Just curious, but what self-respecting terrorist would be so bold as to use real ID with their real names which may be on the list when they entered the country? Isn’t how to use fake identities taught in Being A Bad Guy 101 anymore?
The Ever-Expanding Terrorist Watch List
[After 9/11,] President Bush called upon every agency of government to provide his administration with the names of every so-called person of concern contained in their millions of files. Those records included not just potential terrorists, but also deadbeat dads, people wanted by the federal Marshal, and Drug Enforcement Administration suspects, among others. But they all found themselves on what has come to be called the “terrorist watch list.” By June 2004, that list had swelled to 158,000 names. In May of this year, it clocked in at 755,000. Today, only five months later, it’s at 860,000 and counting, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The argument for maintaining such an unwieldy and quickly growing list is perhaps best voiced by cliché: better safe than sorry. But that philosophy has spawned a list that a recent GAO study found much too large to be effective, and much too inaccurate to protect the civil liberties of innocent people. The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center manages the list, but to date the administration has failed to establish a clear, consistent methodology for government agencies to use when determining who goes on the list and who doesn’t. The criteria vary widely, when they’re known at all.
I’ve had the same criticism over sex offender lists too. The way these idiots think is that it should be easy to get on the list. The list should be as broad as possible to include as many potential suspects as possible.
The obvious problem with that sort of list is that it becomes so watered down as to be rendered useless.
When you’re on the same sex offender list for having consensual sex with your girlfriend when you were 16 along with a guy who kidnaps, mutilates, rapes, and murders babies, the list is useless.
It’s the same as the no-fly list. When you’re on the no-fly list because you protested the president, right along with real terrorists on the list, the list is also useless.
Yeah well trained and funded guys might try and stay off the list, but not everything is like Hollywood. The original hijackers used their real IDs, as did the follow-on guys like Richard Reid.
#2: Up to 9/11, the hijackers just appeared to be graduate students. Richard Reid was a white guy that had just become a Muslim. There was no reason to suspect any of these people. That’s why the terrorist watch list is so worthless.
My real name is a relatively common Irish name, but apparently someone with that name is on the watch list, because I can’t get airplane boarding passes in advance. I have to get them at the baggage counter, even if I have no baggage. I’ll guess the real “bad guy’s” in the IRA or something.
The list has everyone’s fake name too. That’s why it’s so big.
Is there anything or anyone NOT terrifying to the U.S. government these days?
I’m wondering why they aren’t using face recognition tech yet. Along with the watch list it could be very effective, and reduce false positives as well. Some systems can search over 2 million templates a second and the “neural net” type can learn and see through disguises.
This was an interesting article. You can try face recognition on the net right now–
http://tinyurl.com/2csn53
Just think…soon it will also stop you if you have an outstanding balance to the IRS, have credit card debt that is overdue, and if you’ve forgotten to return books to the library, or a video to the local video store. We are prisoners of our own country.
Just curious, but what self-respecting terrorist would be so bold as to use real ID with their real names which may be on the list when they entered the country?
Ah ha! You see: that is the trick…. they’d never suspect that you would, so you might, just to try and double bluff them…..
The rolls are huge because the republicans who make the lists include liberal activists, peace activists, catholic peace advocates, democratic senators, congressmen, and legislators, and anybody who isn’t a pro-israel warmongering jesus loving fanatic.
whatever. It was Democrats that sent the IRS after political opponents all thru the 90s. They also tried to use the Fair Housing Act to go after anyone who complained about their plans for building housing projects in rich neighborhoods.
#11: What’s your point? That Democrats do bad things, too? You consider that news? Both Ds & Rs do equally bad things at times. It’s just that the current bunch in the WH has pushed the envelope farther than anyone imagined anyone had the balls to do.
#11, MikeN
Your totally stupid comments are really annoying. Typical Right Wing Nut Neo-con Conservative Evangelical Republican Radio-head Shut-in crowd bullshit.
Maybe its your wide stance.
I’ve been on one-or-another “terrorist” list ever since the first time a buddy of mine – who happened to be Black – sat down with me in a drugstore and we ordered Cokes. And it was against the law. 50 miles from the White House. 1959.
Fuck ’em all.
I was arrested and subject to deportation from nations part of previous coalitions of the “willing” during earlier imperial wars. 1971.
Fuck ’em all.
Is it important to defend basic civil liberties and civil rights for the whole nation? You bet. Does that mean I should pussyfoot around and be Mr. Middle-of-the-road and be polite to right-wing jerkoffs? Today.
Fuck ’em all!
#14, moss, at Gitmo, twice, with the firework of your choice. Thanks for saving me the typing.
They should dump the Fed’s list. And go with the Nevada/New Jersey Casino Blackbook list. It’s probably a whole lot more accurate. Just be sure to eliminate the “card counters” and poker cheats from the list. They’re not the aero-terrorist types they need to worry about.
Why does having “deadbeat dads” and others whose name merely sounds like a terrorist, on the list bring the following paraphrase to mind?
“When air travel is outlawed for all. Only all outlaws will travel by air.”
I reckon you’re new bud Adam Curry’s on that list. Those TSA fella’s like him good. They like him REAL good.