200,000 people are listed in terror suspect database

[Tab]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police and other government workers in the U.S. have come in contact with terrorists or people suspected of foreign terror ties more than 6,000 times in the past 28 months, the director of the federal Terrorist Screening Center said Tuesday.

The encounters in traffic stops, applications for permits and other situations have resulted in fewer than 60 arrests, said Donna Bucella, whose agency maintains a list of 200,000 people known or suspected to be terrorists. The list contains an additional 150,000 records that have only partial names, Bucella said.

The vast majority of people on the list are not in this country, and many have only tenuous or inconclusive ties to terrorism, Bucella said at a briefing for reporters at FBI headquarters.
...
The TSC list, conceived after the intelligence failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, combines about a dozen databases from nine agencies that any government official — from a Customs agent to a state trooper — can use to check the name of someone who has been screened or stopped.
...
Bucella spoke only in general terms, saying the database last year identified a number of people on the watch list who were flying into the same metropolitan area at the same time. She said their purpose was not innocent, but declined to say whether they were arrested or what they intended to do.

More: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-03-14-terrorism-names_x.htm?POE=NEWISVA

[QuettaKid]

1. "The vast majority of people on the list are not in this country"

they are however on DU.

[MrModerate]

2. "Tenuous or inconclusive ties" -- which is to say . . .

Totally specious! No wonder we can't catch Osama Bin Laden if we're wasting our time on this idiocy.

[Lost-in-FL]

3. Let's see

If there is 86,561 DU users... where's the 113,439 remaining terrorists?

:evilgrin: :crazy: :sarcasm: :hide:

[leveymg]

4. Our friends at Daily Kos and Democrats.com

:toast:

[Lost-in-FL]

5. Gosh!!! Thank you!!!

I forgot about those!!

[High Plains]

6. Ah, the "I heard an unconfirmed rumor" list

[BR_Parkway]

7. 60 arrests out of 6,000 contacts in things like traffic stops? But the

majority are outside the country? And we KNOW their purpose wasn't innocent, but we don't arrest them?

Either the bulk of the 6,000 shouldn't be on that list at all if we've only arrested 60 - or there's some really interesting ways to be put in that database (where you post, what groups you belong to)

How many completely illogical holes can someone put into one article and still have the gonads to call it news vs propoganda?