He was the only person I knew who got this
kind of treatment, and the only obvious difference was his appearance.

And then there was this (1):

Washington Post: Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List

 _U.S. Sen. Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy said yesterday that he was stopped and
questioned at airports on the East Coast five times in March because his name
appeared on the government's secret "no-fly" list.

Federal air security officials said the initial error that led to scrutiny of
the Massachusetts Democrat should not have happened even though they recognize
that the no-fly list is imperfect. But privately they acknowledged being
embarrassed that it took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to
get his name removed._

If it took a powerful senator weeks or months to fix the problem, I knew it
was hopeless for us mere mortals.

When I was in college many years ago, a punk band called the Dead Kennedys
released an album called _Bedtime For Democracy_ that had this famous piece of
artwork (2). It was a cartoon representation of the Statue of Liberty,
crawling with Wall Street thieves, jack-booted SWAT teams, Madison Avenue
shills, and other cons and clowns. There were tears coming out of the statue's
eyes. Take a look at it zoomed in if you can, or buy the LP with the full-
sized cover. I liked the DKs for their music and lyrics, and the cover went
right along with the band's brand of socio-political satire. Nevertheless, at
the time I thought the image was a little over the top.

Not anymore.

1\. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/articles/A17073-2004Aug19.html)

2\.
[http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/d/deadkennedys_bedtime_cd_uk_...](http://punkygibbon.co.uk/bands/d/deadkennedys_bedtime_cd_uk_2001_images.html)

~~~
dbroockman
On #1: If the TSA didn't frisk 80 year old men, any smart terrorist would
begin recruiting 80 year olds. You can't have gaps in enforcement by policy or
they will be exploited (sadly).

~~~
thaumasiotes
Bruce Schneier likes to say this too, as if it makes sense.

It doesn't. Your hypothetical terrorist group can't recruit with equal ease
from any demographic group that strikes their fancy. So if we screen everyone
equally, all[1] of the terrorists will be young single men.

If we start screening young, single, Arab men so heavily that it's more
economical for a terrorist group to recruit Laotian grandmothers, _that 's
exactly what we want_. It will dramatically reduce the incidence of attacks,
because it's extremely difficult to convince Laotian grandmothers to make
them.

The optimal way to allocate screening resources is to produce the _result_
that everyone is equally likely to be a terrorist. But you can't begin by
assuming it; it's the goal you want to reach. If there's a demographic group
with an elevated risk of offending, we want to dedicate screening to it until
it has only the baseline risk. Even if that raises the baseline risk, it's a
win for us.

With all that in mind, screening a particular group at a 0% rate won't get you
there. But screening 80-year-olds at 0.001% of the rate you screen men 15-25,
or less, is probably fine.

[1] most

~~~
busterarm
I wouldn't count 80 year old men out as recruitment targets for suicide
bombing.

Traditionally, the rate of suicide among men only goes up as they get older
and in the US is at ~29/100k/year after 65 years. If a group were well-funded
they could make this an attractive offer to take care of families for folks
who had no assets to pass on. The have less to look forward to and thus less
to lose/more to gain. This already happens in other ways besides suicide
bombing.

I think the perception that most terrorists are young single men demonstrates
less about their willingness to blow themselves up than what they're willing
to trade blowing themselves up for. Young single men, especially poorly
educated ones, are generally dreadfully bad at cost-benefit analysis and
planning for their futures. Terrorist groups tend to be incredibly poorly
funded without state sponsorship and then it all depends on which state.

Tangentially, all[1] decisions are economic decisions.

[1] most

~~~
thaumasiotes
But this is exactly what I'm talking about. If the direct cost of sending a
suicide bomber goes from "transportation" to "transportation + $2,000,000",
there will be less of it.

~~~
einhverfr
Certainly there are additional complexity issues and those work to the benefit
of law enforcement. However, there are some significant costs as well.

How confident really, is one that you aren't going to find 80 year old men
willing to give their last few years of life for what they believe, money
aside, or do we care whether their spouses are still alive?

The other real major cost is the social cost. If we do start making really
fine-grained decisions regarding appearance, married status, etc. then we risk
essentially ensuring that Americans are not equal before our government and
that's something that is really hard to put a price on, particularly given the
history of racial issues in the US.

------
acdha
This is a powerful reminder that the entire state secrets privilege was
invented to cover up official incompetence[1] and obviously has not strayed
very far from its origins. I'd like to get rid of the unconstitutional no-fly
list but it's even more important to remove a privilege with so few benefits
and such great potential for abuse.

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds)

~~~
judk
This need to be reminded every time state secrets are mentioned, until this
case is every US History textbook.

