[Infowarrior] - Questions and Answers on Terrorist List

[Richard Forno]

Questions and Answers on Terrorist List

http://tinyurl.com/2yyoq3

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN and EILEEN SULLIVAN ­ Nov 9, 2007

WASHINGTON (AP) ‹ Watch-list screening is best known ‹ and widely reviled ‹
for putting Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis, the wife of Sen. Ted Stevens,
a few infants and thousands of innocent U.S. residents through extensive
searching and questioning before they were allowed to fly.

Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the government has stepped up its
screening of travelers to try to find possible terrorists. The key weapon
has been the watch list, and it's barred hundreds of suspected terrorists
from entering the country. Federal officials combined a dozen different
lists into one unified terrorist watch list and the number of names on it
soared from 12 on Sept. 11, 2001, to more than 880,000 today. That
contributed to the extra questioning of Democrats Kennedy of Massachusetts
and Lewis of Georgia and the wife of Stevens, an Alaska Republican.

It also has led to a growing backlog of appeals for relief from people who
are on the list or are being mistaken for similarly named people on the
list. But there's widespread public confusion about how the system works and
how it's used by different agencies across the country.

Q: Who is on the terrorist watch list?

A: There are about 300,000 people on the watch list who the government knows
or suspects may have links to terrorism. Less than 5 percent of these people
are U.S. citizens or foreigners legally living in the country. Some
confusion and problems stem from the fact that these 300,000 individuals are
represented by 880,000 different names on the list, because a separate
record is created for each alias or alternate ID. Even different spellings
can create a separate record.

Q: How does someone get on the list?

A: Any agency can nominate a person to the list, but the FBI and CIA screen
all nominations and make the final decisions. The FBI has said if there is
enough evidence against a person to open a preliminary FBI investigation
because of suspected terrorist links, that name will be placed on the list.
An anonymous phone call about someone isn't enough by itself. The CIA has
said its standards are somewhat subjective.

Q: How does someone get off the list?

A: If an FBI investigation determines a person has no link to terrorism,
that name will be removed from the list. The CIA has refused to tell
congressional investigators its standards for removal.

Q. Who operates the list?

A. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center maintains and distributes the list,
or parts of it, to other federal agencies that use it to screen travelers
and even to 750,000 state and local police who can access it to check people
they stop.

Q: Is the terrorist watch list the same as other programs, such as the ones
used in airports for air travel?

A: Not exactly. The no-fly list which can keep a traveler from boarding a
plane and the selectee list which tags domestic airline passengers for extra
searching and questioning at airports are much smaller portions of the
terrorist watch list. It takes more evidence of terrorist links to get on
these smaller sections of the list than it does to get on the full list.

Q: Do any other agencies use the list?

A: Yes. The State Department consular service, which issues travel visas to
foreigners who want to visit the U.S., gets a version of the list that
includes everyone but U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. The Customs and
Border Protection agency uses the full list to screen arriving and departing
international travelers on planes and ships.

Q: Are there ways to get off these lists?

A: Yes, there are ways to get off the full watch list and the smaller
portions of it used by Homeland Security Department agencies like the
Transportation Security Administration.

The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center has a redress program where people can
request to be removed from the list. But that process takes an average of 67
days.

The Homeland Security Department's redress program, DHS TRIP, processes
appeals as well. Since that office opened Feb. 26, it has received 16,000
requests for redress, and 7,400 of those have been completed. Each request
takes about 44 days to process, and people can track the progress of their
requests online. Most of the people who appeal are not actually on the
terrorist watch list, but they were misidentified at the airport usually
because they have a name similar to someone who is on the watch list.

Q: Is there any relief for those people who are constantly being stopped
because authorities are confusing them with someone on a version of the
list?

A: The DHS TRIP program puts such people on a so-called cleared list that is
circulated to the airlines.

Customs and Border Protection operates its own cleared list for
international travelers, called Primary Lookout Override. It's a
computerized system that automatically suppresses a match on Customs
computers at the borders the next time a person who previously generated a
false match is encountered (unless new derogatory information has come in).
>From inception in February 2006 through September 2007, Customs has put
71,487 names on the override list.

Q. With all these checks, why do so many people get mistakenly stopped or
questioned ‹ sometimes repeatedly ‹ trying to board domestic airplane
flights?

A. Matching names without biometric identifiers like fingerprints will
always generate some mistakes. In addition, screening for domestic air
travelers is now done by each airline. They don't all have immediate access
to the most updated no-fly or selected lists or cleared lists, and they have
different procedures.

Q. Can't this be improved?

A. DHS says its proposed Secure Flight program would be a substantial
improvement. The government would take over matching passenger names with
watch lists from the airlines. DHS says then screeners would all use
up-to-date lists and the same procedures and standards for everyone.

Q. When will Secure Flight begin?

A. It was scheduled to begin its testing this fall but is short of money.
DHS says if Congress doesn't approve the $74 million President Bush has
requested for the program, it will have to delay tests, suspend contracts
and postpone the rollout. With prompt funding, DHS says it could implement
Secure Flight sometime next year.

Q: Has the watch list led to arrests of terrorists?

A: Yes, a few. But the government has never issued a precise figure on the
number. It also has led to arrests of people for other crimes. And it has
barred people from entering the United States, including in 2006 alone, 269
foreigners judged to present an unacceptable risk of committing a terrorist
act.