> What a sad and terrifying place America has become.
1 human error is not a statistic, nor does it represent the system in any way.
I still like America and I'm okay with this happening... The system took some time, but it ultimately worked. Which is a credit to it, and not a penalty against it.
I doubt you'd measure success exclusively by the number of false positives but you'd also need to factor in the impact of a false positive.
For eg: There was an x-ray machine [1] with a software bug that would accidentally deliver a dose 100 times the intended dose. I'm sure the machine operated correctly thousands of times however there were "at least 6 accidents" and 3 deaths (worst case scenario). One would not say that this system works.
7 years and 4 million dollars to get on a plane is not working. It absolutely represents the system: There's no way to handle human error, which we all know happens.
I seriously doubt that pro-bono counsel actually worked 24/7 for 7 years on this case. I also doubt the 3-5MM amount, which is probably designed to extract as much cash from the government when the time comes (it's probably 3x of whatever the ceiling is for the damage award).
More than likely, the 7 year figure involved about a month of form submitting, a month or two of figuring out the system/process, a few days in court, and a whole lot of wait time.
At the end, this complicated matter worked itself out. In a secret court no less. Which is a testament to itself.
I just did so. Your link supports my conclusions 100%.
It was mostly waiting time (95% of it from the looks of it), everyone trying to figure out jurisdiction and law issues, and the fact they were suing for lots and lots of money from the start - that made the government "fight" it by mostly conceding on the issues.
This whole story attempts to spin 1 human error event against the system.
It isn't the one human error that's the problem. It's the obstinate, malicious, willful unwillingness to admit and correct the error. It's the lying and coverup. It's the harassment (blocking the daughter, an American citizen, from flying to the trial). Check out the original case of the state secrets privilege to see that this has been going on for much too long.
If you really did read that link, then you'll have noticed that it's not just one error. A large fraction of all entries in the watchlist system are likely to be erroneous.
In case you missed that part, the statistics quoted in the paragraph starting at page 36, line 22 are particularly interesting.
It's not the time spent working which is the issue.
If you were accidentally put on the no fly list tomorrow would it be okay that you were not allowed to board an airplane anywhere in or bound for the us for 7 years?
I understand mistakes. That's no problem. The problem is refusal to admit a mistake except when ordered to by a court. All the government had to do was say, "Woops, misfiled that, you're off the list."
When we analyse a process, we don't simply measure failure rate, we also measure the failure mode. For instance, take a car which only fails with a probability 10^(-10) (pick a number you're happy with). Sounds not so bad? Well, what if the failure mode is "destroy the universe"? Not good now, is it? In fact, such a car would simply not be permitted to be used.
Anyway, this isn't some big argument against America. It's an argument against perpetrating a system that fails to correct its errors. With criticism, and bugfixes, it will become better.
How you recover from an error is a defining characteristic of the character of an individual or organisation. People make mistakes. Fixing them is what matters. Come clean and fix it as fast as you can. Anything less is not good enough.
1 human error is not a statistic, nor does it represent the system in any way.
I still like America and I'm okay with this happening... The system took some time, but it ultimately worked. Which is a credit to it, and not a penalty against it.