Absurd Watch List Bloat Hurts Everyone
There are 917,000 terrorists lurking in our midst, poised and ready to attack America! By July, we will have identified over 1 million!
As absurd as that claim seems, it is the very premise of the terrorist watch list compiled and used by the US government to determine who may board a plane -- and soon enough a train.
No one wants to find themselves sitting on an airplane next to Osama Bin Laden. From that vivid image (cited from time to time by security officials) has sprung our gigantic government watch list apparatus, the likes of which we have never seen before. And that apparatus was constructed with the Bush administration's customary ineptitude: create sweeping new systems for targeting a broad swath of the population, and treat the right to due process and the fate of innocent people as an afterthought.
These watch lists are spinning out of control. A September 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported [PDF] that the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.
We've created a rolling, odometer-style "Watch List Counter" with a real-time readout showing how many names are on the list at a given moment. As our counter shows, the list as of today (according to the IG's numbers) now stands at more than 917,000 names and is steadily marching toward that one million mark.
If there are a million terrorists in this country, we're in a lot more trouble than we thought. In fact, if there were a million terrorists in this country, our major cities would be likely be in ruins.
This is typical of the Bush administration War on Terror bait-and-switch strategy: sell everyone on a commonsense step for fighting terror (don't let Bin Laden on a jet) and then use the resulting fear to create a massive system that turns millions of law abiding Americans into potential enemies of the state. When the ordinary person thinks of terrorist watch lists he or she envisions a small, limited list containing names like Osama Bin Laden and his closest associates - not something with a million names.
Watch lists are used for a growing range of purposes well beyond airline passenger screening, such as selecting people for scrutiny and interrogation at the nation's borders, and excluding people from the country entirely. And as is entirely predictable, their use is quickly expanding across the public and private sectors. Already, private businesses like car dealers and mortgage companies are checking government watch lists and refusing to do business with those whose names appear to be included on the list.
Examples of what we've already seen happen include:
* Famous people like Sen. Ted Kennedy have been caught up on the lists because someone else with their name is a suspect. Other famous people like Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) have been caught up on the list because the government thinks they deserve to be on it (but won't say why).
* Uncounted millions of entirely innocent people have been caught up by the airline watch lists. Partly that is because the list affects many people with common names, such as the dozen Robert Johnsons that 60 Minutes brought into their studio, who have all been caught up in no-fly hell. Thousands of Americans have been denied a bank account or credit card by their financial institutions because their names appear on Treasury Department watch lists.
Documents obtained by the ACLU, which reveal some of the bureaucratic complexities behind these lists, make it clear that for an innocent person placed on one of these lists, it can be, for all practical purposes, impossible to escape.
It is fairly clear what we need to do here: impose checks and balances on the government power to place people on watch lists, just as we do in other areas where we give the government power to impinge on people's liberties.
It is quite clear that the Bush administration will only make this problem worse before it leave office.
The next president needs to call his or her Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security into the Oval Office and demand that the watch lists be drastically pared down to the small number of actual terrorist suspects and that Americans have a real and workable right to challenge their mistaken inclusion on a list.
Anything less squanders our limited security resources and is downright un-American.
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Way to go Barry. They just put you
on the list.
...its sad but welcome to the USSA.
We have lost our minds as a country.
Ben Franklin once said that any nation willing to give up liberty for security will have neither.
Use your minds.
How can I get someone put on the list?
Unfortunately Mr. Steinhardt's breathless criticism is ill-informed. The dramatic improvement in the government’s ability to screen travelers to identify terrorists or their associates means the overwhelming majority of innocent travelers experience minimal or no screening-related delays, keeping them safe, and on the move. The General Accountability Office, the independent investigative arm of Congress which does not slouch from criticizing federal agencies, said that the "outcomes [of encounters with individuals on the watchlist] indicate the list has helped combat terrorism" and "the watch list has enhanced U.S. government counterterrorism efforts."
It's true, the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) is now the world’s most comprehensive and, importantly, widely-shared list of known and suspected terrorists. The names it includes are there because of credible information developed by our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, or those of our foreign partners. While the vast majority of people in it likely will never attempt to enter the United States, the TSDB gives our allies, consular officers, airlines, and border screening agencies the ability to make an informed decision about granting admission to the U.S.
News reports and blogs like Steinhardt's have inflated significantly the number of people actually included in the TSDB. Of the slightly more than 300,000 actual people in the TSDB, ninety-five percent are not U.S. persons. It is important to remember that terrorists often adopt aliases, acquire false identifying information such as dates of birth and passports, or steal identities of others. To ensure such tactics do not allow terrorists to escape detection, the TSDB includes a separate “record” for each such alias and false identity. The result is that a single terrorist can generate dozens of records.
The Terrorist Screening Center works hard to ensure that the list remains effective even as it grows. The government does its best to populate the TSDB with the identities of only those who are known or appropriately suspected of being involved in terrorism. In addition, TSC employees constantly review the database to remove the identities of those who have been cleared of any suspicion of engaging in terrorist activity. During fiscal year 2007 alone, TSC employees removed over 100,000 records from the database of individuals that had been cleared of having any nexus to terrorism.
Unfortunately, in a name-based system innocent persons will inevitably be inconvenienced because their name is similar to that of a person properly included in the TSDB. Those experiencing problems because of a coincidental association with someone properly placed in the TSDB can work with the government to rectify the situation. The Department of Homeland Security has created an electronic, on-line system – DHS TRIP -- that allows persons to seek redress and have their names placed on a “cleared” list.
This list helps protect Americans. We're always at work to do it in the most effective, least intrusive way we can, adhering to our important Constitutional principles in the process.
You sound like you might have worked on the program that built the system in question. My comment here wasn't going to be to yours, but in general, saying that the author is a little off in his implicit assertion that these systems are designed and built as sarcastic, pseudo-jokes. But they're not, as you sort of claim. They are, in fact, solicited for, designed by, and built by "true believers.
By that I mean people who believe that computers, with just a few million dollars of work here and there, can magically make us all safer. People who believe that if citizens miss flights to attend family events or critical meetings - who happen to have a name similar to someone on "the list" - it's OK, because we're making it safe for others. People who are so completely non-creative that they rarely consider anything beyond the avenues of attack used by actual terrorists (which are very few and far between), leaving limitless other means of circumventing security (for example, did you catch the show about the little people on TLC where the father who drives a scooter complained to the TSA that no one ever searched his scooter in any airport he's been in?). People who believe that profiling attackers is an effective, logical means of approaching security.
Fact is, no one has been caught by these systems. And there still continue to be publications of claims that Federal agents successfully smuggle weapons and contraband through airport security with relative ease. Profiles are the easiest thing to beat - just recruit people who don't fit the profile. We are not much more secure than we were before the new system was installed.
If we really were terrorists these lists are so unwieldy and unfocused as to insure our cover and plans .I mean, at some point a bureaucracy becomes so complex it takes all its energy to maintain itself.. 9/11 obviously goes to show our intelligence agencies had already reached this point.
Two people I know have been caught up in this -- my mother-in-law, who flew on 9/11 and is now searched every time she goes to an airport, and a good friend with a common name, who receives the same treatment. Completely awful and ridiculous.
This government, in case you haven't noticed, is un-american. It exists to protect the global corporations and itself, the rest of us be damned.
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