------
lostcolony
I really hope America in the future looks back on the government of this time
the same way Germany looks back on the Nazi government (yes, just Godwinned
it); with shame, and a fierce determination to never allow it to happen again.

~~~
lukifer
Honestly, I wish the Godwin moratorium would end. The lessons of Nazi Germany
are not that Germans in the 1930s were the most evil persons in history,
making it erroneous and offensive to compare anyone else to them. In fact,
it's quite the opposite: the lesson is that all humans have the capacity for
extreme evil when it is socially normalized.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#The_banality_of_evil)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_Lucifer_Eff...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Zimbardo#The_Lucifer_Effect)

~~~
mindcrime
There is no moratorium, and "Godwin's Law" is just some guy's pithy
observation. It doesn't mean shit in the end. As far as I'm concerned, anybody
"invoking Godwin's Law" should be downvoted to the 9th circle of Hell. _shrug_

~~~
ZoFreX
People say "invoking Godwin's law" as if that person is demanding the
conversation halt there - but I very rarely see this happen in practice. It's
simply an observation. "Oh, we compared them to the Nazis". In decent
discussion fora such as this one I almost never see an associated suggestion
that the argument is invalid, or that discussion should end.

~~~
lukifer
There is an oft-cited corollary, sometimes misunderstood as part of Godwin's
Law itself, that whoever brings up Nazis first automatically loses the
argument. In practice, it really does shut down discussion amongst even
otherwise intelligent people, usually by preventing people from making
comparisons in the first place.

------
XorNot
The real question here is why the no-fly list exists in the first place.

Because it really makes no sense: there is no human-being alive who is too
dangerous to, with appropriate screening, be put on airplane and flown
somewhere.

The no-fly list is solely punitive, and argued for on the ridiculous basis
that it somehow prevents the organization of dangerous individuals (as though
they can't just drive between states, or you know, send email).

~~~
einhverfr
I am waiting for the perfect case to challenge the no fly list on its face.

Scenario: A resident of Hawaii ends up on the list.

Problems: There is no alternative to air travel to/from Hawaii to travel about
the country, much less about the world. Thus while the government may argue
there is no right to air travel, there is a right to engage in interstate
travel that is well settled and removing the only form of interstate travel
interferes with that unquestionably. So you have the possibility of saying
flights to/from Hawaii can't be covered, in which case the equal protection
guarantee read into the 5th Amendment doesn't apply independent of state of
residency, or you have to throw the whole list out.

~~~
erichocean
You could take a cruise ship, or hire your own airplane. The no-fly list only
applies to commercial airports.

So I don't think that merely being in Hawaii is going to help.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Someone could successfully argue that such would be an unreasonable burden,
unless they are a millionaire.

------
noonespecial
So all you have to do is slip an error into "the machine" and it becomes
nearly impossible to fix? I'm thbiking that makes "bureaucratic terrorism" a
very real possibility. One database hack or clever feat of social engineering
could effectively end the paper lives of dozens of citizens.

~~~
theandrewbailey
I'm stealing the term bureaucratic terrorism. Thank you.

------
protomyth
Skip the article and go read the actual ruling. It makes me quite mad what
they edited out and the crappy relief given.

[http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2014/02/ibraru...](http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2014/02/ibraruling.pdf)

~~~
hudibras
Page 22 will make your blood boil:

 _Dr. Ibrahim was given a letter by the consular officer informing her that
the Department of State was unable to issue her a visa...The consular officer
wrote the word_ (Terrorist) _on the form to explain why she was deemed
inadmissible._

The judge helpfully includes a photocopy of the letter with the handwritten
note.

~~~
protomyth
I get the feeling our government would be a bit more responsive if individuals
and agencies could be sued for libel.

------
linuxhansl
I read somewhere that the no-fly list is so widely distributed that currently
known terrorists are not actually placed on that list as this would leak
information about who the US considers a terrorist to too wide an audience.

Obviously I have no way to validate that story, but if true it would cement
the story about that list being an utterly useless farce.

