An FBI report obtained by Yahoo News shows law enforcement agencies are being used to gather intelligence on individuals on the U.S. government's terror watch list.
Despite a federal judge’s ruling last September that the U.S. government’s terror watch list violates constitutional rights, an FBI report obtained by Yahoo News shows local and state law enforcement agencies are being used to gather intelligence on individuals to collect information about those already in the database.
Last year, a federal judge found in favor of 23 Muslim Americans who argued that their inclusion in the Terrorist Screening Database violated their constitutional right to due process. Those “biographical identifiers” include a wide range of information, according to another document obtained by Yahoo News. A “First Responders Toolkit” provided to law enforcement instructs police to collect information on both the watch-listed individual and any other person in the car, including “license, passport, and visa and information.
The FBI watch list document underscores just how common such contacts with watch-list individuals are: A map shows that over the past two years, the police have reported encounters with watch-listed individuals in every state, including Hawaii and Alaska. In the cases described in the FBI document, there is no identifying information provided about the people stopped by law enforcement, or whether any of them, or their associates, had been charged or convicted of terrorism.
Another concern for critics of the watch list is that the police may be mistakenly flagging people they stop as watch-listed individuals, when they are not, which appears to be demonstrated by the FBI document. The document notes that of 35,000 interactions reported by law enforcement, only 3,600 of these “positively matched watchlisted individuals,” according to Terrorist Screening Center data.
Johnson, who now runs DT Analytics, a private consulting firm for law enforcement, said that in 2005 he was flagged as a potential threat at an airport even though he was carrying credentials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “I was actually screened at an airport because my name was the same as an Irish Republican Army terrorist,” Johnson said.
The man’s brother, who notified police that his backpack contained a small amount of marijuana, was also placed under arrest.
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