ACLU: Terrorist watch list hits one million names

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), they now have a million names on the U.S. government's terrorist watch list.

Looks like a pretty good example of trying to find a needle in a haystack. After all, the list includes Nelson Mandela, some U.S. Senators and Representatives, several infants and children, the president of Bolivia, active U.S. military personnel (including at least one who was on his way home from Iraq), and people with such common names as Gary Smith and John Williams. (Do I hear "Mary Shaw"?)

Combine this with making us remove our shoes at the airport checkpoints, and it just doesn't seem like the most efficient or effective way of protecting us from terrorists. In fact, the terrorists probably find it all quite amusing. The joke's on us.

Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, shared the following views on this problem:

"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country. It must be fixed without delay.

Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning. I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist."

Indeed.

>> Read an ACLU press release on this issue and what they are doing to address it.

>> Read the stories of some innocent people who have been caught up in the watch list fiasco.