TSA About the Security Watch List
MYTH: TSA’s watch list has more than 1 million names on it.
BUSTER: First, TSA doesn’t have a watch list. TSA is a customer of the Terrorist Screening Center, a component of the FBI that is responsible for maintaining the consolidated terrorist watch list. The center has said publicly that there are less than 400,000 individuals on the overall consolidated watch list, 95 percent of whom are not U.S. persons and the vast majority of whom are not even in the U.S.
TSA uses two subsets of this list, the no-fly and selectee lists. These small subsets of the overall list are reserved for known or suspected terrorists that reach a threshold where they should not be allowed to fly, or should get additional scrutiny.
MYTH: There are 1 million names on U.S. Government terror watch lists.
BUSTER: There are less than 400,000 individuals on the consolidated terrorist watch list and less than 50,000 individuals on the no-fly and selectee lists. Individuals on the no-fly and selectee lists are identified by law enforcement and intelligence partners as legitimate threats to transportation requiring either additional screening or prohibition from boarding an aircraft.
MYTH: The ACLU’s math estimates that there will be 1 million people on government watch lists this July.
BUSTER: Assumptions about the list are just plain wrong. While a September 2007 report may have said that there are 700,000 records on the terrorist watch list and it was growing by an average of 20,000 per month, that is not the same as the number of individuals on the watch lists. A new “record” is created for every alias, date-of-birth, passport and other identifying information for watch listed suspects. The ACLU does not account for the name-by-name scrub that took place in the Fall of 2007 by all government agencies involved with the lists through the Terrorist Screening Center. This review reduced the no-fly and selectee lists by almost 50 percent and eliminated records of individuals that no longer pose a threat.
The government calls its watch list one of the most effective tools in its fight against terrorism. It was created after the September 11, 2001, attacks to consolidate 12 existing lists and make sure no terrorists slipped through the cracks — whether when entering the country or if otherwise stopped for questioning. Last year, congressional investigators found “general agreement that the watch list has helped to combat terrorism.”
Other audits of the watch list over the last several years, however, have concluded that it has mistakenly flagged innocent people whose names are similar to those on it. More than 30,000 airline passengers had asked the Homeland Security Department to clear their names from the list as of October 2006. Additionally, as many as 20 people suspected to be terrorists were left off the list as of last year due to a technology glitch.
Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center that maintains the list, said the government is working to fix the gaps.
“We strive to have the watch list contain all appropriately suspected terrorists who represent a threat to the U.S., but only appropriately suspected terrorists,” Kolton said.
The ACLU predicted the watch list would include 1 million names as early as Monday. The civil liberties group reached that number by citing the 700,000 records on the watch list as of last September and adding 20,000 names each month, as forecast by the Justice Department’s inspector general.
Kolton disputed that number, however, saying that only about 400,000 individuals are on the list — with the rest being records of aliases or other identifiers for those same people. Kolton said that 95 percent of the people on the list are not Americans or legal U.S. residents — and most aren’t even in the country.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigations arm of Congress, similarly concluded last year that the total number of records on the watch list “does not represent the total number of individuals,” saying it contains multiple records for the same person.
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I believe Kennedy is on the no DRIVE list.