"Big Brother is watching you..."
...and he has a quota.
According to the Denver Channel 7 News the Air Marshals service have a quota from the Department of Homeland Security which defines that they must file at least one Surveillance Detection Report (SDR) a month. Failure to do so would prevent the Marshal from recieving a favorable review and result in no raise, no bonuses, no awards or other special assignments according to the article. To meet this quota Air Marshals are filing false reports on passengers who are completely innocent.
Air Marshals speaking anonymously stated that often to meet this quota:
"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong,"
This isn't just some bit of government paperwork either, it can be very serious:
"That could have serious impact ... They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious," said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.
Undoubtly, these people who are wrongly accused are of course never informed they have been added to a watch list. After all that would defeat the purpose of the list So instead we have a list that's populated with people who are no real threat and can't figure out why they're on the list in the first place or how the list became so vague it's not useful.
It also may help explain how 325,000 names have gotten into the terrorist database. That list is made up of names that meet the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6, signed by President Bush in September 2003:
"known or appropriately suspected to be . . . engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism."
I would guess showing up in a SDR would meet the standards for 'appropriately suspected' given much this administration likes to push definitions to the absolute limit.
Finally, I leave you with a quote from a Homeland Security management memo dated July 2004, which sums up exactly what they are looking for:
"There may come an occasion when you just don't see anything out of the ordinary for a month at a time, but I'm sure that if you are looking for it, you'll see something."
Anything.