Terror Watch List Center: "watch list now contains more than 500,000 entries"

[L. Coyote]

Reporter Visits Terror Watch List Center, Prevented from Seeing Map of Targets in America
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/reporter-visits.html


National Public Radio reporter correspondent Dina Temple-Raston got the first ever media tour of the Terrorist Screening Center, where 50 analysts follow-up on hits on the nation's sprawling terrorist watch lists, but right as she entered, the TSC shut down the "Big Board" a la Dr. Strangelove.

To get into the small, top-secret room where about 50 analysts from the FBI, Immigration and other agencies work, my escort has to punch a code into a small keypad and pull open a heavy steel door. He announces my presence by shouting a single word: "Uncleared."

With that signal, the flat screens in the cubicles around the room go dark. ......

Last year, the center had more than 20,000 positive matches against the list (http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2007/07/watchlists), but little is known about the center's effectiveness.

The terrorist watch list now contains more than 500,000 entries, according to a recent ABC News report (http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/fbi_terror_watc.html) on a document that has since been pulled from the web.

Getting off the terrorist watch list is not a simple procedure, given the government won't confirm if a person is on a list or not, and the TSC doesn't take responsibility for names placed on the list by a law enforcement or intelligence agency.

But a traveler who suspects the watch list is wrongly snagging them at airports or the border can try ......

Currently the TSC employs 108 employees, including 17 FBI agents, with a budget of $103 million.

.........

[HereSince1628]

1. I'm guessing 107,804 of those are based on usernames on DU.

[L. Coyote]

3. Don't give them any ideas:

:rofl:

This adds up to one of every 600 people in the USA. That would be about 1,000 North Dakotans, etc.....

[Babsbrain]

2. And there are only 223 al-Queda

http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/consoltablelist.shtml

This lists the known al-queda as reported by the Security Council at the UN. )Al-Queda people are halfway down the list).

[L. Coyote]

4. 223 / 600,000 = 0.037% or 1 of every 2,700.

The list is probably more a matter of defining political enemies as imagined by the Bushco neocons.

In Nixon's day, political enemies were called political enemies.

Is there a "license to kill" aspect of these kinds of lists in a "global war" on terror.