Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

[tericared]

 

“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.

The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening.

At some point, someone named Michael Hicks made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious, and little Mikey is still paying the price. (His father, also named Michael Hicks, was stopped for the first time on the Bahamas trip.)

A third grader at a parochial school in Clifton, N.J., Mikey recites the drill like the world-weary traveler he is. Leave early for the airport, always with his passport. Try to get a boarding pass at the counter. This will send up a flag. The ticket agent, peering down at tiny bespectacled Mikey, will apologize or roll her eyes, and call for a supervisor. The supervisor, after a phone call — or, more likely, a series of phone calls — will ultimately finagle him onto the plane. But the Hickses are typically the last to select seats and the last to board, which means they sometimes can’t sit together.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14watchlist.html?no_interstitial

[mamadixon]

Just one reason that the security measures don't work as well as they could...NO COMMON SENSE.

[tericared]

Quoting mamadixon:

Just one reason that the security measures don't work as well as they could...NO COMMON SENSE.

yep commin sense,,,most humans have no clue...

[BriannaKye]

The ticket agent likely rolls her eyes, as the article states, because she realizes it is ridiculous (ie: has common sense) but has to follow procedure or risk being fired.

The kid's NAME is likely on the list because he shares the name with somebody who may pose a danger. 

 

Are you suggested we purge the list of any name that might  be shared by more than just one person and not worry about it because a real potential danger might share his name with an innocent?

[Kesstan]

maybe there could be some more "info" w/ the names on the list. such as aprox. age or what not, so that the lady at the counter can determine if 8 yr old michael is 40 yr old michael or not.

Quoting BriannaKye:

The ticket agent likely rolls her eyes, as the article states, because she realizes it is ridiculous (ie: has common sense) but has to follow procedure or risk being fired.

The kid's NAME is likely on the list because he shares the name with somebody who may pose a danger. 

 

Are you suggested we purge the list of any name that might  be shared by more than just one person and not worry about it because a real potential danger might share his name with an innocent?

[rotPferd]

I don't know why they can't set up a system like a warrant computer. It gives name, age, race, aliases if any, when you type in a name. 

[cherry41089]

wow where is the common sense now a days? I think it lost in the woods are something

[Della529]

I don't understand why this wasn't done when the lists were originally created.

Quote:

Mr. Fotenos, the T.S.A. spokesman, promised improvements in a few months, as the agency’s Secure Flight Program takes full effect. Under the new system, airlines will collect every passenger’s birth date and gender, along with their names. The T.S.A. will cross-check all that with the watch lists. Previously, the airlines cross-checked the lists themselves, using only the names.

 

[duets]

Security in the USA sometimes is a joke.  It's behind the times, things change so quickly that we aren't able to keep things current.  It's just like the couple who made it into the President's Dinner.  They were able to get thru with no hassle.  And then I heard that they're changing the check in stuff at the airports.  However, the taliban has already got that one figured out & already making threats again.  And the airports don't even have the new stuff set up.  How sad :-(

As for Mikey, the officials said that they are going to make some more changes; but it will take like 4 mos.  Unbelieveable, it takes 4 mos to delete an 8 yr old (no risk) from this list.

I don't understand why things happen so s-l-o-w-l-y when America is at risk.  I feel like I'm watching a game of tag go on.  Surely we can do better than this?

[la_bella_vita]

Poor little Michael Hicks. They should include birthdates, photos if possible.....