What do you say about an airline screening system that tends to mistake government employees and U.S. servicemen for foreign terrorists?[/p] Newly released government documents show that even having a high-level security clearance won't keep you off the Transportation Security Administration's Kafkaesque terrorist watch list, where you'll suffer missed flights and bureaucratic nightmares.[/p] According to logs from the TSA's call center from late 2004 -- which black out the names of individuals to protect their privacy -- the watch list has snagged:[/p] [ul][li]A State Department diplomat who protested that "I fly 100,00 miles a year and am tired of getting hassled at Dulles airport -- and airports worldwide -- because my name apparently closely resembles that of a terrorist suspect." [/li][li]A person with an Energy Department security clearance. [/li][li]An 82-year-old veteran who says he's never even had a traffic ticket. [/li][li]A technical director at a science and technology company who has been working with the Pentagon on chemical and biological weapons defense. [/li][li]A U.S. Navy officer who has been enlisted since 1984. [/li][li]A high-ranking government employee with a better-than-top-secret clearance who is also a U.S. Army Reserve major. [/li][li]A federal employee traveling on government business who says the watch list matching "has resulted in ridiculous delays at the airports, despite my travel order, federal ID and even my federal passport." [/li][li]A high-level civil servant at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. [/li][li]An active-duty Army officer who had served four combat tours (including one in Afghanistan) and who holds a top-secret clearance. [/li][li]A retired U.S. Army officer and antiterrorism/force-protection officer with expertise on weapons of mass destruction who was snared when he was put back on active-duty status while flying on a ticket paid for by the Army. [/li][li]A former Pentagon employee and current security-cleared U.S. Postal Service contractor. [/li][/ul] Also held up was a Continental Airlines flight-crew member traveling as a passenger, who complained to TSA, "If I am safe enough to work on a plane then I should be fine to be a passenger sleeping."[/p] The outcomes of these complaints are not recorded in the documents.[/p] Attorney Marcia Hoffman with the [a href="vny!://www.epic.org/privacy/airtravel/"]Electronic Privacy Information Center[/a], who obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act, emphasizes that "an effective redress process to clear your name from the list is critical."[/p] Currently, individuals who want to clear their names have to submit several notarized copies of their identification. Then, if they're lucky, TSA might check their information against details in the classified database, add them to a cleared list and provide them with a letter attesting to their status.[/p] More than 28,000 individuals had filed the paperwork by October 2005, the latest figures available, according to TSA spokeswoman Amy Kudwa. She says the system works. "We work rigorously to resolve delays caused by misidentifications," Kudwa says.[/p] Citing national security, Kudwa declined to state how many of those 28,000 were ultimately placed on the cleared list, nor would she say how many names are on the no-fly and "selectee" lists or what the selection criteria for those lists are. Those on the no-fly list are banned from air travel and are likely to be arrested at the airport if they attempt to fly, while those on the selectee list face additional scrutiny at the airport.[/p] The watch list is still not very accurate, according to 31-year-old Massachusetts resident Bethan Brome Lilja.[/p][div class="storyTxt"] Two weeks ago, Lilja finally grew tired of her and her son's continual selection for extra screening and contacted the TSA call center. An employee named Eva told Lilja that the FBI was looking for someone with her name, and advised her to watch what she was saying since the call was recorded and "some guys might come knocking on your door," Lilja told Wired News.[/p] "I interpreted that as a threat," says Lilja, a full-time mother and entrepreneur. "When I call a government agency to ask for help and they tell me someone might come knock on my door, you have to take it seriously."[/p] Lilja thinks her full name is too distinctive for it to match someone else's, and notes that her husband Jonathan does not get pulled aside for extra screening.[/p] The TSA's lists are only a subset of the larger, unified terrorist watch list, which consists of 250,000 people associated with terrorists, and an additional database of 150,000 less-detailed records, according to a recent media briefing by [a href="vny!://www.fbi.gov/terrorinfo/counterrorism/tsc.htm"]Terrorist Screening Center[/a] director Donna Bucella. The unified list is used by border officials, embassies issuing visas and state and local law enforcement agents during traffic stops.[/p] That larger list and its increasingly wide usage concerns Lilja, who wonders, for example, what will happen when she visits Canada this summer and attempts to return to the states.[/p] "If I get pulled over for speeding by some small-town cop from western Massachusetts, who sees I'm a terrorist suspect from Boston, it's hard to know if someone is going to overreact," Lilja said.[/p] Lilja has since contacted her congressman, sought legal advice and launched an online campaign called [a href="vny!://terrorwatchlist.org/"]Americans for Terror Watchlist Reform[/a]. Lilja isn't the only one interested in reforming how watch lists are used or how citizens can contest false matches or false inclusions.[/p] Currently, airlines check their own passengers' names against the lists provided to them by the TSA, but each airline chooses how it will match variations of names such as Ted, Teddy and Theodore.[/p] For the past three years, the TSA has been trying to replace the current system, known as CAPPS, with the so-called Secure Flight program that would require airlines to forward passenger lists to the government, a process the TSA hopes will reduce the number of false name matches by standardizing the process.[/p] Some notable homeland security experts suggest, however, that more transparency and responsiveness are needed.[/p] A [a href="vny!://www.heritage.org/research/homelanddefense/lm17.cfm"]paper[/a] published last year by the conservative Heritage Foundation suggested the government should establish a centralized watch-list-dispute-resolution clearinghouse that would handle complaints about all terrorism watch lists and report publicly on its work.[/p] That paper, which also advocated for the right to take watch list disputes to court, was co-authored in 2005 by technologist [a href="vny!://jeffjonas.typepad.com/"]Jeff Jonas[/a] -- best known for his work catching casino cheats in Las Vegas and then adapting that software to enable data sharing within the federal government -- and Paul Rosenzweig, a former Heritage Foundation research fellow who recently joined the Department of Homeland Security's policy office.[/p] Rosenzweig's faith in transparency seems not to have filtered down to the TSA's Freedom of Information Office.[/p] The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed an identical request for the 2005 complaint logs last month, but the TSA denied the organization's arguments that the records are in the public interest, and wants to charge the group nearly $70,000 to search for the database records. EPIC is appealing that decision.[/p][a href="vny!://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70783-0.html?tw=rss.index"]vny!://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70783-0.html?tw=rss.index[/a]
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