“What’s occurring is this secret program where anyone who travels gets a terrorist risk rating, and it’s kept for 40 years,” explains Melissa Ngo, senior council at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C. “We don’t know what it’s based on, what the criteria are, and whether the information that they’re using to make these decisions is true or false.”
What the public does know is that many air travelers are finding themselves on the terrorist watch lists. As of February 2006, the lists contained 325,000 names, according to the National Counterterrorism Center.
Four years after 9/11, 30,000 innocent people, including Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, were on the lists.
And clearing one’s name seemed fundamentally impossible for most. Even those with connections had difficulties. In 2004, Kennedy’s aides told The New York Times that after the senator personally called then Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, it still took several weeks to resolve the problem.
Getting off the list
It wasn’t until late February 2007 that DHS finally launched the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program giving everyday citizens a way to get their names off the lists. Even with a redress system in place, questions regarding the personal information used and the errors responsible for the misidentifications go largely unanswered.
The redress application form, however, does offer some idea of how extensive DHS’s personal data collection might be. The information required includes name; birth date and place; sex; height; weight; hair and eye color; address; telephone; e-mail; driver’s license; birth certificate; passport; voter registration; military identification card; certificate of release or discharge from active military duty; and several other forms of documentation.
The extent of the information necessary to clear one’s name may also suggest the scope of DHS’s information sharing. Printed on the last page of the form, a privacy notice acknowledges that the department may share information with other agencies inside and outside of the federal government, but it does not provide specifics.
“Ultimately, the question is how you are put on these lists, and Homeland Security’s constant response is that they can’t say because of national security,” Ngo says. “They should tell us because it’s national security. If they’re wasting resources on innocent, mistakenly listed people, they’re not spending time on those who will try to harm the United States.”
Not everyone agrees. Counterterrorism policy expert Paula Broadwell says that some information disclosure is necessary but with limits. Broadwell, who serves as deputy director of The Jebsen Center for Counter-Terrorism Studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts, believes that the public should leave the oversight of national security matters to the legislature.
“We’ve elected public officials to serve on oversight committees to vet the system,” she says. “Some things need to stay behind closed doors. If we allow the general public to know what our tactics and techniques are, we’re giving away trade crafts.”
But Broadwell does concede that it’s a slippery slope when any government agency is exempt from privacy law requirements. There are at least 30,000 people, including a senator and a nun, who would second that.
Do you think the U.S. government needs to be exempt from privacy laws? Have you or someone you know been on a terrorist watch list?
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