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Comment by justanother | Hacker News Reader

It isn't just police. I have a somewhat common American name. A bank once opened a signature loan for one of my 4 or so same-state doppelgangers and sent me the payment coupons. One of the doppelgangers is a felon, which sucks for background checks and also because I love to travel and therefore always end up with an 'X' from the APC kiosk. Post-Trump, this means about an hour of detention in Miami while a lady questions me in Spanish until finally they realize we have different birthdays and physical descriptions. They told me it would stop if I got Global Entry. It didn't.

This could all be prevented. These organizations are just flat-out negligent and don't care.

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I also have a common name. I was once called to the principal's office, where I, confused, started to receive a lecture.

  THEY: <confusing nonsense>
  I: What are you talking about?
  THEY: You know what I'm talking about.  Don't play dumb.
  I: (after 10 seconds of thought) How many people named $NAME attend this school?
  THEY: <checking records>
  THEY: ...  Two.  Get back to class!  Now!

No apology. No sign of contrition. They acted like it was my fault that they screwed up. If it had ever happened more than once, I certainly would have raised some hell over it.

They truly do not care. If there is a problem, it is your fault, for being an inconveniently irregular person. I shudder to think at how many of us would be inconvenienced if any one of the other people than share my name and birthdate were disreputable or notorious among certain government agencies.

Anecdotally, municipal and circuit court judges could care less about whether you get treated fairly or not, so long as your case does not make their job even one iota more difficult. You could do 110% of their work for them, and they still might rule capriciously, telling you to appeal if you don't like it.

The thing that pissed me off most about the article was the innocent party pleading guilty and paying fines. It made me want to leap through my screen and scream at her in person.

I think you mean you are being an inconveniently regular person, for having a common name.

> It made me want to leap through my screen and scream at her in person.

That would be attacking the victim, not the person who deserves to be screamed at.

Who is that person? It appears to be the system rather than an individual.

Being a victim doesn't mean you can't also do something scream-worthy on its own merits while that is happening.

I'd like to scream at everyone who pleads guilty to something they know they didn't do. I'd also like to scream at people who take a confidential settlement that allows the other party to continue avoiding ultimate accountability for their actions, possibly creating victims of other people in the future.

They may have valid personal reasons for doing it, but "seeking an outcome better for me at the expense of everyone else" is not a strategy that engenders a lot of sympathy in me.

if she had gone for the "not guilty option" she would have missed out on a job and faced much higher financial costs. How would that have helped?

We cannot say for certain what would have happened if she had done something other than the thing she actually did.

I have a common name, and some jobs that required background checks, and the most I have ever had to do regarding felons with similar names to my own is sign a note saying that none of those people were me.

If I were in her situation today, I would ask the company for the mailing address of its corporate attorney, and go from there.

Yup, I totally agree. My father had a colleague whose name was (unfortunately) Kim Jong Il, the former, deceased dictator of North Korea.

Even though he was clearly alive and well and way taller, he'd be pulled in for questioning every time he boarded an international flight.

> Even though he was clearly alive and well and way taller

That's not relevant, because they probably weren't suspecting him of being the Supreme Leader, they were suspecting him of having a reason to conceal his identity (or possibly of being mentally ill).

Sure, I can understand being detained the first time he enters the US, but each and every time?

Right. My first instinct when I want to conceal my identity is to assume the pseudonym Kim Jong Il. Helps keep a low profile. /s

As per your comment that it could be indicative of his mental health, I would bet my bottom dollar that this is baseless speculation, with no basis in actual research of the behavioral patterns of the mentally ill.

In short, par for the TSA course: thrash blindly around in the dark, catching no one, inconveniencing everyone to remind us all of how important they are.

"Either I'm the dictator of North Korea traveling incognito and without an entourage in which case you should treat me as having diplomatic immunity and send me on my way or contact the US State Department, or I'm obviously not the dictator of North Korea and I've probably had enough trouble in my life already because of the matching name and you should send me on my way."

"By the way, if you contact the State Department they're probably going to laugh at you."

> lady questions me in Spanish until finally they realize we have different birthdays and physical descriptions

(sarcastically) If only they could check the physical descriptions. And then flag the passport as "already checked".

This is probably the best case for giving your child a "unique" name. I would have also probably changed my name after the first occurrence.

It's pretty sad that my email address is a better unique identifier than most of the values the government tries to use.

I suppose it's an incentives thing - if I give different emails for different events, that's a problem for the government. If they have multiple people 'assigned' to my name and birthdate, that's my problem. But it's still damned sad that they're using an identifier which isn't even close to unique for topics this important.

I regularly get notices for children's sports leagues, drugs available for pickup at pharmacy, updates to apartment rental procedures, etc. for others who believe they have my email address. All because I have a simple first.last@gmail.com address, rather than something with goofy numbers appended.

I've been dealing something similar for years now. There is a guy out there who thinks that his email address is firstlast@gmail.com, however I've had the first.last@gmail.com version of the address from back before google decided that the dots didn't matter any more.

It appears to me that google merged the addresses but he still continues to use the dotless address when signing up for things.

It amazes me that he thinks it works, surely none of the email ever gets to it?

I've tracked him down on facebook and got a message to him via his wife.... but it continues to happen. Which makes me wonder if somehow sometimes it does work for him?

For me it certainly isn't one person. These odd messages are coming from all over the English-speaking world.

Are you sure that google ever "merged" the dot and non-dot versions? As I recall (and I remember finding about that dots don't matter over a decade ago), it was like this since gmail launched?

I have a pretty unique email address (you'd probably guess it) but somehow I once ended up on the LA Bar association mailing list.

could be worse. I'm <first initial><last name>@gmail.com.

> I would have also probably changed my name after the first occurrence.

There was nothing wrong with my name, until I was about 12 years old and that no talent ass clown became famous and started oppressing his people.

No way, why should I change? He's the one who sucks.

It's a case of bad incentives: nobody is going to lose his job because they harass you, but somebody is going to suffer if a felon somehow goes through unmolested and then proceeds to do something that local newspapers might report.

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