Terrorist Needles Hidden in Super-database Haystacks

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:20 PM Permalink

I know that Sailor here at VidiotSpeak can vouch for the fact that I have long maintained that the government, collecting information on everyone through domestic spying to build a dossier on every citizen, would suffer the logical fate of attempting to find terrorist needles in government database haystacks.

In other words, they are so overloading these databases that they will soon be useless, after having spent billions and billions of dollars to gather so many names, so much useless info, so much inaccurate info, and just the sheer unwieldiness of searching through that info would permit many terrorists to go unnoticed amongst the millions and millions of bytes of information contained in the database.

I suffered much derision, provoked such vehement opposition to my position, and was ridiculed so badly that now, like most people, I am pleased to say, "I told you so," even though this bodes ill for America and is simply emblematic of the worst administration in American history.

See this posting in The Blotter by Justin Rood which confirms my theory.

Excerpt:

A terrorist watch list compiled by the FBI has apparently swelled to include more than a half a million names.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates say the list is growing uncontrollably, threatening its usefulness in the war on terror.

The bureau says the number of names on its terrorist watch list is classified.

A portion of the FBI’s unclassified 2008 budget request posted to the Department of Justice Web site, however, refers to “the entire watch list of 509,000 names,” which is utilized by its Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force.

[…]

“It grows seemingly without control or limitation,” said ACLU senior legislative counsel Tim Sparapani of the terrorism watch list.

“If we have 509,000 names on that list, the watch list is virtually useless,” he told ABC News. “You’ll be capturing individuals with no connection to crime or terror."

This list is growing rapidly out of control, but you can bet that the other databases being compiled will become just as unwieldy very quickly.

And think about that number: 509,000! 509,000 terrorists or so-called terrorist sympathizers. Ridiculous. Ludicrously so.

Most terrorism experts estimate that there are between 20,000-40,000 terrorists worldwide. Insufficient numbers to populate a small mid-western town, whereas the numbers on the no-fly list, 509,000, would populate a fairly large city.

Who's kidding whom here?

Labels: Bush, civil liberties, FBI, GWOT