Flawed No-Fly Lists Disrupt Passengers, Including Kennedy; Anarchy and the RNC; IE Flaw Discovered in XP SP2 Patch

Flawed No-Fly Lists Disrupt Passengers, Including Kennedy

On more than one recent occasion, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) has been blocked from boarding airplanes because his name is on a terrorist watchlist. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Thursday, Kennedy described his encounters with airline agents who would not permit him to board planes because his name is the same as an alias used by a suspected terrorist. Ultimately, these agents were overruled and Kennedy was allowed to board the planes, however it took weeks to get Kennedy’s name off the list. But Kennedy isn’t the only person who’s run afoul of airline screeners, according to a report in The New York Times. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the government on behalf of seven airline passengers who said they had been wrongly added to terrorist watch lists. Asa Hutchinson, the Homeland Security Department’s under secretary for border security, told the committee that travelers with these problems should contact the ombudsman at the Transportation Security Administration in order to clear their names. Said Hutchinson: “There is a process to clear names. But it does illustrate the importance of improving the whole system.”

For more details, read the full article in The New York Times.

Anarchy and the RNC

New York Police are gearing up for potential violence, destruction of property and acts of civil disobedience during the Republican National Convention by a group of protesters that call themselves anarchists. According to an article in The New York Times, the anarchists, which staged major protests at a 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle and at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000, are planning several events for this year’s RNC, including “chaos on Broadway,” where protestors will harass delegates as they attend Broadway shows. Chief John Timoney of the Miami police has tangled with the anarchists twice: once in 2003 at a WTO meeting in Miami and in 2000 when he was head of the Philadelphia police department. Timoney said the anarchists plan to instigate violence. “These guys are pretty sophisticated and just wait for opportunities. They are going to look to provoke the cops. It’s all a game.”

For more details, read the full article in The New York Times.

IE Flaw Discovered in XP SP2 Patch

Through a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer on Windows XP with SP2, malicious websites can place an executable file in a user’s start-up folder when a user drags or clicks on a program disguised as an image, according to a report from The Register. Danish security firm Secunia advises users to disable Active Scripting or use a different browser to protect themselves from attack.

For more details, read the full article in The Register.