Ever since the horrendous attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the airlines and various states’ security organisations trusted with guaranteeing security have gone into overdrive to enshittify air travel.

From condescending orders barked at you by barely-trained staff with no interest in making their job easier on themselves to the already frustratingly-long queues to get past that hurdle of show and tell. A burden that was already astonishingly tedious, usually as a direct result of a passenger not understanding that metal detectors detect … wait for it … metal!

A Swiss hacker reports that he/she/they discovered a file containing all the names and other information on the US Government’s “No Fly List”. A list that, like the first rule of fight club, no one talks about.

If that wasn’t bad enough, consider that on that list, there are children as young as four years old, according to those that have seen the list.

But here we reach a new low.

The name of the “database” of names?

NoFly.csv

Yep, you got that right. A fucking comma-separated file.

Words cannot describe the level at which this is unacceptable, regardless of circumstances.

… but wait. It does get worse.

I’ll let you read on through the Techdirt article for more analysis.

24 January 2023 — French West Indies