If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
The United States Government terrorist watch list now stands at 755,000. The list has grown at a rate of 200,000 names a year since 2004 when it was first established to counter terrorism and keep the homeland safe. Of course, racial profiling is rampant but there have been plenty of names toddlers, grandmas, and Senators included, placed due to sheer stupidity and incompetence. At this rate, it might soon hit the million mark and subsequently end up being increasingly irrelevant. Mind you, although the level of terror each individual is associated with may widely differ, they are still placed on one easily digestible list. So a TSA official at the airport on seeing an airline passenger with a same name as on the list might just think he caught one of Osama’s minions. Also, I believe that the existence of such a list puts people with the same unfortunate name at great risk and considering that there are several million Muhammads in this world, you can imagine the probability of mistaken identity. Now only if a John Smith made the list, would the government understand the stupidity of such a list.
This also reminds me of another irrelevant list that has no indication of level of risk - the sexual offenders list. In spite of the supposed heinous nature of crimes that such offenders are capable of, the qualification to place an individual on such a list is surprisingly low. If you are caught peeing out in the open and a school happens to be within a mile or so of your peeing location, then you might be arrested for public indecency and labeled a sex offender. Under the guise of protecting the people, such a list serves as a perfect tool for the authorities to threaten and intimidate individuals. The power of lists is far too much to contemplate giving up.
On a related note, it turns out that Tamil Nadu has included ‘Dalit’ Christians and Muslims in the quotas by approving a bill that provides reservations in education and government jobs. Hmmm…I never knew Islam and Christianity had a caste system. Now this is a list that people actually want to get on.
by Patrix | on Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 9:00 am | 
Governance, Law, United States . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
October 26th, 2007 at 10:14 am reply
Hahahaha - 700000 lists!! They must have some super computers crunching that much data… What I am not sure of is are there a million terrorist groups… million… whoa… hehe!!
I think by the time my kids grow up, I will have to apply for their school in the Economically-backward-Hindus category.
S
October 26th, 2007 at 1:45 pm reply
Supremus, that’s 700,000 individuals not groups. But yup, with the low qualifications, I’m sure we too can make the list if they so wish.