[ExI] Feel Safer Now?

[Mirco Romanato]

Amara Graps ha scritto:
> The news at Boing Boing today that the US federal government thinks that
> 1 in 300 US residents are terrorists:
> 
> http://www.boingboing.net/2008/03/13/1-in-300-us-resident.html
> 
> "September 2007 report by the Inspector General of the Department of
> Justice, which reported that the Terrorist Screening Center had over
> 700,000 names in its database as of April 2007, and that the list was
> growing by an average of over 20,000 records per month.As of today, the
> list stands at approximately 917,000 names."
> 
> reminded me how scarily out-of-control and out-of-touch with reality is
> the Bush administration, with no end in sight (I'm not sure the Congress
> after the Fall elections will be any better). Since 1 in 300 of US citizens
> are considered terrorists, a good question is how to get all of those
> bomb-throwing lunatics locked up? The usual (statist) answer is to throw
> more money into the black pot, with the usual source of money being you
> and me.
> 
> Feel safer now?

I don't understand.
Where did they write that the 700.000 names are all from U.S. citizens?
I suppose they are interested in domestic and foreign terrorists.

Where did they write that any single name refer to a single person?
Usually terrorists and common criminals have alias and different 
spelling of their names (mainly the foreign ones).

Where did they write that any and all persons in the database are 
terrorists?
Is in a database about terrorists  appropriate to insert the names of 
the family members of suspected terrorists? The names of criminal know 
to work with terrorists or that have skill useful to terrorists? The 
name of suspected or of people connected directly or indirectly to 
terrorism and terrorists?

The real worry is about how the database is used.
If being inside the DB is enough to prevent people to board an airplane, 
this is stupid more than it is wrong.
Simply because they are too much false positive and following all of 
them is a waste of resources better used for other, more useful, purposes.

Mirco

-- 
[Intangible capital is] the preponderant form of wealth.
When we look at the shares of intangible capital across income classes, 
you see it goes from about 60 percent in low-income countries to 80 
percent in high-income countries.
That accords very much with the notion that what really makes countries 
wealthy is not the bits and pieces, it's the brainpower, and the 
institutions that harness that brainpower.
It's the skills more than the rocks and minerals.
—Kirk Hamilton
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