"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

[kadene]

The list is now longer than Pinnochio's nose...and will continue to grow until November!

[tendeafears]

C'mon people it isn't one million Americans:

"News reports and blogs 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."

It's fine that people are upset about the procedures, but don't make up a scary number to support your argument, that's the kind of looseness with facts that Bush infuriates us with.

[neecy]

Does this sound like McCarthy-ism to anyone else?

[wutzhappn]

Yes. 1 million more Americans sanctioned by FISA for wiretapping. Thanks Barry.

[wadenelson1]

Hi, my name is Wade Nelson and I'm on the list.

Plutonium.

Attack.

Code word.

Al-Zahiri.

That ought to do it.

[Shaddup]

Once again, bush holding the country hostage.

[wutzhappn]

Oh great, thanks to Barack Obama's FISA vote, all of the above named suspects will be subjected to LEGAL wiretapping. You can keep the Change....

[truthoutdotduh]

Right on! If that is an example of the 'change' you were promising, you can keep the change Obama!

[atomic]

This should tell us everything we need to know about their real agenda. It's not fighting terrorism. That's just their cover story. 911 allowed these elite criminals to execute all their plans, from invading the middle east to wire tapping our phones and gutting the bill of rights.

Their goals also include privatizing as much as possible and leaving the middle class destroyed and in debt to the bankers and oil ruling elite.

Keeping names on a terrorist list is just like what the Soviet Union did with those who disagreed with the party. It is a way to keep tabs on the people who they determine are a threat to their power ... it has nothing to do with terror ...

Terror is their game of choice for reestablishing a New World Order. Osama Bin Laden was created after all by the CIA. The CIA is all about the financial dealings of the New World Order and the ruling elite. It also orchestrates covert operations such as drug running and assassinations for the shadow elite and is accountable only to them.

The agent Valerie Plame was as much brought down by elements within the CIA itself as it was by Cheney. As her roll was keeping tabs on Iran's nuclear capabilities they needed to remove both her and the cover company she worked for AMCO.

They didn't want the pesky facts that Iran had no nuclear capability to get in the way of attacking Iran.

[darcy]

You said it all, atomic. We are screwed.

[toadicux]

Since one has a greater chance of dying from peanuts or hitting a deer than terrorism, yes we are screwed. This is the list for the first group to go to the FEMA camps (if their lucky).

[truthoutdotduh]

yeah, we have been screwed for a while now. I just didn't know how to break it to you softly . . .

[holeybuybull]

Atomic, I thought Plame's front company was Brewster Jennings.

[SouthpawSass]

This jihad hot list is now a right of passage. You're just not a terrorist without being this list... Hell, it's the difference between going to an event wearing Payless BOGO or Jimmy Choo's

Not being on the list is soooo pre 9/11...

[rzan]

Rite of passage.

[dumboldfarmer]

Words like "stupid", "idiotic", and "incompetent" come to mind. There is just no way they could actually be this incompetent, is there? There must be some secretive (and probably illegal) reason that has nothing at all to do with security behind all of this.

[tbone99]

How about blackmail, political manipulation and coercion?

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

It's the new "it" list.

[rkreeves]

Looks like Nixon's "enemies list" is now system-wide, and validated by apathy.

[enoughalready13]

It's the ultimate Watergate ...

Better name = Waterboard­ingIllegal­SpyingGate

[Pyfagorus]

"With common names like Robert Johnson on the list..."

Looks like the Hellhounds of Republican Stupidity and Ineptitude are on his trail.

[Destin]

"Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry."
-- Sir Winston Churchill

"You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again."
-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

[indypete]

"Freedom's just another name for nothing left to lose"

-Kris Kristofferson

[TrevorAlan]

This is one of those proofs that the terrorists have won. Really, a list with everyone on it does you no good or proves you are wrong about what you are tracking. Its a basic and very conservative point of military strategy that you cannot guard everything, you have to choose. At some point, you have to get people off the list for it to do any good.

My understanding of 9/11 is that some of the hijackers were noticed to be on a list at the airport, but a list so prone to mistakes it was ignored. Beyond the inconvenience, if an unwieldy list is allowed to continue it actually will AID terrorists who will slip by as people start to ignore the list to do anything.

[Hillrick]

Name just ONE thing that this administration has done in a passable (forget competent, just passable. Even their destruction of their opponents is not turning out to be a long term accomplishment) fashion.

[jacqmac]

Well, this is as good a place as any to start watching those Telecoms! Nelson Madala??!! David NELSON???!!! TED KENNEDY??!! Gov:Okay--hand over thier phone bills. Thanks! People: NOW get ready for the BIGGEST DANG LAWSUIT YOU EVER SAW!!