Do you believe that the terror watch list represents a significant threat to individuals’ privacy or Constitutional rights?
Do you believe that the terror watch list represents a significant threat to individuals’ privacy or Constitutional rights?
INFO531, APUS/Dr. Kraimeche
Source: Laundon & Laundon, MIS, 12th edition, page 240
The Terror Watch List Database’s Troubles Continue
CASE STUDY
In the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, the FBI’s
Terrorist Screening Center, or TSC, was
established to consolidate information about
suspected terrorists from multiple government
agencies into a single list to enhance inter-agency
communication. A database of suspected terrorists
known as the terrorist watch list was created.
Multiple U.S. government agencies had been
maintaining separate lists and these agencies lacked
a consistent process to share relevant information.
Records in the TSC database contain sensitive but
unclassified information on terrorist identities, such
as name and date of birth, that can be shared with
other screening agencies. Classified information
about the people in the watch list is maintained in
other law enforcement and intelligence agency data-
bases. Records for the watchlist database are pro-
vided by two sources: The National Counterterrorism
Center (NCTC) managed by the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence provides identifying
information on individuals with ties to international
terrorism. The FBI provides identifying information
on individuals with ties to purely domestic terrorism.
These agencies collect and maintain terrorist
information and nominate individuals for inclusion
in the TSC’s consolidated watch list. They are
required to follow strict procedures established by
the head of the agency concerned and approved by
the U.S. Attorney General. TSC staff must review
each record submitted before it is added to the
database. An individual will remain on the watch list
until the respective department or agency that
nominated that person to the list determines that the
person should be removed from the list and deleted
from the database
The TSC watch list database is updated daily with
new nominations, modifications to existing records,
and deletions. Since its creation, the list has
ballooned to 400,000 people, recorded as 1.1 million
names and aliases, and is continuing to grow at a rate
of 200,000 records each year. Information on the list
is distributed to a wide range of government agency
systems for use in efforts to deter or detect the
movements of known or suspected terrorists.
Recipient agencies include the FBI, CIA, National
Security Agency (NSA), Transportation Security
Administration (TSA), Department of Homeland
Security, State Department, Customs and Border.
Protection, Secret Service, U.S. Marshals Service, and
the White House. Airlines use data supplied by the
TSA system in their NoFly and Selectee lists for
prescreening passengers, while the U.S. Customs and
Border Protection system uses the watchlist data to
help screen travelers entering the United States. The
State Department system screens applicants for visas
to enter the United States and U.S. residents applying
for passports, while state and local law enforcement
agencies use the FBI system to help with arrests,
detentions, and other criminal justice activities. Each
of these agencies receives the subset of data in the
watch list that pertains to its specific mission.
When an individual makes an airline reservation,
arrives at a U.S. port of entry, applies for a U.S. visa,
or is stopped by state or local police within the
United States, the frontline screening agency or
airline conducts a name-based search of the individ-
ual against the records from the terrorist watch list
database. When the computerized name-matching
system generates a “hit” (a potential name match)
against a watch list record, the airline or agency will
review each potential match. Matches that are
clearly positive or exact matches that are inconclu-
sive (uncertain or difficult to verify) are referred to
the applicable screening agency’s intelligence or
operations center and to the TSC for closer examina-
tion. In turn, TSC checks its databases and other
sources, including classified databases maintained by
the NCTC and FBI to confirm whether the individual
is a positive, negative, or inconclusive match to the
watch list record. TSC creates a daily report summa-
rizing all positive matches to the watch list and
distributes them to numerous federal agencies.
The process of consolidating information from
disparate agencies has been a slow and painstaking
one, requiring the integration of at least 12 different
databases. Two years after the process of integration
took place, 10 of the 12 databases had been
processed. The remaining two databases (the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Automatic
Biometric Identification System and the FBI’s
Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification
System) are both fingerprint databases. There is still
more work to be done to optimize the list’s useful-
ness.
Reports from both the Government Accountability
Office and the Office of the Inspector General assert
that the list contains inaccuracies and that govern-
ment departmental policies for nomination and
removal from the lists are not uniform. There has also
been public outcry resulting from the size of the list
and well-publicized incidents of obvious non-terrorists
finding that they are included on the list.
Information about the process for inclusion on the
list must necessarily be carefully protected if the list
is to be effective against terrorists. The specific
criteria for inclusion are not public knowledge. We
do know, however, that government agencies popu-
late their watch lists by performing wide sweeps of
information gathered on travelers, using many
misspellings and alternate variations of the names of
suspected terrorists. This often leads to the inclusion
of people who do not belong on watch lists, known as
“false positives.” It also results in some people being
listed multiple times under different spellings of
their names.
While these selection criteria may be effective for
tracking as many potential terrorists as possible, they
also lead to many more erroneous entries on the list
than if the process required more finely tuned infor-
mation to add new entries. Notable examples of ‘false
positives’ include Michael Hicks, an 8-year-old New
Jersey Cub Scout who is continually stopped at the
airport for additional screening and the late senator
Ted Kennedy, who had been repeatedly delayed in
the past because his name resembles an alias once
used by a suspected terrorist. Like Kennedy, Hicks
may have been added because his name is the same
or similar to a different suspected terrorist.
These incidents call attention to the quality and
accuracy of the data in the TSC consolidated
terrorist watch list. In June 2005, a report by the
Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector
General found inconsistent record counts, duplicate
records, and records that lacked data fields or had
unclear sources for their data. Although TSC
subsequently enhanced its efforts to identify and
correct incomplete or inaccurate watch list records,
the Inspector General noted in September 2007 that
TSC management of the watch list still showed some
weaknesses.
