CNN is now reporting on Headline News that 325,000 names are now listed on the "terror watchlists", as potential threats to national security. This is after
the Washington Post story on this appeared today.
The number has quadrupled since 2003.
A few bits of info from the article.
The list kept by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) -- created in 2004 to be the primary U.S. terrorism intelligence agency -- contains a far greater number of international terrorism suspects and associated names in a single government database than has previously been disclosed. Because the same person may appear under different spellings or aliases, the true number of people is estimated to be more than 200,000, according to NCTC officials.
The NSA is a key provider of information for the NCTC database, although officials refused to say how many names on the list are linked to the agency's controversial domestic eavesdropping effort.
The NCTC name repository began under its predecessor agency in 2003 with 75,000 names, and it continues to grow. The center was created as part of a broad reorganization of U.S. intelligence agencies after the failure to disrupt the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It is the main agency for analyzing and integrating terrorism intelligence and is under direction of Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.
This all just seems to keep building.
Just 2 days ago, there was a NYTimes story about how people have difficulty getting off the No-Fly List (which is apparently separate from the NCTC list, but since nobody is quite sure how names end up on the No-Fly list, the NCTC list might well be one source), if their names happen to resemble the names of a suspected terrorist. For example:
Last week, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska complained that his wife, Catherine Stevens, has been questioned at checkpoints because her name in its diminutive matches that of the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens. Now known as Yusuf Islam, he has been barred from entering the United States because of activities that the Department of Homeland Security said could be linked to terrorism.
Now, if this is an unresolvable problem for someone like the wife of a Republican U.S. Senator, just imagine how many non-connected and non-powerful people are unable to do anything to clear their names.
As has been discussed many times on this site, there are substantial problems with getting information about how names are added, and why. For example, from 2003, the ACLU discussed their attempts to obtain information & analysed the info that they did receive from the FBI.
How many false positives are on these lists? How do they figure out which names to add? Nobody is quite sure. These lists are extensively distributed domestically and internationally, with no evidence that the data on them is reliable or based on any coherent standards.
And the solution could be even worse. New programs such as Secure Flight and Registered Traveler, mentioned in the NY Times article, allow passengers to pay a fee and register, hoping that this will allow them to get through the screening system. But as the ACLU has pointed out, these programs in turn raise significant civil liberty and privacy concerns.
Just another day in the encroaching big-brother state.