"Terrorist" Watch List Hits One Million Names

The "terrorist" watch list now has more than one million names. Do you feel safer now?

Since February we've been tracking the size of our government's list of ostensible terrorist suspects, which according to the government's own report (pdf) has been rising at a rate of 20,000 per month.

Today I appeared in a press conference at the National Press Club here in Washington to mark this latest threshold in the history of our government's so-called "War on Terror." With me were Caroline Fredrickson, head of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, and two watch list victims: Jim Robinson, a former assistant attorney general for the Civil Division at the Justice Department, who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite possessing a governmental security clearance; and Akif Rahman, an American citizen who has been repeatedly detained, shackled, separated from his family, and interrogated at the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for his business.

The first thing we have to do is reduce the size of this list. There cannot possibly be one million terrorists poised to attack us. If there were our cities would be ablaze. The president - if not this president, then the next one -- needs to order the Terrorist Screening Center (the entity that maintains the list) to take everyone off this list except those for whom there is credible evidence of terrorist activities or ties. And they should be ordered to do it quickly -- within three months.

There's just no excuse for a terrorist watch list with one million names on it. And the million names dramatically understates the number of Americans actually affected by this hopelessly bloated folly. With common names like Robert Johnson on the list, exponentially more Americans are caught up in a Kafkaesque web of suspicion.

Think about it -- when the government announced it was setting up this list, did anyone picture such a thing? Might as well just put the whole population on the list and save on administrative expenses.

The second primary thing that needs to be done is for checks and balances to be imposed on this watch list system. If the government is going to use watch lists, there needs to be in place the same kinds of due process protections that American citizens expect any other time the government interferes with the rights and privileges that other members of society enjoy (such as the right to travel by air).

Congress needs to put into law -- you can't trust bureaucracies to stick with "guidelines" or other weaker protections -- basic protections such as:

• a right to access and challenge data upon which listing is based;
• tight criteria for adding names to the lists;


• rigorous procedures for updating and cleansing names from the lists;


• and most of all, the right to a meaningful, participatory process by which we can challenge our inclusion on a watch list in an adversarial proceeding before a neutral arbiter.

Today we also announced the creation of an online form where victims of the watch list can report their experiences to us. We will collect those stories and use them in a variety of ways to advance our advocacy. We only share or use each story according to the permission that the submitter gives us, and stories can be submitted anonymously.

In some ways, this million-person watch list is the perfect symbol for an administration whose strategy in fighting terrorism has always revolved around making everyone a suspect -- from data mining to ID cards to see-through body scanners. It is an approach based around trying to pick a one-in-a-billion terrorist out of the population, rather than doing the only thing that has ever really worked to stop attacks: following up competently on known terrorists and known leads and working outward from there to go directly to the terrorists.

Comments

[Chavez08]

It's "Terrorism" when executed by those who are underprivileged, exploited, oprresed, enslaved. It's "Foreign Policy" when carried out by men wearing $2000 suits for purpose of corporate profit.

[Ammobob]

World population? In other words, there are so, so many more to be listened to. Keep up the good fight.

[collprof]

That's why it's terribly important that we spy on every phone call overseas. Our grandmother and grandfathers who are calling us from foreign countries are giving us 'the' signal for a go on taking those pictures of our next vacation destination but in Bush's mind we're planning the next 9/11.

Is there any wonder that when Bush goes on TV to make another prepared assault on the English language that 65% of Americans shudder.

I'd still like to know who those 16% of Americans are who think Bush is doing a great job.

[AmericanSinceFeb08]

Am I on this list? Scary, by the of the decade, every american that thinks will be on this list.....

[shelobo]

If you have done research about terrorist's groups could maybe be terrorist groups ,chances are your personal information IS on file.ICQ at one time was famous for being easy to 'hack' another users ICQ logs ,friends list ect.The Columbine Shooters ICQ accounts were accesed by federal agents after the shootings,those agents traced everyone that was on the boys friends lists,some innocents that curious about what the shooters said and who they knew added themselves to the kids friends list,only to be contacted by the FBI later on.Yes ,if you use the I/N for any reason and you land on the wrong site ,you could possably very well be on a 'MAYBE' list kept by our own goverment..

[watchingthings]

.....and when everyone winds up on that list is the time the public should start to worry and realise why their neighbors are starting to disappear at night.

[shelobo]

If any of my neighbors were to disappear at night,I would then know that ICE was finally doing it's job!

[MuseScavenger]

...Tops one million and thus loses all credibility... just like the administration that created it.

[kingfelix]

With just 18000 or so people sharing my name, I should be okay, right?

Maybe I can devote my life to monitoring all my namesakes and encouraging them to Do the Right Thing...

[katheyquilts]

I'VE GOT IT!!!!!!If we all just change our names to George and Laura......

[OgreDaddy]

If the American people want a reality check, just count how many people are employed
by the Terrorism Industry.

