Terror watch list
The government’s terrorist screening database flagged Americans and foreigners as suspected terrorists almost 20,000 times last year. But only a small fraction of those questioned were arrested or denied entry into the United States, raising concerns among critics about privacy and the list’s effectiveness.
And this is the same database some folks want to use to restrict gun rights without due process of law?
August 27th, 2007 at 9:28 am
The Pentagon just shut theirs down due to innaccuracy and lack of effectiveness.
August 27th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Once upon a time, I played a part in the background on said list. That’s about all I’m able to say about it, but believe me, the list at that time was very large, very redundant, and had plenty of spurious entries, including all the members of the team I was on, as we were all involved in ‘testing’ at various points of contact.
It does make commercial air flight interesting for me these days because of my close involvement in the past. The times I’ve flown since then I’ve checked firearms through with TSA and they’ve always gotten a giggle out of my tales.
Yeah, the list and the application thereof works; in fact, the day the project went live, it snagged several ‘persons of interest’ in front of a high level DHS administrator on site for the rollout at a certain U.S. point of entry, several of which did have active federal warrants. Do I like it? Well, that’s another matter of discussion for a different forum and venue.
My whole issue is garbage in, garbage out.
Regards,
Rabbit.
August 29th, 2007 at 8:22 pm
I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the Washington Post. They even admit (around paragraph 247) that arrests aren’t the point.