Links
The trouble with US terrorist watch lists
What do the late Senator Edward Kennedy, Nelson Mandela, American Airlines pilot Kiernan O'Dwyer, Democratic congressman John Lewis and Sam Adams, aged 5, have in common? They have all been on one of America's terrorist watch lists and found it easier to get on the list than off it.
That's a trend almost certain to continue as the database grows relentlessly, resulting in a huge haystack of suspects in which to find the terrorist needle. There are no up-to-date figures on the size of that haystack but according to a report a year ago by the Justice Department's inspector general, the "consolidated watch list" contained more than 1.1 million "known or suspected terrorist identities" by the end of 2008.
That corresponded to around 400,000 people, plus various aliases and ways of spelling names. If the growth rate of previous years is anything to go by, the database may well reach two million entries sometime before the end of this year. The government's approach to the watch lists has fluctuated from rapidly expanding it after September 11 2001, to trying to trim it, as happened in the final year of the Bush administration.