[IP] TSA and airlines use Soundex to match terrorist names

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

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Dave Farber  +1 412 726 9889



...... Forwarded Message .......
From: Richard Wiggins <richard.wiggins@gmail.com>
To: David Farber <dave@farber.net>
Date: Sat, 09 Oct 2004 05:54:41 -0400
Subj: TSA and airlines use Soundex to match terrorist names

The Washington Post reports that TSA uses a scheme based on the
ancient (1918) Soundex algorithm to vet airline passenger names
against its list of terrorists:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18735-2004Oct8_2.html

The article also says that travelers who had false positives were able
to pass screening by adding their middle names or middle initials when
purchasing tickets.  Clearly the matching is primitive.

/rich

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