[Infowarrior] - Terrorist watch list hits 1 million

[Richard Forno]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-03-10-watchlist_N.htm

Terrorist watch list hits 1 million
By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — The government's terrorist watch list has hit 1 million  
entries, up 32% since 2007.

Federal data show the rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries  
last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to  
purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in  
investigations.

It's unclear how many individuals those 33,000 records represent — the  
center often uses multiple entries, or "identities," for a person to  
reflect variances in name spellings or other identifying information.  
The remaining million entries represent about 400,000 individuals,  
according to the center.

The new figures were provided by the screening center and the Office  
of the Director of National Intelligence in response to requests from  
USA TODAY.

"We're continually trying to improve the quality of the information,"  
says Timothy Edgar, a civil liberties officer at the intelligence  
director's office. "It's always going to be a work in progress."

People put on the watch list by intelligence and law enforcement  
agencies can be blocked from flying, stopped at borders or subjected  
to other scrutiny. About 95% of the people on the list are foreigners,  
the FBI says, but it's a source of frequent complaints from U.S.  
travelers.

In the past two years, 51,000 people have filed "redress" requests  
claiming they were wrongly included on the watch list, according to  
the Department of Homeland Security. In the vast majority of cases  
reviewed so far, it has turned out that the petitioners were not  
actually on the list, with most having been misidentified at airports  
because their names resembled others on it.

There have been 830 redress requests since 2005 where the person was,  
in fact, confirmed to be on the watch list, and further review by the  
screening center led to the removal of 150, or 18% of them.

Without specific rules for who goes on the list, it's too bloated to  
be effective, says Tim Sparapani, a lawyer with the American Civil  
Liberties Union.

A 2007 audit by the Government Accountability Office said more needed  
to be done to ensure the list's accuracy, but still found that it has  
"enhanced the U.S. government's counterterrorism efforts."



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http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-03-10-watchlist_N.htm