It pisses me off that we squander scarce security resources on obvious mismatches.
It seems so blindingly stupid, I wonder if there’s an ulterior motive. If you have to de-plane and investigate all partial name matches even with the wrong DOB and sex, and you have a database of Arabic names - voilà - you can red-flag any or all passengers with Arabic names.
Pure speculation, of course. Arabic names are hard to translate and match and variants are common. (eg, a surname in the AP story was “Elmoslemany”). I understand the need for partial matches on names.
But why investigate passengers with the wrong sex and DOB? Looking for relatives of people on the watch lists? They damn sure weren’t doing that in the days immediately after 9-11.