FBI Terror Watch List ‘Out of Control’
June 14th, 2007Via: ABC News:
A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than half a million names.
Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror.
The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.
A portion of the FBI’s unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to “the entire watch list of 509,000 names,” which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.
A spokesman for the interagency National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which maintains the government’s list of all suspected terrorists with links to international organizations, said they had 465,000 names covering 350,000 individuals. Many names are different versions of the same identity — “Usama bin Laden” and “Osama bin Laden” for the al Qaeda chief, for example.
In addition to the NCTC list, the FBI keeps a list of U.S. persons who are believed to be domestic terrorists — abortion clinic bombers, for example, or firebombing environmental extremists, who have no known tie to an international terrorist group.
Combined, the NCTC and FBI compendia comprise the watch list used by federal security screening personnel on the lookout for terrorists.
While the NCTC has made no secret of its terrorist tally, the FBI has consistently declined to tell the public how many names are on its list. Because the number is classified, an FBI spokesman told the Blotter on ABCNews.com, he was unable to comment for this story.
“It grows seemingly without control or limitation,” said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure “stunning.”
“If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless,” he told ABC News. “You’ll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror.”
Since the FBI and our government consider EVERYONE a potential terrorist, the list should include at least 300 MILLION names and that is just the U.S. citizens on it!
Yep. All this, and they have yet to catch a single ‘turrrist’ trying to board an aircraft. Don’t think for a minute they wouldn’t plaster it across every MSM source the second they did, as “proof that it’s working!”
The same stupidity is played out here at work every single day (CONUS USAF base), where new chipped id cards have been issued, new expensive gated entrances built, roads widened, klieg lights, new traffic signals, and pop-up barricades installed, armed guards hired, K-9 units brought in, and several block long multi-lane lines of crawling, waiting cars form up for hours at a time every morning and afternoon as some 13,000 people que up to enter or leave, while they “check” the ID of each and every person and randomly search vehicles. A recent USAF cost-benefit analysis concluded that the total cost of this added ‘security’ since 9/11, in resources squandered and lost time, just at this one location, is over 260 million dollars, not counting the added inconvenience, annoyance, and stress.
Yet in all that time they have not stopped or caught a SINGLE would-be jihadist. Besides, any determined ones could just drive through the miles of unguarded and rusting chain link perimeter fencing, or hike in the unguarded, unfenced swamp side, they’re not going to come through the gates!
What 9/11 really shows is how a handful of nothing-to-lose desperadoes can make hundreds of millions of simpering bed-wetters fall to their knees and beg for mercy. Pitiful.
I have a feeling they’re one step ahead of you Glick.
Welcome to Stasi-land
Damn, I Guess I should look at dates before submitting, just heard about this on the radio though. Cheers!
Everything is about state control these days. They should just end this farce, declare martial law, hand everyone a national id, close the borders, ‘disappear’ protestors, and be done with it. You heard it, BOW TO THE STATE! It’s just about too late to skip out now. Kevin, see you on the other side.
Ok, i’m sane again. We’re all being watched. In the past two weeks, I know two people who have been sent warning letters from their ISP’s for downloading “Children of Men” which is a some what anti-facist-state-we’re-already-fucked-but-there-is-hope movie. I’m sure they are on that anti-terror list now. Heck i wouldn’t be surprised if all of us who read and post here are as well.
Time to take a deep breath, relax, and accept that we are on that list. The NSA data farm knows we read this website, and others like it, so we are “The Enemy Within”. The powers that be really don’t care about Osama and his happy band of jihadis, or the Baathists, or the rag-tag bad boys who are “Al-quida in (insert name of country here)”. The corprate state cannot function when challenged with rifles, so it uses military power to achive control. Here in the US that point has not been reached, so this effort to tamp down any challenge is not so surprising. I am waiting for the moment when we cross the facisist ‘event-horizon’, when everyone is a terrorist unless the state chips, cards, checks, and approves of that person. When the game reaches the point where everyone is told which side they are on, the real fun can begin.
Colley Dog, if the movie “The Lives of Others,” is at all accurate about the Stasi, then the Stasi was a lot nicer and more honest than our police already are.
And Snowden, I wish I could have your optimism, but I think Americans are a lot closer to the “simpering bed-wetters” Peregrino is talking about than freedom loving revolutionaries. I think you’ll find that at the “fascist event-horizon” your countrymen will cheerfully line up to be chipped and carded, and enthusiastically report you and anyone else who complains or resists to the proper authorities who are keeping them “safe” from the “terrorists.”