June 19,
2008: A growing problem in the
counter-terrorism community is dirty data. That is, information on suspects, or
potential terrorists, that is wrong, or unreliable. "Watch lists" (of terrorism
suspects) have long been a problem for air travelers, as names are easier to
put on the list, than to get off. And a growing percentage of those names are
of innocent people. This not only causes extra work for security personnel, but
is bad PR for the counter-terror effort.
There are
also databases of people who are seen, for one reason or another, to be
"security threats". The people who created the criteria for putting people on
the list did not think through how this would work, and are reluctant to change
anything. For example, it was recently discovered that foreign graduate
students at MIT were classified as "security threats" simply because they
followed the rules. These students, who belong to an oceanographic studies
program, have to get a special ID card in order to move about in U.S. ports, where
the oceanographic survey ships they spend a lot of time on, are docked. The
U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) security watch list was
programmed to refuse foreigners with student visas, who applied for this ID
card, and also tag them "security
threats". The students applied for the cards at the request of the Coast
Guard. The TSA has refused to correct
the situation, which is typically how inept bureaucracies react to their
errors.
