Babies Under Scrutiny At Airports
Kids With Names Similar To Terror Suspects Kept Off Their Flights
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Play CBS Video Video A Baby Or A Terrorist? A Virginia baby was stopped at Dulles airport after his name popped up on a watch list. Nancy Yamada reports that he was almost denied boarding on an international flight for security reasons.
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Checking baggage through at Reagan National Airport (AP)
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Ingrid Sanden, with her one-year-old daughter, who she says was stopped at the airport in Phoenix because her name was similar to a name of a possible terrorist on the government's "no-fly list." (AP)
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Interactive Eye On Air Safety See how turbulence affects an airplane, test your flight survival knowledge and see how black boxes help crash investigators piece together what happened.
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Interactive America On Guard The Homeland Security Department, the terror alert system, preparedness quiz and more.
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Special Report War On Terror Complete coverage of the military's battle against terrorism.
Two especially sticky issues: babies and children reportedly being stopped from boarding because of names too similar to terror suspects; and an effort to modify sophisticated x-ray machines to detect bombs and other threats while suppressing potentially embarrassing detailed images of body parts.
USA Today says the Transportation Security Administration is paying two engineering firms $722,000 to modify new super-revealing x-ray machines so that the images they produce could be adjusted to add or subtract details.
"We believe you get excellent detection capability even with filtering," Joe Reiss, marketing director for American Science, one of the engineering firms building the modified machines, told the newspaper.
Others have their doubts that machines sparing air travelers' privacy would also guard against smuggled weapons. The TSA reportedly hopes to be testing a few of the new machines in airports sometime this fall.
Another area which appears to be in need of fine-tuning: the "no fly" lists meant to make things tougher for would-be hijackers by refusing to allow passengers to board if there is any trace of suspicion about their intentions.
Stopping babies from boarding planes sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents faxed.
The Transportation Security Administration, which administers the lists, instructs airlines not to deny boarding to children under 12 — or select them for extra security checks — even if their names match those on a list.
But it happens anyway. Debby McElroy, president of the Regional Airline Association, said: "Our information indicates it happens at every major airport."
©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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