860,000 Name Long Terror Watch List Scrutinizes Americans Most

By Ryan Singel
Wired
Oct. 25, 2007

The nation's centralized watch list has grown to include 755,000 names suspected of having terrorist ties, resulting in nearly 20,000 positive matches of persons against the list in 2006, according to a new report from Congress's investigative reporting arm. Since the list is now used in nearly all routine police stops and for domestic airline travel, Americans made up the bulk of those matches.

The Government Accountablity Office's report was presented in a hearing to the Senate's Homeland Security Committee Wednesday, causing senators to express concern about the size and effectiveness of the list.

The GAO report (full pdf, html summary) included a few new details about the list's size and operation but much of this was reported by Wired months ago.

The Terrorist Screening Center runs the list, which is created from nominations from a wide array of government agencies via the National Counter Terrorism Center. The watch list entries are used to check persons seeking visas, travellers entering or leaving the country, domestic airline passengers and persons stopped by state, local or federal law enforcement. Most of the positive matches on the list came from police routinely checking persons, such as speeding motorists, against the list, according to the Government Accountablity Office's report (.pdf). The TSA is responsible for resolving mismatches, which can happen when an innocent person's name is similar or the same as different, watch listed person. The number of individuals on the list may be significantly less than three quarters of a million, since the name count include aliases.

Since list entries are coded with varying suspected threat levels, simply being on the watch list doesn't mean one will be arrested. In fact, being on the watchlist isn't even enough to ensure that a person is denied a visa or entry into the country, according to the report.

The GAO, at the request of the feds, removed information about how often the list has been used to arrest suspected terrorists or keep them out of the county. It also doesn't report the number of times people were falsely matched to the list.

But the report says the feds say it is effective.

Our analysis of data on the outcomes of encounters revealed that agencies took a range of actions, such as arresting individuals, denying others entry into the United States, and most commonly, releasing the individuals following questioning and information gathering.

TSC data show that agencies reported arresting many subjects of watch list records for various reasons, such as the individual having an outstanding arrest warrant or the individual's behavior or actions during the encounter. TSC data also indicated that some of the arrests were based on terrorism grounds.

Individuals who believe they are on the list erroneously or because of a confusion over their name can apply for help through the DHS Advise system, but it is not set up to allow people to contest the information that got them on the list.

Homeland Security officials defended the list's size and said they were working to make sure that watch listed individuals did not get past airline checks, according to the Voice of America.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary of Policy, Paul Rosenzweig: "We have made great strides," he said. "More work needs to be done, but the improvement is quite noticeable."

The chairman of the Senate committee, Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, expressed concern about the growth of the terrorist watch list, which the GAO report says has grown from 158,000 in June 2004 to 860,000 today."With the list likely to go over one million names in the near future, we need to know that there are clear standards for placing names on it and of course taking them off it," he said.

But Leonard Boyle, director of the Terrorist Screening Center, says the list is actually much smaller than described by the GAO because some people may be on the list more than once if their names are listed under multiple spellings.[...]

Boyle says federal agencies have agreed to a set of procedures to allow people who believe they were wrongly added to the watch list a timely, fair and accurate review of their cases.

Other adjectives that apply to the DHS review process include one-sided, secretive, administrative, and non-reviewable.