Feds’ terror watchlist grows to more than 750,000 names

In testimony to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security last week, the Government Accountability Office said that the federal government’s consolidated terrorist watch list – used by airlines to check passengers’ names for matches – has grown from 158,000 in mid-2004 to an incredible 755,000 name records this year. The list is maintained by the FBI and made available to airlines and other sources that need to check it. It is supposed to consist of “individuals who are reasonably suspected of having possible links to terrorism.” GAO said that in the past three and a half years, federal agencies have encountered individuals on the list some 53,000 times – some of them multiple times. Occasionally they were arrested or denied entry to this country, but most often “agencies questioned and then released the individuals because there was not sufficient evidence of criminal or terrorist activity to warrant further legal action,” GAO said. But it added: “Nevertheless, such questioning allowed agencies to collect information on the individuals, which was shared with law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community.” The notorious “No-Fly list” of persons who shouldn’t be allowed onto an aircraft is a small subset of the larger terror watchlist, and the GAO report noted that “a number of individuals” on the No-Fly list nonetheless “passed undetected through airlines’ prescreening of passengers and flew on international flights bound to or from the United States.” The Transportation Security Administration is planning to take over the prescreening function from the airlines in the months ahead.