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My wife has a problem at airports related to her name. When we married, she changed her name from Ann Betty Smith to Ann Smith Jones. That is, first name Ann, m
by kstrauser 3y ago
My wife has a problem at airports related to her name. When we married, she changed her name from Ann Betty Smith to Ann Smith Jones. That is, first name Ann, middle name Smith, last name Jones. Some federal agency or another entered her name into their database as first name Ann, no middle name, last name “Smith Jones”.
Now her drivers license is “Ann” “Smith” “Jones”, but we signed up with TSA Precheck and it expects her name to be “Ann” “Smith Jones”. Every time we travel, someone at the airport has to reconcile it.
We’re currently in the middle of spending $600 to legally change her name from Ann Smith Jones to Ann Smith Jones. That’s what the ad we had to run in the newspaper says.
- mbg721 3y agoWhenever someone says there's a glorious technological future and we're living in it, I read an anecdote like this one. The robots won't be using us as slaves, they'll be confused by the traffic-calming speed-bump that the apathetic underpaid offshore programmer didn't factor in. I hope "Smith" was "Morgan" and "Jones" was "Stanley", just for the irony.
- lazide 3y agoYeah, the future is more likely to be a variant of ‘Brazil’ than anything else.
- lazide 3y agoAlso a bunch of watch lists use soundex algorithms and fuzzy matches and put you into all sorts of tarpits/extra screenings based on them. If the name is actually ‘smith jones’ (or ‘Mohammed’, or ‘Chan’) your odds of getting whacked by one of them goes way up. Since what are the odds one of the hundreds of millions of people with a similar name misbehaved enough to get on one of those?
- kstrauser 3y agoIf the other Torgel McForkelsen gets one more DUI in this state and it causes me to get pulled over again, I'm gonna lose my mind. Edit: More seriously, TSA has the idea of a "redress number". If you get flagged because your name buddy did something shady, you can get your own ID number that says "no, I'm a different John Smith than the one you're looking for". See https://www.dhs.gov/redress-control-numbers https://www.dhs.gov/redress-control-numbers for more.
- user_7832 3y agoGood news, if you get charged and change your name they won't find you later!
- lazide 3y agoMy favorite is when someone gets arrested without ID and uses the name/info of someone they know but don’t like. Bonus points if they look somewhat similar at first glance. That can be really fun to untangle. [https://www.wbir.com/article/news/crime/tennessee-woman-steals-twin-sisters-identity-to-avoid-arrest/51-581089ce-32f9-4848-bbf9-d9e037e460b2 https://www.wbir.com/article/news/crime/tennessee-woman-stea...]
- mbg721 3y agoThere is, afaik, exactly one other American with my first and last name. Fortunately, we're both reasonably upstanding citizens, so the scenario you mention has not come up.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y agoAh hell. My new passport might have my middle name as part of my last name
- kstrauser 3y agoI am so sorry if that's the case. It's a recurring pain in the ass.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3y agoStep 1. Build an algorithm/AI to do what we want it to. Step 2. It sometimes doesn't do what we wanted it to do. Step 3. Humans are forced to changed their behaviors to suit the algorithm/AI We work for the machines.