I thought the tin foil hast people were on Kos and DU’ers. Once again, CNN is more interested in getting people to tune in than the truth and you guys are buying into it.
Getting someone on a watchlist is not as easy as calling in the name of a reporter when he writes a bad story about you. An agency nominates someone who is a known threat to airplanes – a terrorist – to get on the no-fly list. That alone doesn’t get you on the list – there’s a thorough review but other security agencies before it’s approved, and the list is reviewed and scrubbed daily. Drew Griffin, the CNN reporter, is not a known threat and is not on the No Fly list. He’s just like those guys on 60 Minutes whose name is misidentified with someone who’s really on the list. Odds are he knows that but likes getting his mug on tv so he keeps up his false reporting.
Drew Griffin and anyone else who is told “you’re on a watchlist” can point their finger directly at the airlines. Airlines do the watchlist matching right now – they have the No Fly list and match pasengers’ names against it. They look at similar names and determine who will get hassled because of misidentification. Airlines know that people will be furious with TSA for the inconvenience – not them – and it costs them money to come up with a system to clear people who aren’t really on the list, so there’s no real carrot or stick to cause them to reduce passenger’s hassle.
