[update to diary of Oct. 11, 2006]
   On slow news days, semi-comical stories have provided momentary respites from the thunder of war, about who was interrogated as a suspected terrorist simply because of a coincidence of names on the no-fly list.

  • September 2002: Sister Virgine Lawinger, a 74-year old Catholic nun, and nineteen other anti-war members of Peace Action Wisconsin, was escorted by two sheriff’s deputies for questioning, detained overnight in San Francisco;
  • August 2004:  Senator Ted Kennedy told the Senate Judiciary Committee of how he had been stopped five times that Spring in East coast airports;  it took his staff three weeks to have his name removed from the no-fly list;
  • September 2004: Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, was deported rather than allowed to continue his flight from London to Washington for a business meeting.

    The Electronic Privacy Information Center (“EPIC”) collected documents and filed suit under the FOIA in December, 2002.  Because it appeared the watch lists were used to interfere with travel plans of political activists, EPIC’s suit sought the criteria for putting names on the watch lists, but received no clear answer.  
    The watch lists are maintained and shared by the Transportation Security Administration, One more big brother bureaucratically bungled branch of the Department of Homeland Security. Three years and $144 Million later, TSA hasn’t fixed the flaws.  Instead, the list has grown to include 44,000 names, in addition to 75,000 on a selectee list for extra questioning. Many are such common names as “Sam Adams” and “David Nelson.”  Others on the list clearly are not terrorists, such as Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales Ayma. Sister Glenn Anne McPhee, until recently head of the Department of Education for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, struggled for nine months in 2003 and 2004 to have her name removed from the list.  By August 2005, a TSA spokeswoman told a reporter, 89 children had submitted their names to be removed from the list.  

    Journalists Joseph and Susan Trento obtained a copy of the no-fly list and co-wrote Unsafe at Any Altitude.  Interviewed on “60 Minutes” for a show to be broadcast this Sunday, Trento explained that the root of the list was the FBI’s national criminal information list, which was embarrassingly screwed up.

“Air travel is in crisis,” said Joseph Trento. “Our government has spent literally billions of dollars to create a bureaucracy that federal investigators tell us is demonstrably less effective than what was in place before 9/11.” …
   UNSAFE documents, for the first time, how the Bush Administration attempted to deflect the blame for 9/11 on to the private companies then responsible for passenger screening. The Trentos describe the plight of Frank Argenbright, the founder of what was one of the world’s largest aviation security companies, [who was] the only American singled out for blame by the White House and the U.S. Department of Justice for the tragedy of 9/11. The Atlanta businessman, who was then suffering from cancer, no longer owned the company at the time…. “Argenbright was hung out to dry, basically to take the pressure off the Administration.”

    The ACLU has called for discontinuing the list altogether.  Its analysis of FOIA-obtained documents about the aviation watch lists details more mismanagement and ineffectiveness.

The ability of individuals to receive fair treatment when caught up in this system is still lacking after 5 years. Innocent victims cannot discover if they are a victim of the inaccuracies that riddle government and private databases, have been falsely accused of wrongdoing by someone, or have been discriminated against because of their religion, race, ethnic origin, or political beliefs.

Clearly, placement on the list is a highly subjective process subject to enormous discretion by invisible, unaccountable security workers.

   In February of this year, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, Timothy Sparapani, testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.  

The problem from a security and civil liberties perspective is that both the No Fly and Selectee Lists, which are at the heart of the Secure Flight proposal, are bloated with names of individuals who have absolutely no connection to terror and do not have the capability of threatening aviation security.  This leads to numerous cases of False Positives, which distract TSA from finding the actual terrorists.

   Mr. Sparapani described four examples of the treatment in 2005 of “false positive” passengers:

Passenger David XXXXX (Aug. 16, 2005) was surrounded by armed police with guns drawn at the ticket counter when he was mistakenly identified as being on the No Fly List.  Moreover, when he arrived at the gate, his checked luggage was brought to him, and he was forced to witness the search of his belongings at the gate, the whole process taking two hours.  

Passenger Gregory XXXXX (May 9, 2005), after having his luggage thoroughly searched, was separated from his five-year-old son who was hysterically crying and escorted into a private room where he was subjected to a cavity search and genital inspection.  Gregory has been wrongly delayed overnight on five separate occasions and whoever is accompanying him is also subject to delays and searches.

Passenger, Mary XXXXX (May 16, 2005) was forced by TSA screeners to be screened with a machine (Smiths Detection Ionscan Sentinel II), which she was told checked “to see if I have a bomb inside me.”  This machine photographed her and TSA denied her repeated requests to view the picture or be provided a copy.

Passenger Hussein XXXXX (July 23, 2005) is a Lebanese citizen who has been a legal resident of the U.S. since 1992.  During his layover in Minneapolis, Minnesota while flying from Lebanon to Seattle, Washington, he was escorted off the plane by five security officers to a room away from the gate.  He was questioned about his family, extended family, how he files taxes, his business, his real estate holdings and so forth. Additionally, the officers demanded he give them access to his computer, which he initially refused because it contained confidential information about his clients. After five hours of interrogation, he was exhausted and delirious so the officers gave him a choice of either being detained overnight and being questioned the following day or having an appeal inspection in Seattle.  He was scheduled to appear at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office in Seattle on July 25, 2005.  In the past, he has had similar experiences.  For example, on October 3, 2004, he was stopped in Portland, Oregon on his way to Frankfurt, Germany by U.S. Customs who interrogated him.  He was given no medical attention when he fainted, and security officers laughed at him while they waited until he regained consciousness.

    Someone at the Transportation Security Administration, has a sense of humor:  its logo is “Vigilant, Effective, Efficient.” TSA answers the call for discontinuing the list with a vague catalogue of changes in store for Secure Flight (the formal name for the no-fly list):  a staff will review and scrub the existing list; your personal information will be shared only with those who have a need to know; redress mechanisms are devised.  The TSA website’s links to “redress procedures” and to its “Passenger Identity Verification Program”  go nowhere, just to show they are truly vigilant, effective and efficient.      

   Under Chertoff’s lead, TSA has joined FEMA as joke  material for late-night t.v. monologues.  But we’re kidding on the square.  There is no excuse for inefficient and ineffective bureaucracies which purport to promote public safety — scamming us for  multi-millions, ignoring complaints for years.  

   How long do we have to wait for the Department of Homeland Security to be junked?

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