There are 250 Americans on the No-Fly list.
That's the good news.
The bad news? There's 250 people in America who the federal government believes are too dangerous to let onto a plane, but who aren't dangerous enough to arrest.
There are fewer than 20,000 unique individuals on the lists used for domestic air travel screening -- 2,500 on the No-Fly list and some 16,000 on the Selectee list, according to Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff who disclosed the numbers for the first time to reporters on Wednesday.
While that's a lot fewer than were on the list in 2007, it's not clear whether the watch lists are worth the expense, the indignities of false positives, and the number of people convinced that the federal government is watch listing them based on their race, religion or political views.
Back in 2007, the No-Fly list had 44,000 names on it. The Selectee list -- the one that directs airlines to send someone for extra screening -- had 75,000 names. That's according to a July 2007 report from 60 Minutes, which got its hands on the list.
That seems like the government really has cleaned the lists or become more selective about who it considers a threat to a 767. But that might not be that radical of a change since Chertoff was speaking of the number of individuals on the list, not the number of names.
The number of names on the list is much higher, Chertoff warned, because the list includes aliases and alternate spellings of people's names.
Both lists are derived from the nation's consolidated terror watch list, which contains some 400,000 unique individuals and more than a million names at last count.
Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley says the list works, in fact he says it works very well.
"We identify dozens of terrorist-related individuals a week and stop No-Flys regularly with our watch-list process," Hawley wrote in a recent TSA blog post.
I take "identify dozens of terrorist-related individuals a week" to mean the TSA correctly matches at least 24 TRIs to the Selectee list every week. Terrorist-Related Individuals refers to cousins, acquaintances or the pizza guy of people believed to be terrorists. (Also TRIs would be, for example, Iraqis who worked on the now-largely forgotten, but once infamous "WMD-related program activities" found after the invasion of Iraq.)
Now, I hate to poke too much fun, now that the government is actually willing to share some information. For those who don't remember, for quite a while, the government refused to confirm or deny the very existence of a airline terrorist watch list.
Then the existence of the Selectee list was discovered in 2003 through government sunshine requests. After that the government acted like revealing the number of names on the list would tip off would-be terrorists.
So now that we know the size of the lists and the terrorists still haven't won, what's next?
Well, the government is planning to take over watch list checking from the airlines starting sometime in 2009 at a cost to the country of $3 billion over ten years.
That's the long-delayed Secure Flight program. But before it really takes over from the airlines, the TSA will have to make sure its IT infrastructure is capable of checking some 2 million passengers a day, make sure the system can handle last-minute purchases, and figure out a way to make its redress program actually work.
Moreover, the watch lists are useless since anyone can -- without cost to themselves -- test to see if they are on a watch list. (Hint: Splurge for a fully refundable ticket and try to print out a boarding pass. Record result. Cancel your ticket. Repeat until you've figured it out.)
If they are on the watch list, then they can simply bypass the system using minor computer skills and a pre-paid credit card. (This could be changed with ID checks at the gate or by giving ID checkers at the checkpoints a way to verify a boarding pass is real.
Is all of the infrastructure of Secure Flight worth it?
Think about it. Now one of the nation's most important transportation systems is set up so that you can't travel unless the government approves your travel application. You submit some personal information and they make a decision whether or not you can fly. It's rules don't require them to be fair or rational. The government can use most whatever data they would like to make the decision. And if you don't like their decision, you can only appeal to the same agency for redress.
Or as Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project writes:
And now that the watch list checking and your flight data is in the hands of the government, there's not much beyond political will that keeps the government from starting to check for fugitives or sex offenders or parking ticket scofflaws. Or from building permanent travel dossiers or to start using algorithms and private databases to determine if you can fly or how much of a terrorist risk you are.
Photo: David el Nomo/Flickr
