1,600 Names Suggested Daily For FBI's Watch List 168
schwit1 writes with this excerpt from the Washington Post:
"During a 12-month period ended in March this year... the US intelligence community suggested on a daily basis that 1,600 people qualified for the list because they presented a 'reasonable suspicion,' according to data provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the FBI in September and made public last week. ... The ever-churning list is said to contain more than 400,000 unique names and over 1 million entries. The committee was told that over that same period, officials asked each day that 600 names be removed and 4,800 records be modified. Fewer than 5 percent of the people on the list are US citizens or legal permanent residents. Nine percent of those on the terrorism list, the FBI said, are also on the government's 'no fly' list."
How do they define "reasonable suspicion"? (Score:4, Interesting)
How do they define "reasonable suspicion"? I couldn't find that information in the article.
91% of terrorists are allowed on planes (Score:5, Interesting)
If 9% of the list o' terrorists are also on the no-fly list, that means that the feds are happy with 91% of terrorists being on airplanes.
bummer (Score:5, Interesting)
Watch list? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be more interested in knowing what the average length of time a person remains on the list, and a demographic breakdown. The problem with compiling lists like this is the same as with sex offender registries: Even after people are removed from it (sometimes winding up on it for petty reasons in the first place), they continue to be linked to it. Computers don't forget, and there's always some bureaucrat who wants to keep a list of everyone that's ever been on the list available and searchable. There is a point at which even justice becomes injust.
So what are the numbers, Big Brother?
i'm on the list (Score:3, Interesting)
One family friend is a military lawyer; another works in sigint. Two things I learnt:
(1) Since I wrote a bunch of anti-war articles a few years ago, I am at least documented - although nothing much is said, I guess since most of what I co-wrote with my partner was published only under their name.
(2) It's worryingly trivial to obtain a list of recent peers of any particular US IP. IOW, even a routine background check will include a list of regular web sites visited.
What is needed is for any as many as possible to be on such lists: it is only by getting as many people as possible inconvenienced, while making the amount of data too great to focus too hard on harassing any one individual or small group, that such methods lose their efficacy.
Re:Lessons from the STASI (Score:3, Interesting)
The STASI (East German Secret Police) got awesome participation from its citizens when it asked them to help them spy on their fellow citizens.
There is a scary lesson in that.
http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/homeland_security_patriot_act_fema/news.php?q=1255711589 [fourwinds10.com]
They don't need STASI, they already have the Boy Scouts:
"...military and police indoctrination of Boy Scouts at the Boy Scouts Of America Great Lakes Centennial Jamboree, held on September 25, 26, and 27 at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
“I thought it would be a great adventure with thousands of scouts from all over the Midwest,” an assistant Scout Master writes in an email. “The official count was 10,144 people in attendance (Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Adult Leaders, Parents, and Staff).”
Instead of an old-fashioned Boy Scout event of camping and outdoor activities, the attendees were subjected to unrelenting military and police propaganda."
Re:How do they define "reasonable suspicion"? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do they define "reasonable suspicion"?
That's their euphemism for "foreign."
Re:How do they define "reasonable suspicion"? (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm familiar with the case of someone who got on the no-fly list for repeated short notice, one-way trips between Boston and Palm Beach. It involved considerable harassment to get off the list. An alternative explanation might be: affluent person with house in both cities. For an added dose of common sense it was a mother flying with multiple children. A human can see this immediately, but I suspect that a computer program put the person on the list.
Due Diligence (Score:3, Interesting)
Recently, in Vancouver, RCMP officers were publicly challenged for stopping known protesters to the upcoming Olympic winter games and asking them why they were against the games. I don't know the ins and outs of the whole episode but the criticism of the RCMP in the media seemed to centre on their stopping people in public places and questioning the reasons for their political opinions. A news broadcast carried the response from an RCMP public relations officer who used the term "due diligence" in defense of the RCMP's actions. Due diligence as I was schooled in the subject matter had to do only with commercial dealings wherein a party to a contract was expected to have scrutinized the terms of a pending contract to ensure they understood the value they would receive for their part in the contract. It may be that in law the term "due diligence" has a wider meaning, but, I think, the RCMP's use of the term is symptomatic of the use of law suits to resolve many issues in terms of monetary damages and contractual obligations that tacitly put aside principles that should invest more fundamental laws addressing vital issues like freedom of speech. There seems to be developing an adversarial, highly litigious approach to addressing issues that rightly belong to more sober venues.
