Of course officials will always tend to err on the side of caution, which means the list of 1.1 million on TIDE ends up containing many false positives, or incorrectly identified "persons." This is why, after years of complaints, officials had to devise a way for incorrectly listed individuals to challenge the listing and get their names off the "no fly list."
The government counters -- probably rightly -- that it's far better to tolerate the problem of "false positive" inaccurate listings than to err by not including a true "needle in the haystack" terrorist suspect. What's left unsaid is the degree to which the list of 1.1 million persons is still under-inclusive as well as being over-inclusive.
-We realize that the pre- and circa-9/11 examples of egregious failures now should be moot in light of the vast changes initiated in data-collection, data-mining and refining the watch listing processes after 9/11. These failures occurred before "Top Secret America" began vacuuming up trillions of pieces of data on people all over the world, including that done by the NSA's massive communication interception programs; before TIDE or the no-fly list even existed. Congress needs to learn whether any of the recent participants in the Mideast or the European terrorist attacks could have used the waiver program to enter the U.S.
-The new "$64 million question" becomes what is the actual, current track record of the watch listing process? How many, if any, of the dozens of citizens of any of the 38 participating countries who have, in hindsight, been identified as participating in recent terrorist incidents were NOT listed in TIDE or the TSDB so would not have been flagged if they had sought to enter the U.S. through the VWP? How accurate is the actual operation of the tiered nomination process in its attempts to accurately strain the wheat from the chaff, i.e., to get more "needles" and less "hay?"
DHS and NCTC will invariably know the full answers to these important questions while the public must rely on reporters' limited prying. In all fairness, it's been reported that brothers Saà �d and Cherif Kouachi, who shot 12 "Charlie Hebdo" employees, were on the U.S. terrorist watch list for years. One of the brothers was known to have traveled to Yemen, possibly for training with Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Also on the plus side, Reuters reported that four of the Nov. 13 attackers in Paris were listed in TIDE and at least one of the attackers was also on the U.S. no-fly list.
The US Refugee Program
Last week, the House of Representatives voted to tighten restrictions on the resettlement of Syrian refugees into the United States based on their concerns about national security. With a veto-proof majority, the bill passed 289-137 as Democrats joined Republicans, pointing to the fact that one of the participants in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks was a Syrian who entered Europe with a fake passport while posing as a refugee.
The House bill requires that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security devise rigorous background checks on refugees, guaranteeing that they pose no threat. But the current process of so thoroughly vetting refugees can take years before approval, since it requires repeated interviews, applicants' furnishing of full biometric data before traveling to the U.S. (in contrast to the VWP), and much more rigorous screening than merely checking terrorist watch lists. Further legislative restrictions would almost invariably prove so onerous as to effectively block almost all Syrian refugees from resettling in the U.S.
In 2013, DHS recorded a total of 69,909 persons admitted to the United States as refugees. The leading countries of nationality for refugees were Iraq, Burma, and Bhutan. This is almost seven times the number of proposed Syrian refugees, but no one raised an eyebrow about these refugees.
Of course, the bigger the haystack, the harder it is to find a terrorist. It is counter-intuitive to the "collect it all" mentality, yet whistleblowers, even before Edward Snowden, have been trying to make the public aware of the problems that inherently undercut the meaningfulness of "big data" gathering and analysis.
"The problem with mass surveillance is when you collect everything, you understand nothing," said Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor. Data collection, even with biometric identifiers added, will inherently prove far less useful for predicting or preventing terrorism or any crime, than it will be in identifying a perpetrator, i.e., solving a crime, after the crime has been committed. That's essentially how the FBI's fingerprint repository works. A fingerprint identified one of the dead Paris attackers AFTER he died in the attack.
Yet no one would accuse the fingerprint database of having failed. That is because, unlike the massive data collection undertaken after 9/11, no one ever claimed or justified the fingerprint repository as the ultimate solution that could detect criminals/terrorists and prevent would-be crimes/terrorist attacks before they happen.
A similar realistic appreciation of the benefits, difficulties and vulnerabilities of terrorist watch listing based on big data collection, along with honest answers instead of government secrecy is necessary to justify continuation or possible expansion of the VWP.
Given the apparent urgency of plugging holes in the VWP, President Obama announced on Monday, Nov 30, that he would raise the potential fine for airlines who do not verify their passengers' identities. But bigger issues such as disallowing those on the "no fly list" to buy guns will have to wait as that would depend upon congressional action.
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