In September 2007, the Inspector General of the Justice Department reported that the Terrorist Screening Center 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. At that rate, the number of names in the database would exceed 1,000,000 names by the end of July, 2008.
Who gets included in the TSDB?
"Per HSPD-6, only individuals who are known or appropriately suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism are included in the TSDB."
However, some unlikely people have shown up on the ever-growing list of suspects... like several deceased individuals
The ACLU has launched a new watch list counter showing the number of new names supposedly added each day to the list, as well as a number of well-known people who have been put on the list.
At this point you may logically ask yourself, "Can I find out if I am in the TSDB?"
Well...officially:
"The TSC cannot reveal whether a particular person is in the TSDB. The TSDB remains an effective tool in the government’s counterterrorism efforts because its contents are not disclosed. If TSC revealed who was in the TSDB, terrorist organizations would be able to circumvent the purpose of the terrorist watchlist by determining in advance which of their members are likely to be questioned or detained."
9 comments:
Oh my...
I'm going to mention this on the FGI Blog I'm blogging for this month!
Will more names make us safer?
Anybody is potentially a terrorist in that wonderful, wacky, paranoid bizzaro world of national security; so we're all suspects.
Awesome, thanks for putting me on the blog roll. But the correct url for Gov Docs on the Bayou is:
http://msugovdocs.blogspot.com/
The supposed proliferation of terrorists worldwide gives us good reason to ponder when war is "just."
As a foundation, you may want to red the entry for "just war theory" in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (linked from the blog under "texts and resources."
Just-war theory deals with the justification of how and why wars are fought. The justification can be either theoretical or historical.
The theoretical aspect is concerned with ethically justifying war and forms of warfare.
The historical aspect, or the “just war tradition” deals with the historical body of rules or agreements applied (or at least existing) in various wars across the ages. For instance international agreements such as the Geneva and Hague conventions are historical rules aimed at limiting certain kinds of warfare.
It is the role of ethics to examine these institutional agreements for their philosophical coherence as well as to inquire into whether aspects of the conventions ought to be changed.
If there are million terrorists in the world, how do we ethically go about protecting ourselves, other innocent people, villages, and nations?
Let me try this again. Read this:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/
nationworld/2004289338_terrorwatch18.html?
syndication=rss
O.k., 1,000,000 names, sure it sounds bad, but how many unique extension specifying definite descriptions is that really?
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