Watching suspected terrorists is a hard job for the FBI these days. It is especially difficult when you have over 509,000 names to keep track of. The Interagency National Counterterrorism Center has a combined total that is even higher than the FBI when you add in the other groups that look out for bad guys. So how do they keep track of a segment of society roughly equal to the size of a medium American city? And why do some talk numbers while others are silent?
From The Blotter:
While the NCTC has made no secret of its terrorist tally, the FBI has consistently declined to tell the public how many names are on its list. Because the number is classified, an FBI spokesman told the Blotter on ABCNews.com, he was unable to comment for this story.
"It grows seemingly without control or limitation," said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list. Sparapani called the 509,000 figure "stunning."
"If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless," he told ABC News. "You'll be capturing innocent individuals with no connection to crime or terror."
Now to be fair to the FBI, a few of those names are aliases of actual terrorists, both dead and alove. Even Saddam Hussein is up there post-mortem. Nevertheless, what is the point of having all of those people being watched? There is no way that the government can keep track of all those people with any kind of effective policy that stops one of them in the act.
And not only terrorists made the list, even American legislators have been stopped before for being on the list. Speaking of elected officials, I want to know why George Bush isn't the most dangerous domestic terrorists on that list. He has created more terror all over the world than Nixon and Kissinger could ever dreamed of. It is time to start updating that list, taking most names off and just a few back on.
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