Air Marshals Place Innocents on Secret Watch List

An anonymous reader writes "The Denver Channel 7 News reports that federal air marshals are operating under a quota for reporting a minimum number of suspicious travelers which is resulting in innocent people being placed on a secret government watch list. From the article: 'These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR.'"

Comments

Bullshit

[Tony]

That is utter and complete bullshit.

I am on that list. I don't know why; I have never been arrested or convicted or tried or anything else. I served honorably in the US Army. I fly all the time.

About 18 months ago, I got on this watch list. It isn't so secret if you are a traveller. You can't use the fancy-shmancy self-service kiosks. You have to wait for a representative to help you. They have to make phone calls. The entire process takes an addiotional 10-15 minutes of not only my time, but the service representative, as well.

There was some poor Thai girl in Bangkok. It was her second day on the job, and she freaked out when my name came up as I was checking in. It took them about 20 minutes to make the call to the US and get stuff squared away.

No, I have not been arrested because of it. But, as an innocent person, why am I singled out for bureaucratic harrasement? I am denied the conveniences of other citizens simply because of my name existing on a watch list.

So, I call bullshit.

Re:Bullshit

[nojomofo]

My 3-year-old nephew is on the list. This has resulted in such events as him getting into a tugging match with a TSA screener over his teddy bear....

Re:The gov't ruining innocent peoples lives

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a relatively common anglo name (like John Doe) which has found its way onto the air watch list. To try and take myself off of the list, I had sent stacks of documentation, my birth certificate, copies of my passport and volumes of other personal crap to the TSA with a request to clear my name. The TSA, after many months, sent back a one page form letter that said they had taken some "actions", but said that those actions may or may not be ignored by the airlines. Some airlines still will not let me check in without going thru the counter and a confirmation phone-call to somebody in the back room somewhere. I don't know if that watch list is the same as the SDR, but it's causing a lot of unnecessary and unwarranted grief.

I'm sure Bin-Hiding is laughing his ass off. He won.

Quantity or Quality

[NMagic]

This seems to be a case of education. They haven't invested the time/funds to train the marshals enough to recognize who they're looking for. Instead of fixing the problem, they compensate with higher numbers to keep up with the odds.

This is your typical case of quantity being chosen instead of quality.

Re:The gov't ruining innocent peoples lives

[TopShelf]

That's not surprising - we had a consultant on our project go back to India on a 3-week vacation, which got extended another 6 weeks because his name was on the "do not fly" list. It took him that long to get his identify clarified and his visa restored, along with monumental efforts on our end to work through Senatorial offices, etc. to try and clear through the red tape.

And in the end, our company's legal advisors said that 6 weeks should be considered a very quick turnaround under the circumstances...