Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

LIZETTE ALVAREZ
New York Times
Thursday, January 14, 2009

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site a “mythbuster” that tries to reassure the public.

Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.

Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.

“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.

The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

View the original article at New York Times

Obama to Adopt More Air-Security Steps as Screening Increases

John Hughes, Mary Schlangenstein and Roger Runningen
Bloomberg
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

President Barack Obama today will announce changes to the government’s terrorist watch-list system as well as additional steps to improve airline safety, an administration official said.

More than half of U.S.-bound international fliers already are undergoing tighter screening such as pat-down searches and full-body scans after the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet, a Transportation Security Administration official said yesterday.

Those getting extra scrutiny include all passengers flying from or through 14 countries as well as other travelers chosen at random, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the agency hasn’t disclosed the scope of the effort.

Obama will meet in the White House with 20 top advisers from his security, defense, legal and intelligence teams before making a public statement at 4 p.m. Washington time on plans to improve the country’s ability to thwart future terrorist attempts, the administration official said.

View the original article at Bloomberg