Given the option between a list that tracks every
potential terrorist at the cost of unnecessarily track-
ing some innocents, and a list that fails to track
many terrorists in an effort to avoid tracking inno-
cents, many would choose the list that tracked every
terrorist despite the drawbacks. But to make matters
worse for those already inconvenienced by wrongful
inclusion on the list, there is currently no simple and quick redress process for innocents that hope to
remove themselves from it.
The number of requests for removal from the
watch list continues to mount, with over 24,000
requests recorded (about 2,000 each month) and only
54 percent of them resolved. The average time to
process a request in 2008 was 40 days, which was not
(and still is not) fast enough to keep pace with the
number of requests for removal coming in. As a
result, law-abiding travelers that inexplicably find
themselves on the watch list are left with no easy
way to remove themselves from it.
In February 2007, the Department of Homeland
Security instituted its Traveler Redress Inquiry
Program (TRIP) to help people that have been
erroneously added to terrorist watch lists remove
themselves and avoid extra screening and question-
ing. John Anderson’s mother claimed that despite
her best efforts, she was unable to remove her son
from the watch lists. Senator Kennedy reportedly
was only able to remove himself from the list by
personally bringing up the matter to Tom Ridge, then
the Director of the Department of Homeland
Security.
Security officials say that mistakes such as the one
that led to Anderson and Kennedy’s inclusion on
no-fly and consolidated watch lists occur due to the
matching of imperfect data in airline reservation
systems with imperfect data on the watch lists. Many
airlines don’t include gender, middle name, or date
of birth in their reservations records, which increases
the likelihood of false matches.
One way to improve screening and help reduce
the number of people erroneously marked for
additional investigation would be to use a more
sophisticated system involving more personal data
about individuals on the list. The TSA is developing
just such a system, called “Secure Flight,” but it has
been continually delayed due to privacy concerns
regarding the sensitivity and safety of the data it
would collect. Other similar surveillance programs
and watch lists, such as the NSA’s attempts to gather
information about suspected terrorists, have drawn
criticism for potential privacy violations.
Additionally, the watch list has drawn criticism
because of its potential to promote racial profiling
and discrimination. Some allege that they were
included by virtue of their race and ethnic descent,
such as David Fathi, an attorney for the ACLU of
Iranian descent, and Asif Iqbal, a U.S. citizen of
Pakistani decent with the same name as a
Guantanamo detainee. Outspoken critics of U.S.
foreign policy, such as some elected officials and
university professors, have also found themselves on
the list.
A report released in May 2009 by Department of
Justice Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that
the FBI had incorrectly kept nearly 24,000 people on
its own watch list that supplies data to the terrorist
watch list on the basis of outdated or irrelevant infor-
mation. Examining nearly 69,000 referrals to the FBI
list, the report found that 35 percent of those people
remained on the list despite inadequate justification.
Even more worrisome, the list did not contain the
names of people who should have been listed
because of their terrorist ties.
FBI officials claim that the bureau has made
improvements, including better training, faster
processing of referrals, and requiring field office
supervisors to review watch-list nominations for
accuracy and completeness. But this watch list and
the others remain imperfect tools. In early 2008, it
was revealed that 20 known terrorists were not cor-
rectly listed on the consolidated watch list. (Whether
these individuals were able to enter the U.S. as a
result is unclear.)
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who
unsuccessfully tried to detonate plastic explosives on
the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, had not made it onto
the no-fly list. Although Abdulmutallab’s father had
reported concern over his son’s radicalization to the
U.S. State Department, the Department did not
revoke Adbulmutallab’s visa because his name was
misspelled in the visa database, so he was allowed to
enter the United States. Faisal Shahzad, the Times
Square car bomber, was apprehended on May 3,
2010, only moments before his Emirates airline flight
to Dubai and Pakistan was about to take off. The
airline had failed to check a last-minute update to the
no-fly list that had added Shahzad’s name.
Sources: Scott Shane, “Lapses Allowed Suspect to Board Plane,”
The New York Times, May 4, 2010; Mike McIntire, “Ensnared by
Error on Growing U.S. Watch List,” The New York Times, April 6,
2010; Eric Lipton, Eric Schmitt, and Mark Mazzetti, “Review of Jet
Bomb Plot Shows More Missed Clues,” The New York Times,
January 18, 2010; Lizette Alvarez, “Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him
on Watch List,” The New York Times, January 14, 2010; Eric
Lichtblau, “Justice Dept. Finds Flaws in F.B.I. Terror List,” The New
York Times, May 7, 2009; Bob Egelko, “Watch-list Name Confusion
Causes Hardship,” San Francisco Chronicle, March 20, 2008;
“Reports Cite Lack of Uniform Policy for Terrorist Watch List,” The
Washington Post, March 18, 2008; Siobhan Gorman, “NSA’s
Domestic Spying Grows as Agency Sweeps Up Data,” The Wall
Street Journal, March 10, 2008; Ellen Nakashima, and Scott
McCartney, “When Your Name is Mud at the Airport,” The Wall
Street Journal, January 29, 2008.242 Part Two Information Technology Infrastructure
CASE STUDY QUESTIONS
1. What concepts in this chapter are illustrated in
this case?
2. Why was the consolidated terror watch list
created? What are the benefits of the list?
3. Describe some of the weaknesses of the watch
list. What management, organization, and
technology factors are responsible for these
weaknesses? 4. How effective is the system of watch lists
described in this case study? Explain your answer.
5. If you were responsible for the management of
the TSC watch list database, what steps would you
take to correct some of these weaknesses?
6. Do you believe that the terror watch list
represents a significant threat to individuals’
privacy or Constitutional rights? Why or why not?
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