A government report said thousands of people have been
mistakenly linked to names on terror watch lists when
they crossed the border, boarded commercial airliners or
were stopped for traffic violations.
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Friday, October 6, 2006
WASHINGTON - Thousands of people have been mistakenly linked to
names on terror watch lists when they crossed the border, boarded
commercial airliners or were stopped for traffic violations, a
government report said Friday.
More than 30,000 airline passengers have asked just one agency
- the Transportation Security Administration - to have their names
cleared from the lists, according to the Government Accountability
Office report.
Hundreds of millions of people each year are screened against
the lists by Customs and Border Protection, the State Department
and state and local law enforcement agencies. The lists include
names of people suspected of terrorism or of possibly having links
to terrorist activity.
"Misidentifications can lead to delays, intensive
questioning and searches, missed flights or denied entry at the
border," the report said. "Whether appropriate relief is
being afforded these individuals is still an open question."
When questions arose about tens of thousands of names between
December 2003 and January 2006, the names were sent back to the
agencies that put them on the lists, the GAO said. Half of those
were found to be misidentified, the report found.
In December 2003, disparate agencies with counterterrorism
responsibilities consolidated dozens of watch lists of known or
suspected terrorists into the new Terrorist Screening Center run
by the FBI.
People are considered "misidentified" if they are
matched to the database and then, upon further examination, are
found not to match. They are usually misidentified because they
have the same name as someone in the database.
People are considered "mistakenly listed" if they
were put on the list in error or if they should no longer be
included on the list because of subsequent events, the report
said.
Problems developed with terrorist watch lists after the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was detained at New
York's Kennedy Airport in 2002 because Canadian officials had
asked that he be placed on a watch list. The U.S. transferred him
without court approval to Syria where he was tortured and
imprisoned for a year. A Canadian inquiry found that Arar should
not have been on the list because he didn't do anything wrong.
The no-fly list given to airlines to make sure terrorists don't
board airplanes grew exponentially after the attacks on the World
Trade Center and the Pentagon. The no-fly list is part of the
Terrorist Screening Center database.
Young children and well-known Americans like Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy, D-Mass., were stopped at airports because their names
were the same as those on the no-fly list.
The list has contained the names of Bolivia's President Evo
Morales and Nabih Berri, Lebanon's parliamentary speaker,
according to a report by CBS' "60 Minutes," to be
broadcast Sunday.
Richard Kopel, acting director of the screening center, said in
a statement that Morales and Berri are not on the current no-fly
list. He did not address whether they were in the past, noting
only that the list changes daily.
Two international flights - in December 2004 and May 2005 -
were diverted because passenger were misidentified as on the
no-fly list.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a
telephone interview with The Associated Press that watch lists
aren't perfect.
"The watch list was the first stage of building a security
net for the aviation system," Chertoff said.
He said an agreement reached Friday between the U.S. and the
European Union would help prevent people from being misidentified.
The agreement calls for airlines to submit 34 pieces of data -
including names, addresses and credit card details - about
passengers flying from Europe to the United States.
The report said agencies are working to minimize the effect on
people who are frequently misidentified.
TSA puts people on a special list of names that have been
checked and cleared after they've complained to a call center and
provided the agency more identification.
Customs annotates its database with a note that certain people
shouldn't be stopped. As of September 2006, Customs annotated more
than 10,300 names. Customs also gives preapproved low-risk
travelers ID cards that provide expedited processing.
Customs acknowledged to the GAO that it needs to do a better
job of providing guidance for their redress procedures for people
who believe they've been misidentified.
The Justice Department is leading an effort to make sure that
all agencies formally document opportunities for redress and that
agency responsibilities are clear, the report said.
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On the Net:
To see the GAO report: http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-1031
