Neither of the detained men appears to have any connection to terrorism, according to a weekend story in the Seattle Times. Both continue to be held while under investigation for immigration violations, and may have been participants in an illegal-alien-smuggling scheme rather than terrorist activities, unnamed officials told the Times.
This sort of false positive has the ACLU concerned. The organization's Northern California chapter filed suit in federal court in April challenging the secrecy under which watch lists are compiled. The government has separately conceded that the current system has flaws--because it is both prone to errors and too easy to evade--but believes a new, substantially expanded screening system will reduce mistakes and make the flying public safer.
Civil libertarians not only reject the planned new system as a massive and unwarranted erosion of privacy rights that is ripe for abuse, but also attack the current system as too secretive. They contend that people with no terrorist connections are often caught up in the no-fly net.
Doug Honig, communications director for the ACLU of Washington, says that some peace and other activists have found their names on the list, and have been interrogated as a consequence. "If someone ends up on the list and doesn't have any connection to terrorism, how do they get their names off?" he asks.
No known protocols for effecting such corrections are known to exist, he says. The ACLU in Northern California, through Freedom of Information Act requests, found that at least 339 passengers had been stopped and questioned in San Francisco International Airport between September 2001 and March 2003.
"The government has so far failed to disclose even basic information about the 'no-fly' list, such as why names are added to the list, how incorrect names can be removed from such lists, and what the guidelines and restrictions are regarding the use of such lists," Northern California ACLU attorney Jayashri Srikantiah said in an April 22 press statement announcing the chapter's lawsuit.
That suit is expected to be heard in the fall.
The government takes a diametrically opposed position. The identification and detention of the Pakistani men constitutes a success for the existing system, a TSA spokesperson says. Still, the existing no-fly system is far from foolproof and needs updating, according to Admiral James Loy, the TSA director. He told National Journal in May that the current screening protocol "is inadequate to the task today."
The government's solution is the development of the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, known as CAPPS II, which would use a variety of database checks to color-code passengers either red, yellow, or green, depending on their assessed potential for engaging in terrorism.
