Faulty 'No-Fly' System Detailed

by WP

Fri, Oct 8, 2004 10:51PM

The federal government's 'no-fly' list had 16 names on it on Sept. 11, 2001. Today, it has more than 20,000.

The list, which identifies suspected terrorists seeking to board commercial airplanes, expanded rapidly even though the government knew that travelers were being mistakenly flagged, according to federal records. The records detail how government officials expressed little interest in tracking or resolving cases in which passenger names were confused with the growing number of names on the list.

More than 2,000 people have complained to the Transportation Security Administration. Airlines, at one point, were calling the agency at least 30 times a day to say that they had stopped a passenger whose name was similar to one on the list, but after further investigation was determined not to be a terror suspect, according to a TSA memo.

More than 300 pages of documents related to the no-fly and related lists were released late Thursday night by the TSA and the FBI in response to a federal court order. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed suit on behalf of Jan Adams and Rebecca Gordon, two peace activists who wanted to know why their names had turned up on a no-fly list.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18735-2004Oct8.html

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