Saturday 10 October 2009

FBI current terrorist watchlist too big and riddled with errors


From THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION'S TERRORIST WATCHLIST NOMINATION PRACTICES, May 2009:

The federal government's consolidated terrorist watchlist was created in March 2004 by merging previously separate watchlists that were once maintained by different agencies throughout the federal government.1 The watchlist is managed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), through its supervision of the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC). The watchlist is used by frontline screening personnel at U.S. points of entry and by federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement officials.2 The watchlist serves as a critical tool for these screening and law enforcement personnel by notifying the user of possible encounters with known or suspected terrorists and by providing instruction on how to respond to the encounter. Each day the watchlist is updated with new or revised biographical information on known or suspected terrorists gathered by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, including the FBI. Within the FBI, submitting the name of a known or suspected terrorist to the consolidated terrorist watchlist is referred to as a watchlist nomination. In general, individuals who are subjects of ongoing FBI counterterrorism investigations are nominated for inclusion on the watchlist, including persons who are being preliminarily investigated to determine whether they have links to terrorism. In certain circumstances, FBI policy also allows for the nomination of an individual for whom the FBI does not have an open terrorism investigation. Since the establishment of the watchlist in 2004, the FBI has nominated or processed the nominations for more than 68,000 known or suspected terrorist identities.3 As of December 31, 2008, the consolidated terrorist watchlist contained more than 1.1 million known or suspected terrorist identities.4........... In total, more than 62,000 watchlist records have been created using the FBI's processes for nominating individuals who are not being investigated for terrorism. Additionally, we found almost 24,000 FBI watchlist records that were based on an FBI investigation but not sourced to a current terrorism case classification. Many such watchlist records that we reviewed were based on cases that had been closed years ago and should have been removed at that time. [My highlighting]

If one bothers to read this U.S. Dept. of Justice audit it quickly becomes obvious that this terrorist name/profile list is not being accurately updated and is riddled with errors, including in some instances the names of dead people.

And so many pooh-poohed when the ACLU first pointed out problems with the list and set up its Terror Watch List Counter.

I can't help but wonder if the Rudd Government were to introduce a national mandatory ISP-level Internet filtering scheme, would we see the Australian Communications and Media Authority/Censorship Board list of banned URLs increase with similar rapidity (although it would be hoped with a more modest total) as those born-again flying monkeys the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy appears to favour pile on complaints about their pet hates?

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