According to the American Civil Liberties Union's Watch List Counter, the Department of Homeland Security's Terror Watch list passed the million-name mark a few days ago. Click on that link and you can see the counter spinning around as fast as the dollar counter on a gas pump. The ACLU website further reports:
"September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that
the Terrorist Screening Center (the FBI-administered organization that
consolidates terrorist watch list information in the United States) had over
700,000 names in its database as of April 2007 - and that the list was growing
by an average of over 20,000 records per month. (See also this new March 2008
report.)
"By those numbers, the list now has over one million names on it. Terrorist
watch lists must be tightly focused on true terrorists who pose a genuine
threat. Bloated lists are bad because they ensnare many innocent travelers
as suspected terrorists, and because they waste screeners' time and divert their
energies from looking for true terrorists. Small, focused watch lists
are better for civil liberties and for security."
At this rate, the only people who won't be on the Department of Justice's Watch List are those wearing American flag pins in their lapels. These days, the Justice Department doesn't seem much more concerned with justice than the Department of Defense is with war. IMO, such shifts in policy and procedures have a lot to do with Americans' travel experiences -- whether we are experienced hassles and delays when we fly or whether we feel "liked" when we travel abroad. For words like this, I'm probably going to end up on the list myself!
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