Put everybody on it.
Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.
Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.
[...]
The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.
[...]
The government adds names to its databases, or adds information on existing subjects, at a rate of 900 records each day.
The Intercept
Information overload, you think?
A U.S. counterterrorism official familiar with watchlisting data told The Intercept that as of November 2013, there were approximately 700,000 people in the Terrorist Screening Database, or TSDB, but declined to provide the current numbers. Last month, the Associated Press, citing federal court filings by government lawyers, reported that there have been 1.5 million names added to the watchlist over the past five years. The government official told The Intercept that was a misinterpretation of the data.
A government official with whom the reporters for this story were conversing before publishing it (perhaps that same official who characterized the AP report as a misrepresentation) fed their would-be scoop - with a government twist, of course - to a government-friendly AP reporter, allowing a government-friendly international article to be published first. Probably not a good idea.
According to the source, [Intercept editor] Cook told the [government] official that in the future the agency would have only 30 minutes to respond to questions before publication.
Huffington Post
That’s gonna hurt.
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