[Infowarrior] - Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names

[Richard Forno]

Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names (7/14/2008)

http://www.aclu.org/privacy/35968prs20080714.html

ACLU launches online watch list complaint form

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (202) 675-2312 or media at dcaclu.org

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."

Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology  
and Liberty Program, spoke today along with two victims of the watch  
list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Criminal  
Division who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite  
possessing a governmental security clearance and Akif Rahman, an  
American citizen who has been detained and interrogated extensively at  
the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for business.

"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."

Controls on the watch lists called for by the ACLU included:

     * due process
     * 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.

The ACLU also called for the president - if not this one then the next  
- to issue an executive order requiring the lists to be reviewed and  
limited to only those for whom there is credible evidence of terrorist  
ties or activities. The review should be concluded within 3 months.

In February, the ACLU unveiled an online "watch list counter," which  
has tracked the size of the watch list based on a September 2007  
report by the inspector general of the Justice Department, which  
reported that it was growing by 20,000 names per month.

The ACLU is also announcing today the creation of an online form where  
victims of the watch list can tell us their stories. We will collect  
those stories and use them (with permission) in various ways to  
advance our advocacy. A link to the form is available online at www.aclu.org/watchlist 
  or directly at www.aclu.org/watchlistform.

The watch list counter and other materials are available at: www.aclu.org/watchlist