ACLU calls out US over absurd bloating of terror watch list

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/ACLU_calls_out_US_over_absurd_0227.html

Quote :

More that 900,000 people are currently listed as suspected terrorists on the US government's "do not fly" list, and that number will grow to beyond 1 million by summer, says the American Civil Liberties Union.

"If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, stated in a press release from the group. "The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."

The ACLU has launched a new Web site to track the growth of the watch list, which it says includes thousands of innocent Americans, including prominent politicians and authors as well as people with common names.

The group says its count is "extrapolated from a September 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which reported that the Terrorist Screening Center had over 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007, and that the list was growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month." As of Wednesday afternoon, the ACLU said there were about 917,500 names on the list.

Having such an unwieldy list does little to protect against terrorism, the ACLU argues, and it violates the constitutional rights of innocent people on the list who are hassled by airport security.

Just couple of weeks ago Michael Chertoff said he worries about homegrown terrorists. With this current government destroying our Constitution how can i take these threats seriously? They told us the Patriot Act will keep us safe from another 9/11 but then they go out and say its not if we get attacked its when.

The only real threat to a superpower nation is always its own government getting out of control and bringing the whole machine down.

I've always worried this is exactly how OBL will end up with the win. He was never going to destroy the USA by blowing up a bunch of cities, but by giving Americans enough rope to hang ourselves.