Terrible tracking on terror watchlist

Lots of people who shouldn't be on it are, and some who should, aren't. [Link]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has incorrectly kept nearly 24,000 people on a terrorist watch list on the basis of outdated or sometimes irrelevant information, while missing people with genuine ties to terrorism who should have been on the list, according to a Justice Department report released Wednesday.

The report said the mistakes posed a risk to national security, because of the failure to flag actual terrorism suspects, and an unnecessary nuisance for nonsuspects who may be questioned at traffic stops or kept from boarding airplanes.

By the beginning of 2009, the report said, this consolidated government watch list comprised about 400,000 people, recorded as 1.1 million names and aliases, an exponential growth from the days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the list’s uses is the screening of people entering the country, and intelligence officials say it has allowed agencies to work together to prevent the type of breakdown that allowed two of the Sept. 11 hijackers to get into the United States even though they were known to the Central Intelligence Agency for their terrorist ties.

But the new report, by the office of the Justice Department’s inspector general, provides the most authoritative statistical account to date of the problems connected with the list. An earlier report by the inspector general, released in March 2008, looked mainly at flaws in the system, without an emphasis on the number of people caught up in it.

Get it together, people. The more of this stuff that goes around, the less people trust the validity of the list or the competence of those associated with it.