The difficult experience of being on DHS's no-fly watch list
For many travelers, airports have all the charm of purgatory; some have it much tougher, though: They are those whose names happen to be on the no-fly watch list
Most people who travel by air have at least one good horror story, and most would agree that airports have all the transient charm of purgatory. Some travelers, though, have it tougher than others. One of them is seven-year old Michael Martin, a cute little boy in Florida who gets checked out every time he checks in becasue he has the misfortune of sharing a name with someone (with a name like Michael Martin, in all likelihhod an aging IRA gunman from years gone by) who is either on a no-fly list (barred from boarding a plane) or a “selectee” list (not banned, but nonetheless worrisome to the U.S. government).
Amina Kahn is an intern for the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and her name, too, has made it to one of these mysterious lists (“But because I’m not 7-years-old and adorable, nobody aside from my mother cares if I miss a flight,” she writes).
Read her well-written discussion of her own experiences — and of the larger underlying problem.