Law enforcement agencies wield what should be illegal force. Force that necessarily must be used for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the infantile need among a high proportion of people to make the world in their image, but, if we take the core principles of democracy and subject them to remedies that belong in commercial enterprises then, I think, we run the risk of debasing those principles and turning democracy into a commercial venture wherein all principles and actions are arbitrated by monetary awards, and, the duties and responsibilites of persons with extraordinary powers are also simply monetized.
I'm a strong backer of the military and the police, the more so because I believe the current state of affairs places them collectively and individually in conflicts both individual and collective that subject them to more stress than their pay warrants and, perhaps, more stress than can be expected to be suffered without considerable negative consequences, but, I sure, this being /. many will disagree.
Re:Fucking-a. (Score:5, Interesting)
Try making your own, it's a quality condiment. It's just the stuff in stores that they call mayonnaise that's disgusting. It's just some egg yolks and a bit of lemon juice in a blender, and you slowly drizzle oil in until it's stiff. You can add some flavor too, a bit of nice mustard and black pepper is good. Sometimes I'll add garlic, capers, or a touch of cayenne. Whatever I have on hand really, it's fun to play around with. Of course, everyone's tastes vary, but I'm of the opinion that you shouldn't decide you don't like something until you've tasted it done right.
Re:The crap list (Score:3, Interesting)
It's all security theater. If they really cared about the security of the country they would whittle down the list as fast as they can, so that they can concentrate on the true potential threats.
For nearly five years I was on some form of list and an analyst back in Washington DC had to waste an hour looking at my file every time I crossed the border just to confirm that, as in the previous n-1 times, I still pose no threat to the USA. Eventually I did get off the list (no reason given) and for the last two years or so I can go through without any hassle.
Re:Inefficient System (Score:1, Interesting)
Nah. From the +1600 but -600 daily changes, I'd guessing they're modeling associations between people, using their connections in a big relationship graph - since the list will include some people already confirmed as terrorists by good old fashioned traditional investigation - to score each person on the list. Actual manpower is only divided among the high scorers. Low scorers get pruned from the list. This prunes the vast majority of false accusations before any human time/effort/money is ever wasted on them.
The reason the add:drop ratio is so high is that every human being has a LOT of connections to other humans. List inflation is naturally going to be way higher than linear. But you can't always tell which associations are trivial until AFTER you've run them through the computer. And since the algorithm is traveling-salesman-like in complexity, this means you need to both add lots of people into it AND aggressively remove the low scorers from the list. That's the most efficient use of time/money/effort/manpower for the best results.
Re:bummer (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List [wikipedia.org]
In an article in The Atlantic[11], security expert Bruce Schneier described a simple way for people to defeat the No Fly List:
Use a stolen credit card to buy a ticket under a fake name. Print a fake boarding pass with your real name on it and go to the airport. You give your real ID, and the fake boarding pass with your real name on it, to security. They’re checking the documents against each other. They’re not checking your name against the no-fly list—that was done on the airline’s computers. Once you’re through security, you rip up the fake boarding pass, and use the real boarding pass that has the name from the stolen credit card. Then you board the plane, because they’re not checking your name against your ID at boarding.
Among other problems, it is unknown
- who is on the list,
- what criteria are used to get on the list
- how you can get off the list
Effectively, it is a reversal of the presumption of innocence. Terrorists should be treated as criminals, we should not forget that they are human. The situation is truly Kafkaesque, with the public being happy to not be on the list.