On the other hand, I’d like to see the birthdate information limited to month and year (to reduce some identity theft risk).

What I think is hilarious, is the fact that despite all the years of computer and data base development,

1) the databases can’t handle middle names well, can’t handle long last names, and can’t handle native scripts other than English (no Thai, Chinese, Arabic). Even if the airlines need Romanizations of foreign scripts so the gate agents can pronounce foreign names and tell one from another, it’s absurd to think that foreign spellings also get transliterated to the English alphabet uniformly.

2) we are fools to think that names are as “consistent” in foreign countries as they are in this country. Spelling and usage shifts much more readily in other countries than they shift here. Heck, for that matter, I drove databases nuts when I used my middle name instead of my first name (I never use my first name, EXCEPT for travel or driver’s license purposes).

The whole idea of tagging identity to an officially issued card or supposed fixed name is absurd. We need a finger printing biometric device if we really want to track the bad guys.

Assuming we can figure out who the bad guys are. The elephant in the sitting room is the fact that terrorist organizations constantly recruit new and unknown names and faces to do their dirty work for them. Our lists will ALWAYS be out of date.