Of course this can never happen ... Ahmad Ali, a Canadian citizen from Saskatoon man is fed up with being stopped every time he tries to fly within Canada because he has a similar name to someone on a no-fly list. The strange thing is that American authorities have granted him a Nexus card to enter the U.S. and he said he has no trouble boarding flights with U.S. airlines. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/09/05/bc-watchlistmistake.html
Yup, thanks much! By including his name & city it's much more likely to generate search engine matches.
And just wait until this bogus "Trusted Traveler" program is implemented -- people giving up their personal biometric data. Yeah, that'll never be compromised! No mistakes will ever be made there, and nobody will ever end up on a list erroneously! I can just see someone sitting in a cell -- "Yes, I am John Doe!" "No, you're not. The database says so." "Then the database contains a mistake. I know who I am!" "No, you don't. The database never makes a mistake." Nah, this (expletive deleted) isn't Orwellian. It's all in my imagination.
It seems like the only thing we can do for our kids is to name them something unique. St3fh3n Sm1th doesn't look that good, but he is unlikely to get a match on any watch list. "Say your name" will be interesting though. I wonder if anyone would go as far as naming their kid with a QR code? Of course QR codes can be used for communicating with smurfs. Please scan this one