~~~
judk
Perhaps the whole set of noflys are a cover so that when someone is harassed
or tortured by the govt, that doesn't leak any info about who is actually a
terrorist.

------
defen
So, I'm curious which of the terrorist screening databases - "Consular Lookout
and Support Systems", "Interagency Border Information System", "TSA Selectee
List" "TUSCAN", "TACTICS" Mr. Kelley _did_ intend to sign Rahinah Ibrahim up
for, and why. Clearly it was at least one of them, since the ruling states
that he filled out the form "exactly the opposite way from the instructions on
the form".

~~~
hudibras
It's left unsaid, but my guess is that he left all the boxes blank thinking
that would keep her from being added to any of the databases.

Unfortunately, I don't have an answer to your next question: if that's true,
why was he filling out the form in the first place?

------
coldcode
What a sad and frighting story that the US has become. I wonder how many of
the soldiers who died for this country would volunteer if they had known then
what their fight for freedom would become.

~~~
judk
Most of them, military is the highest paying job for a large class of
Americans.

------
revelation
There are obviously things where it becomes completely immaterial if something
happened by error. Depriving someone of their constitutional rights is most
certainly one of these. The only remedy can be to handle these cases as if
intentional, such as to rectify the processes that allowed it to happen.

Look at page 9 of the ruling, the VGTOF form. It shows checkboxes, which any
human being can reasonably interpret as boolean values. But the intent is
negated! It asks you to check those lists that you do _NOT_ want someone
entered in (so true (checked) becomes false (not in list)). This is terrible
style in programming, it is completely unacceptable in forms that brand you a
terrorist.

(Regardless, someone needs to be fired for the $4M alone that will be going to
plaintiff to cover their costs. Theres error, and then theres refusing to fix
them.)

------
sdegutis
Honestly, I feel that there are situations where a government makes mistakes.
I think some cases should be assessed and handled on a case-by-case basis,
whereas others are very black-and-white and should be handled en masse.
Personally, I believe this situation may be one of these two, in which case it
should be handled appropriately by the government. But overall, I think the
most important thing is that governments should handle the cases correctly
depending on what kind of case it is, and be held accountable for their
mistakes.

------
lhnz
Does anybody on Hacker News think they could design a system with a 0% error
rate?

Whenever you design a system like this, it's just a matter of time before a
mistake is made.

Small errors don't necessarily mean that the whole system should be gotten rid
of.

If there's a benefit to the system existing you might want to consider adding
an undo feature [0] or simply _using it less_.

It's becoming pretty clear to me that system designers are needed at a
government bureaucracy level.

[0] Other UX features like authorisation or confirmation boxes would decrease
the error rate but not zero it.

------
mnw21cam
So, if the agent checked the wrong boxes, presumably (in order to place this
person on the no fly list) there must have been something dodgy in the boxes
that were checked. Does this mean that someone else (who the boxes actually
belonged to) was mistakenly _not_ put on the no fly list? Shouldn't the
government be trying to track this person down?

~~~
andrewaylett
My reading of the article suggests that the form was for the right person, but
was filled in ticking each question the opposite of the way it should have
been filled in. My conclusion is that adding someone to the no-fly list is
purely a box-ticking exercise (in the literal meaning of the phrase), without
actually requiring any written reasoning or any proof of anything.

~~~
mnw21cam
Yeah, but what about the boxes that were checked, and what did they have in
them? I don't see what this has to do with a form-filling mistake.

~~~
andrewaylett
I've just realised that the idiom 'checking boxes' might be foreign to you. In
this case, the 'boxes' are squares on a piece of paper, and 'checking' them
refers to filling them with a tick-mark.

I managed to avoid using the term in my comment as I'm from the UK and it's
definitely a US thing.

------
leobelle
Now that everyone in this thread has pointed out what the problem is and has
shared how they feel about the problem, what's a real world, plausible
solution so this doesn't happen again in the future?

------
seanccox
Harry Buttle?

------
mariuolo
Any chance to obtain any financial redress?

------
brosco45
Nah, it was the right box.

