[Infowarrior] - US Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years

[Richard Forno]

Terror Database Has Quadrupled In Four Years
U.S. Watch Lists Are Drawn From Massive Clearinghouse

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 25, 2007; A01

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032400
944_pf.html

Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the
world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and
sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where
analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and
terrorism suspects.

Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a
storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community
believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists
distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates,
created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11,
2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda
operatives.

But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from
fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database
threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry
that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of
TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean. "Where am I going to
be, where is my successor going to be, five years down the road?"

TIDE has also created concerns about secrecy, errors and privacy. The list
marks the first time foreigners and U.S. citizens are combined in an
intelligence database. The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on
the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the
process can lead to "horror stories" of mixed-up names and unconfirmed
information, Travers acknowledged.

The watch lists fed by TIDE, used to monitor everyone entering the country
or having even a casual encounter with federal, state and local law
enforcement, have a higher bar. But they have become a source of irritation
-- and potentially more serious consequences -- for many U.S. citizens and
visitors.

In 2004 and 2005, misidentifications accounted for about half of the tens of
thousands of times a traveler's name triggered a watch-list hit, the
Government Accountability Office reported in September. Congressional
committees have criticized the process, some charging that it collects too
much information about Americans, others saying it is ineffective against
terrorists. Civil rights and privacy groups have called for increased
transparency.

"How many are on the lists, how are they compiled, how is the information
used, how do they verify it?" asked Lillie Coney, associate director of the
Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center. Such information is
classified, and individuals barred from traveling are not told why.

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed
repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the
watch-listed Cat Stevens. The listing referred to the Britain-based pop
singer who converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam. The
reason Islam is not allowed to fly to the United States is secret.

So is the reason Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, remains on the State
Department's consular watch list. Detained in New York while en route to
Montreal in 2002, Arar was sent by the U.S. government to a year of
imprisonment in Syria. Canada, the source of the initial information about
Arar, cleared him of all terrorism allegations last September -- three years
after his release -- and has since authorized $9 million in compensation.

TIDE is a vacuum cleaner for both proven and unproven information, and its
managers disclaim responsibility for how other agencies use the data.
"What's the alternative?" Travers said. "I work under the assumption that
we're never going to have perfect information -- fingerprints, DNA -- on 6
billion people across the planet. . . . If someone actually has a better
idea, I'm all ears."
'Thousands of Messages'

The electronic journey a piece of terrorism data takes from an intelligence
outpost to an airline counter is interrupted at several points for analysis
and condensation.

President Bush ordered the intelligence community in 2003 to centralize data
on terrorism suspects, and U.S. agencies at home and abroad now send
everything they collect to TIDE. It arrives electronically as names to be
added or as additional information about people already in the system.

The 80 TIDE analysts get "thousands of messages a day," Travers said, much
of the data "fragmentary," "inconsistent" and "sometimes just flat-out
wrong." Often the analysts go back to the intelligence agencies for details.
"Sometimes you'll get sort of corroborating information," he said, "but many
times you're not going to get much. What we use here, rightly or wrongly, is
a reasonable-suspicion standard."

Each TIDE listee is given a number, and statistics are kept on nationality
and ethnic and religious groups. Some files include aliases and sightings,
and others are just a full or partial name, perhaps with a sketchy
biography. Sunni and Shiite Muslims are the fastest-growing categories in a
database whose entries include Saudi financiers and Colombian
revolutionaries. U.S. citizens -- who Travers said make up less than 5
percent of listings -- are included if an "international terrorism nexus" is
established. A similar exception for the administration's warrantless
wiretap program came under court challenge from privacy and civil rights
advocates.
Information Sharing

Every night at 10, TIDE dumps an unclassified version of that day's harvest
-- names, dates of birth, countries of origin and passport information --
into a database belonging to the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center. TIDE's
most sensitive information is not included. The FBI adds data about U.S.
suspects with no international ties for a combined daily total of 1,000 to
1,500 new names.

