Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names

WASHINGTON, DC – The nation’s terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government’s own reported numbers for the size of the list.

“Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ‘suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon…”

“…America’s new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. “It must be fixed without delay.”

“Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning,” said Steinhardt. “I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist…”

“…it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought…”

Yep, that sounds like dubya and his administration. Nothing fails like failure. The deity looks after fools and idiots, it’s just that everyone else suffers.

AUDIT OF THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE TERRORIST WATCHLIST NOMINATION PROCESSES (pdf)

Audit Report 08-16

March 2008

…We believe that informal information sharing processes create a greater risk that terrorism information is not passed fully, accurately, and timely and that information is not acted upon in an appropriate manner. We therefore recommend that DOJ consider promulgating general policy related to watchlist nomination processes and the sharing of information that might result in a nomination. Such policy could identify nomination thresholds and information sharing criteria, or require formalization of watchlist nomination and information sharing activities. Although each DOJ component would continue its current initiatives to share information related to known or suspected terrorists and the FBI would continue to make its nominations, such a policy would provide an overall framework within which all DOJ components would operate. Further, if DOJ components operated within a standardized framework, others in the Intelligence Community, such as NCTC, would have a better understanding of the intent of, and act appropriately upon, information provided…

[emphasis added]

That would explain Nelson Mandela.