"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.
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I bet I'm on the list just for my opinions. But I don't care.
I normally will side toward the right on most things but the Bush administration's handling of Iraq and to an extent Afghanistan has been inexcusable. They have defined basically every person that does not agree with them as a terrorist. Even in Iraq, insurgents are not terrorists, insurgents are angry Iraqi's who do not want us in there country. Terrorists are people who go into foreign countries to cause terror, hence the name, not citizens of an occupied country. And with the Iraq war, first off there was absolutely no reason for us to invade that country, second, all that war has done is pissed off more Muslims who may have liked the U.S. before but now that we control them hate us and would give their lives to take ours. Afghanistan has been an atrocity as well, we were supposed to go in, capture bin Laden, and leave. Now almost seven years later bin Laden is still free and we are talking about increasing troop levels. I love the United States, I hate what our government has done to it, and it's world image.
Lists like this are useless. If you have a million names, there is no way that it is usable to anyone but direct mailers and call centers....Seriously, they have more people on that list than there are in a couple of our splinter political parties. Focus is important. This is so damned republican.
Terrorists send direct mail now? Who'da thunk?
There have been investigations (reported on by the MSM) stating that only a small minority of the prisoners at Guantanamo are guilty of offenses that would classify them as terrorists, and make them eligible for trial. On the face of it, this list looks like another example of a mistake in action.
Obviously there are people who deserve and need to be fought, but are there 1 million, or even 100,000, terrorists in the whole world?
Of the people who have been detained because they are on this list, how many and what percentage of them have been renditioned, imprisoned, and/or tortured? How many and what percentage were in any way dangerous to their fellow men?
There have always been lists, such as the FBI's ten most wanted list, for example. But in this case, is the list part of the neo-con effort to scare people into submission, or is it being used intelligently, as part of an effort to protect us? My own feeling is that once again this administration is not handling a matter competently, unless one wants to make the argument that they are doing exactly what they set out to do, and it only looks like they are incompetent. Whether this government's actions are intentionally incompetent or intentionally misleading, they are putting us in danger by making matters appear worse than what they are.
What's the exact oppositite of "being used intelligently, as part of an effort to protect us? "
That's my theory.
"Think about it -- when the government announced it was setting up this list, did anyone picture such a thing?"
Actually, yes. Given the massive incompetence displayed by the Bushies, and the fact that they've been wrong about almost everything, I fully expected something like this to happen.
you think its incompetence? LOL
For those who feel that this list is not accurate since there are not 1,000,000 terrorist, you do not understand that the target of this list is domestic citizens who could cause trouble for the administration.
They are crushing the middle class and are anticipating a domestic backlash. This is why we are being stripped of our rights. It is also the reason that they are militarizing the police force and creating an enemies list. I feel that these actions are being taken to prepare for larger injustices.
After the last 8 years, I think it is clear that the rule of law does not apply in this country and the Congress has been reduced to a ceremonial body. By eliminating the middle class it will create a 2 class system like much of the world has. A wealthy ruling class which will usually comprise 10-20% of the population and an underclass of 80-90% of the population. The question is, will the Americans allow themselves to be reduced to a third world country and do we even have a choice anymore?
You should also ask yourself which side of the divide you would be on.
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One name that is noticeably not on the Huffington Post list is Maher Arar. He was a Canadian citizen wrongly sent to Syria by the U.S. government to be tortured for one year. after an impromptu stopover in New York on his way back to his country, he was handcuffed, blind-folded and held against his will. He was brutally tortured and held in a cell the size of a grave. The Canadian government has officially apologized and has given Maher millions of dollars in compensation.
The U.S. governmnet STILL, to this day, has Maher Arar on the watch list....
We don't apologize, sorry.
If he isn't a terrorist, what was he doing in Syria?
Visiting his sick grandmother ?
Surely, I hope that this is a joke (bad one at that).
He wasn't doing anything in Syria. He wasn't anywhere near Syria.
He was a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who left his country when he was a teenager (he's now in his late 30's or early 40's. He is a software engineer and a father of 2 children and was illegally renditioned to Syria against his will by the United States of America.
To this day, not one ounce of evidence has been provided as to why this Canadian was sent against his will to a country that he left more than 20 years ago, to be tortured for more than one year.
Also, for your information, his flight was originally a direct flight to Montreal from Europe. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the flight was diverted to New York. There, he was detained and given no explanation as to what they were about to do to him.
There is a ton of information out there for you to educate yourself as to what the U.S. government did to this innocent man. And he's not the only one. Google is your friend.
Wow, their way off. 1 million? Last I heard Obama had 1.7 donors!
I think it'd be a whole lot easier if they'd just make up a list of folks who wholeheartedlly support this goverment... Prob'bly wouldn't take more than one sheet of paper.
Just think, 300,000,000 to go!
Well, I guess crying wolf has hit new highs now.
Apart from the absurdity of including well known people and very common names, this list as a tool for fighting terrorism is totally meaningless. In today's post-911 world, no terrorist worth his salt will ever fly under his own real name. This is a pointless waste of billions of tax payer dollars and bureaucratic time.
There are people in the world who are willing to die for their beliefs. Aside from a nuclear bomb, that is the most powerful weapon on earth. Now, if those people are on your side, you call them patriots, freedom fighters, or soldiers. If they are on the other side, they are called terrorists. What they are really is poor, or working people, who are compelled to attack, or forced to defend themselves, usually as a result of tyrannical or charismatic men in power positions.
The million terrorist watch list is emblematic of the blatant Fascism that permeates everything in American life now. It isn't creeping fascism, it is full-on, full bore, full steam ahead, in your face Fascism.
The US Government has asked that persons such as postal workers, cable guys, etc, be on the lookout for suspicious terrorist activity in the neighborhoods they work in, such as people talking about the "Constitution"....!!
Did you see that? Coyote was on the list. I am so proud.
Remember Nixon's "Enemies List?" Everybody who was anybody was on that puppy.
The terrorist watch list has so many names on the list that should have been removed, yet they have no protocol in place to remedy these errors. The Department of Homeland Security have no firm protocol for deciding who should be on it, and what proof needed for adding to the list.
One million people obviously aren't terrorists. Until we find a better way of target, recognizing and gathering information on those who really pose a threat to the US, the list is a major inconvenience and an obstacle to law enforcement officials, ultimately wasting their time and resources.
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