Between 5 and 6 a.m., a shift of 24 analysts drawn from the agencies that
use watch lists begins a new winnowing process at the center's Crystal City
office. The analysts have access to case files at TIDE and the original
intelligence sources, said the center's acting director, Rick Kopel.

Decisions on what to add to the Terrorist Screening Center master list are
made by midafternoon. The bar is higher than TIDE's; total listings were
about 235,000 names as of last fall, according to Justice Department
Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. The bar is then raised again as agencies
decide which names to put on their own watch lists: the Transportation
Security Administration's "no-fly" and "selectee" lists for airlines;
Consular Lookout and Support System at the State Department; the Interagency
Border and Inspection System at the Department of Homeland Security; and the
Justice Department's National Crime Information Center. The criteria each
agency use are classified, Kopel said.

Some information may raise a red flag for one agency but not another.
"There's a big difference between CLASS and no-fly," Kopel said, referring
to State's consular list. "About the only criteria CLASS has is that you're
not a U.S. person. . . . Say 'a Mohammed from Syria.' That's useless for me
to watch-list here in the United States. But if I'm in Damascus processing
visas . . . that might be enough for someone to . . . put a hold on the visa
process."

All of the more than 30,000 individuals on the TSA's no-fly list are
prohibited from entering an aircraft in the United States. People whose
names appear on the longer selectee list -- those the government believes
merit watching but does not bar from travel -- are supposed to be subjected
to more intense scrutiny.

With little to go on beyond names, airlines find frequent matches. The
screening center agent on call will check the file for markers such as sex,
age and prior "encounters" with the list. The agent might ask the airlines
about the passenger's eye color, height or defining marks, Kopel said.
"We'll say, 'Does he have any rings on his left hand?' and they'll say, 'Uh,
he doesn't have a left hand.' Okay. We know that [the listed person] lost
his left hand making a bomb."

If the answers indicate a match, that "encounter" is fed back into the FBI
screening center's files and ultimately to TIDE. Kopel said the agent never
tells the airline whether the person trying to board is the suspect. The
airlines decide whether to allow the customer to fly.

TSA receives thousands of complaints each year, such as this one released to
the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2004 under the Freedom of
Information Act: "Apparently, my name is on some watch list because
everytime I fly, I get delayed while the airline personnel call what they
say is TSA," wrote a passenger whose name was blacked out. Noting that he
was a high-level federal worker, he asked what he could do to remove his
name from the list.

The answer, Kopel said, is little. A unit at the screening center responds
to complaints, he said, but will not remove a name if it is shared by a
terrorism suspect. Instead, people not on the list who share a name with
someone listed can be issued letters instructing airline personnel to check
with the TSA to verify their identity. The GAO reported that 31 names were
removed in 2005.
A Process Under Fire

A recent review of the entire Terrorist Screening Center database was
temporarily abandoned when it proved too much work even for the night crew,
which generally handles less of a workload. But the no-fly and selectee
lists are being scrubbed to emphasize "people we think are a danger to the
plane, and not for some other reason they met the criteria," Kopel said.

A separate TSA system that would check every passenger name against the
screening center's database has been shelved over concern that it could grow
into a massive surveillance program. The Department of Homeland Security was
rebuked by Congress in December for trying to develop a risk-assessment
program to profile travelers entering and leaving the United States based on
airline and financial data.

Kopel insisted that private information on Americans, such as credit-card
records, never makes it into the screening center database and that "we rely
100 percent on government-owned information."

The center came in for ridicule last year when CBS's "60 Minutes" noted that
14 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were listed -- five years after their
deaths. Kopel defended the listings, saying that "we know for a fact that
these people will use names that they believe we are not going to list
because they're out of circulation -- either because they're dead or
incarcerated. . . . It's not willy-nilly. Every name on the list, there's a
reason that it's on there."