400,000 names on US terrorist watch list

There are over 1 mil­lion records cov­er­ing 400,000 names on the US Government’s ter­ror­ist watch list, accord­ing to this Reuters arti­cle, U.S. ter­ror­ism watch list tops 1 mil­lion. 

How in the name of good com­mon sense can this list be effec­tive? That’s what the ACLU would like to know, and I agree with them.

Accord­ing to a sur­vey by the Asso­ci­a­tion of Cor­po­rate Travel Exec­u­tives, 7 per­cent of the respon­dents had at least one elec­tronic device seized for inspec­tion while trav­el­ing. As the New York Times points out in this op-ed piece, The Gov­ern­ment and Your Lap­top, search­ing a com­puter or cell phone can involve much more infor­ma­tion than a sim­ple lug­gage search might reveal. 

What­ever hap­pened to the Fourth Amend­ment? I know the US Sen­ate, includ­ing Sen­a­tors Inouye (D-HI) and Obama (D-IL) tossed it under the bus last week when they extended the For­eign Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance Act (FISA). Hillary Clin­ton (D-NY) and Daniel Akaka (D-HI) voted no, while John McCain (R-AZ) did not vote on the mea­sure — see the roll call. 

At least the ACLU has filed a suit to halt FISA — see this Wired arti­cle called Bush Signs Spy Bill, ACLU Sues for details.

Tagged as: airline, airport, Federal, government, Hawaii, privacy, reliability, safety, security, senate, travel, USA