It really is a whole new multi-billion dollar industry.

FEAR=FUNDING

[HypocrisyAlarm]

Yes, we can readily see why nothern Virginia has grown at such a pace: it's all growth in the political industry. You know, all those contractors, consultants, pollsters, spin doctors, etc. sucking the life (to say nothing of dollars) out of the US citizenry.

[OgreDaddy]

Indeed,

Between Mclean, Tyson's Corner, Reston and new development along the Rt. 28 corridor and Dulles, just off the top of my head, we have major offices for

Mitre, Northrop-Grumman, Lockheed, Dyncorp, BEA, EADS, Raytheon, Booze Allen Hamilton, SAIC, L-3 Communications (who keep pinging my computer for some reason) TRW, CSC, Bechtel, Bearing Point, Orbital, Oracle Microsoft, Apple Government Sales, Rolls-Royce, the new not-so secret National Anti-Terrorism Center, DHS, DEA, FBI, U.S. Customs, Postal Service Forensic Lab, and countless other IT and information systems
consulting firms and at least 6 satellite offices for the CIA.

While it's great to have so many people employed in Northern VA., the reason
they are so gainfully employed is quite disturbing.

It is truly a new, highly profitable, fear based Terrorism Industry.

[whatsthatsound]

Paranoia strikes deep; into your life it will creep.

A potential terrorist, a potential Communist, a potential anarchist (pretty Old School, but they were the bogeymen in the earlier part of this century).....
Do the people who make these lists really imagine they're making anyone safer? Hardly. It's the same mentality that encouraged everyone in East Germany to rat on their neighbors, friends and family members.
It's about as American as a Trotsky poster.

[shelobo]

It's 'Hooverism' just more skilled and even more secretive.Back in 1947 'HUAC' known as the House Un-American Activities Committee,investigated communist influences in the American movie industry and J.Edgar Hoover pushed it with all it's glory , Richard Nixon was a HUAC member . The HUAC provided an anonymous white paper on Communism in Hollywood, a list of individuals who belonged or once belonged to the Communist Party or to Communist front organizations, and a list of cooperative witnesses and some the names on that list had connections with politicans from different countries and with Important politicans in this country and with famous hollywood names ,Sinatra was firends with a woman named Judith Campbell( once the mistress of Sam Giancana ,Sinatra arranged for JFK to meet her, so Hoover became obsessed with hollywood names that he THOUGHT were communists..syping by our goverment isn't anything new at all.

[whatsthatsound]

Oh, I know it isn't new. I'm just saying it isn't American; it doesn't represent the values that this country was founded on and should aspire to uphold.

[tbone99]

I think we're all "Spartacus:, read this-

WASHINGTON - The name of the Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor turned up on the government's terror watch list.

This terrorism-era roster, popped up with the name of former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson.

Robinson joined another mistaken-identity American and the American Civil Liberties Union Monday in calling for elimination of the list, which is designed to identify suspected terrorists.

[shelobo]

Mandela was on the list too,but now his name has been removed,ordered by Bush .A six year old child was on the watch list,John Anderson of Minneapolis ,read his story at http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-11-06-watchlist_N.htmt_N.htm

[frappe]

From the article:

"...Might as well just put the whole population on the list and save on administrative expenses...."

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The sad part is that I wouldn't be surprised if the entire population is already on the list insofar as countless numbers of U.S. citizens have already been subjected to electronic eavesdropping and have probably had their email communications copied as well. This is not the America that I grew up with. It is "Fortress America" as conceived by a small but powerful group of scheming, reactionary nutcases who place little value in freedom and our Constitution.

[prscnt1]

The list is expected to double every year until each and everyone in the world is listed. The, list is going to look at ancestry and dig all the graves to find genetic correlation among races and past. It will stop when the backward investigation will identify Lucy really was human terrorist fighting apes and chimps.

Also, there will be massive needs of computer power, storage, and IT professionals to keep track of this stuff for unelected govts world over.

[whatsthatsound]

Why stop there? The list can go forward too, identifying who the terrorists will be in the years 2027, 2310, etc. The possibilities are exponential!
And it can go beyond our own species as well. If a potential terrorist owns a ferret, isn't that ferret also a potential threat? It could be taught to deposit small, potentially terrorist thingies in potential terrorist targets. Maybe that's why Rudy Giuliani was so weirded out about ferrets. They're the enemy!! At least potentially, they are.

[cdnnewsjunky]

I do believe that someone is trying to sell you a bill of goods. After Bush's failed adventures in the M.E. I think the number is far far greater than a measly million.

[tbone99]

Interestng that 14 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were on the list and it didn't seem to help . Also goes to show the list PRECEEDED 9/11

[darthdarcy]

We are all Terrorists as far as the government is concerned, tax paying pre-incarcerates and terrorists not Citizens any more...

Guilty till proven innocent...