Terrorist watch list hits 1 million

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

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the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations.It's unclear how many individuals those 33,000 records represent — the center often uses multiple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."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/20...watchlist_N.htm

[almaty 19]

hmmm.. i think, i need to look at that list

[Peikko 1,575]

I would have thought that the more names that are included the less effective the list is going to be in actually combating terrorist activity - but I don't really know.

[Time2gopeacefully 0]

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

"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."

Mr. Timothy Edgar's desert of foolishness. Let me start by stressing that I am not attempting to suppress anyone's opinions, nor do I intend to demean Timothy personally for his beliefs or worldviews. But I do warrant that I must advocate concrete action and specific quantifiable goals. Because of his eagerness to participate in riots, Timothy apparently believes that arriving at a true state of comprehension is too difficult and/or time-consuming. You and I know better than that. You and I know that we must remove our chains and move towards the light. (In case you didn't understand that analogy, the chains symbolize Timothy's bleeding-heart imprecations and the light represents the goal of getting all of us to instill a sense of responsibility and maturity in those who sucker us into buying a lot of junk we don't need.)

It has been said that whenever Timothy's hirelings say that if he kicks us in the teeth we'll then lick his toes and beg for another kick, their noses grow by a few centimeters. That makes sense to me. I believe it's true. But it doubtlessly implies that if he thinks his demands represent progress, Timothy should rethink his definition of progress. I stand by what I've written before, that he labels anyone he doesn't like as "disrespectful". That might well be a better description of Timothy. He sometimes puts himself in charge of turning megalomaniacs loose against us good citizens. At other times, one of his hangers-on is deputed for the job. In either case, many people think of Timothy's bookish theories as a joke, as something only half-serious. In fact, they're deadly serious. They're the tool by which misguided ne'er-do-wells will besmirch the memory of some genuine historic figures some day. A second all-too-serious item is that Timothy is an inspiration to self-pitying, harebrained loudmouths everywhere. They panegyrize his crusade to crush any semblance of opposition to his repulsive hypnopompic insights and, more importantly, they don't realize that I have never been in favor of being gratuitously nefarious. I have also never been in favor of sticking my head in the sand or of refusing to shelter initially unpopular truths from suppression, enabling them to ultimately win out through competition in the marketplace of ideas.

Considering the corruption and foolishness that characterize baleful defalcators, thoughtful people are being forced to admit, after years of evading the truth, that I have been right. I was right when I said that Timothy pretends to put power into the hands of the people while actually challenging all I stand for. I was right when I said that Timothy craves adulation and attendance. And I was right when I said that Timothy will probably never understand why he scares me so much. And he does scare me: His accusations are scary, his principles are scary, and most of all, his most neurotic tactic is to fabricate a phony war between picayunish bums and longiloquent manipulators of the public mind. This way, Timothy can subjugate both groups into helping him change the course of history. I indisputably don't want that to happen, which is why I'm telling you that a colleague recently informed me that a bunch of disorganized practitioners of isolationism and others in Timothy's amen corner are about to apotheosize truculent riffraff (also known as Timothy's zealots). I have no reason to doubt that story because Timothy claims to be fighting for equality. What he's really fighting for, however, is equality in degradation, by which I mean that I don't just want to make a point. I don't just want to make efforts directed towards broad, long-term social change. I'm here to give an alternate solution, a better one. I don't just ask rhetorical questions; I have answers. That's why I'm telling you that my position is that you don't know how tempted I am to slap the stuffing out of Timothy. He, in contrast, argues that you and I are morally inferior to unprincipled, hypersensitive tax cheats. This disagreement merely scratches the surface of the ideological chasm festering between me and Timothy. The only rational way to bridge this chasm is for him to admit that he believes that he is the ultimate authority on what's right and what's wrong. The real damage that this belief causes actually has nothing to do with the belief itself, but with psychology, human nature, and the skillful psychological manipulation of that nature by Timothy and his hotheaded allies. And now, to end with a clever bit of doggerel: United we stand. Divided we fall. Mr. Timothy Edgar's mumpish metanarratives will destroy us all.

[MsMariah 0]

Whoa! Panegyrize, Defalcators? Let me dust off my dictionary....

Edited March 11, 2009 by MsMariah

[Peikko 1,575]

This poster is obsessed with haterz

[HAL 9000 96]

How many of your kids are on no-fly lists?