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December 09, 2005

80,000 Potential Terrorists Can't Be Right

This is just ridiculous:

A watchlist of possible terror suspects distributed by the US government to airlines for pre-flight checks is now 80,000 names long, a Swedish newspaper reported, citing European air industry sources.

The classified list, which carried just 16 names before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington had grown to 1,000 by the end of 2001, to 40,000 a year later and now stands at 80,000, Svenska Dagbladet reported.

Are there really 80,000 terrorists in the entire world, let alone 80,000 anti-U.S. terrorists (not that our government isn't doing a good job of upping the numbers for us every day)? We know that many innocent people have been caught up in this stupid list because there are lots of common names on the list (such as David Nelson and Edward Kennedy). This story says that "2,000 passengers checking in at Stockholm's Arlanda airport have had to be cleared with the US authorities because of name matches on the 'selectee' list this year, although none was prevented from boarding." Even if no innocent people were caught up in it, though, a list this huge is worthless.

Posted by Mike Tennant at December 9, 2005 09:12 AM

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Posted by: Roger Young at December 9, 2005 10:43 PM

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