What's in a name? That which we call a rose / by any other word could face extraordinary rendition.

Prologue: A college roommate of mine and I stayed in touch off and on after graduation, then, during the 1990s (and mainly because of me) we fell out of touch. Contact resumed around 6 years ago, shortly after which his work email address stopped working. I wrote this fact off to the end of the dot-com bubble (his employer was one of the older companies but went through turmoil same as the upstarts) and assumed he'd be in touch once the dust settled and he landed on his feet.

Now I'm beginning to worry that it may not be that simple. You see, my old roomie is an uncommon fellow, but he has a very common name. Here's why that detail matters:

Thousands of people have been mistakenly linked to names on terror watch lists when they crossed the border, boarded commercial airliners or were stopped for traffic violations, a government report said Friday.

More than 30,000 airline passengers have asked just one agency - the Transportation Security Administration - to have their names cleared from the lists, according to the Government Accountability Office report.

Hundreds of millions of people each year are screened against the lists by Customs and Border Protection, the State Department and state and local law enforcement agencies. The lists include names of people suspected of terrorism or of possibly having links to terrorist activity.

"Misidentifications can lead to delays, intensive questioning and searches, missed flights or denied entry at the border," the report said. "Whether appropriate relief is being afforded these individuals is still an open question."

When questions arose about tens of thousands of names between December 2003 and January 2006, the names were sent back to the agencies that put them on the lists, the GAO said. Half of those were found to be misidentified, the report found.

In December 2003, disparate agencies with counterterrorism responsibilities consolidated dozens of watch lists of known or suspected terrorists into the new Terrorist Screening Center run by the FBI.

People are considered "misidentified" if they are matched to the database and then, upon further examination, are found not to match.

Yeah, lord knows that bit of bureaucratic insight makes me feel safer. How about you?

It would be one thing if the system gave a false-positive on a Kabul-to-JFK passenger booked under the name "Fred bin Ladin," but, according to tomorrow night's CBS "60 Minutes," the system isn't even that close to getting it right.

The name of David Belfield who now goes by Dawud Sallahuddin, is not on the list, even though he assassinated someone in Washington, D.C., for former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. This is because the accuracy of the list meant to uphold security takes a back seat to overarching security needs: it could get into the wrong hands. "The government doesn't want that information outside the government," says Cathy Berrick, Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues for the General Accounting Office.

Berrick says Homeland Security would probably agree that leaving such names off the list is a concern. The Transportation Security Administration is trying to fix the list through a program called "Secure Flight," says Berrick, but after three years and an estimated $144 million spent on the program, there's "nothing tangible yet," she says.

Even if the list is made more accurate, it won't help thousands of innocent travelers who share a common name on the list and who get detained, sometimes for hours, when they attempt to fly.

Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson are some of those names. Kroft talked to 12 people with the name Robert Johnson, all of whom are detained almost every time they fly. The detentions can include strip searches and long delays in their travels.

"Well, Robert Johnson will never get off the list," says Donna Bucella, who oversaw the creation of the list and has headed up the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center since 2003. She regrets the trouble they experience, but chalks it up to the price of security in the post-9/11 world. "They're going to be inconvenienced every time … because they do have the name of a person who's a known or suspected terrorist," says Bucella.

Kevin Drum pointed out:

You know, I'll bet if there were some senator named Robert Johnson, the FBI would figure out a way to make this list a little more user-friendly. Maybe we should try to elect one.

--which is not a bad idea, but longtime p3 correspondent Doctor TV has a better one:

The point about electing a member of Congress named Robert Johnson is one solution. The other is to add the names Donna Bucella and Cathy Berrick to the list.

Epilogue: While we're waiting for that: Rob, if you're out there and you're not in GITMO, could you drop us a line to let us know you're okay? Thanks.