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I saw this correction coming a frequent-flier mile away.
The ever vigilant Richard M. Smith sent this News.com story by Anne Broache to Dave Farber's Interesting People list this morning.
Tens of thousands mistakenly put on terrorist watch listsWASHINGTON--Nearly 30,000 airline passengers discovered in the past year that they were mistakenly placed on federal "terrorist" watch lists, a transportation security official said Tuesday.
Jim Kennedy, director of the Transportation Security Administration's redress office, revealed the errors at a quarterly meeting convened here by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.
Actually, that's not quite what Kennedy said according to reports I heard about the meeting.
And I'm pretty sure the TSA press office gave Broache a call to say they were very unhappy about the story.
Here's the corrected lede and hed:
Tens of thousands mistakenly matched to terrorist watch lists
WASHINGTON--About 30,000 airline passengers have discovered since last November that their names were mistakenly matched with those appearing on federal watch lists, a transportation security official said Tuesday.
Full story here.
Kennedy works in the redress office.
Even the correction doesn't really get the story right.
What he said, according to my sources, is that 30,000 people had gone through the non-trivial process of submitting forms and identification and had received letters that would help them get through security faster.
These 30,000 are people whose names match or come close to matching names on the no-fly or selectee lists.
This is a *very* touchy subject for the TSA.
I got a call from TSA after I ran the story about Sister Glenn Anee McPhee matching on the list, because they were mad about something I quoted her saying (something to the effect of how happy she was she got off the list).
It didn't matter that I made sure in my story not to make clear the difference between being on the list, and matching an entry on the list. I still got an earful.
But, back to the real story. The redress office has been very busy to issue 30,000 letters in a year. The TSA likely ran background and FBI checks on each of them. That's not an inexpensive or automated endeavor.
Kennedy also said that 60 people who wrote in weren't able to be helped. That means that 60 of them were or were deemed likely to be the person on one of these lists.
Posted by Ryan Singel at December 7, 2005 08:30 PM
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» 30,000 Americans mistakenly matched to watch list from Homeland Security or Homeland Stupidity
Since last November, about 30,000 airline passengers were mistakenly matched against federal terrorist watch lists, according to Jim Kennedy, director of the Transportation Security Administration’s redress office.
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Tracked on December 8, 2005 08:07 AM
Post a commentThe story remains wrong. These poor folks have known for a long time that they're on the wrong list. They have not "discovered since last November" that they were on the wrong list. What's new is that TSA has finally put in place a process to process their investigations of the processing process.
Posted by: Adam at December 8, 2005 07:54 AM
As a "suspected terrorist" wrongly placed on the list, it's also important to note that even if you file all the paperwork and are cleared you can still NEVER be removed from the list. This is according to TSA who also told me to stop asking questions because my call was recorded and someone might come knock on my door...
Posted by: Beth at April 15, 2006 06:39 PM