Veteran on Terror list could get fired

[TheSteve]

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For Erich Scherfen, being on a government terror watch list isn't just a matter of inconvenience. It could end his career.

Scherfen served in the U.S. military for 13 years, as an Army infantryman in the first Gulf War and then as a helicopter pilot in the National Guard. After receiving an honorable discharge, he was hired as a pilot by Colgan Air Inc., a regional airline operating in the Northeast and Texas.

In April, Colgan informed Scherfen that he was on a government list and would be suspended from his job. He was told he faced termination on September 1 unless he was able to clear his name.

But Scherfen, of Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, has been unable to do so and said fears it could mean he has no future as a pilot.
"My entire career depends on me getting off this list," he told CNN. "I probably won't be able to get a job anywhere else in the world having this mark that I'm on this list."

Witold Walczak, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Scherfen and his wife in a lawsuit, calls the government actions "unfair" and "unjust."

"It is quite clear when the government does something that takes away not just your job, but your occupation, your career, they have to provide you with some means to clear your name," Walczak said.
The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in Pennsylvania, asks the U.S. government to remove Scherfen and his wife, Rubina Tareen, from any watch lists or databases that inhibit their travel.

Scherfen is a convert to Islam (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Islam). His wife emigrated from Pakistan when she was 17 and is now a U.S. citizen. She runs a small business selling books and DVDs about Islam, publications she describes as nonpolitical.
by security personnel that they are on "a list." Scherfen calls it "embarrassing."

Tareen said she thinks they may be on a watch list because of their Muslim faith and her Pakistani heritage. The two said they are not terrorists and don't associate with people who are.

"I have no idea why I am on the list, and they're not telling officially that I'm even on the list," Scherfen said.

In a statement, the U.S. Justice Department said it will not confirm or deny that the couple's names are on a watch list for national security and privacy reasons.

In May, Scherfen and his wife wrote to the Department of Homeland Security asking for help with their case. The department referred them to the Transportation Security Administration (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Transportation_Security_Administration)'s Traveler Redress Inquiry Program. This week they received a number to track their case, but their complaint has not been addressed.

A TSA spokeswoman told CNN the agency is seeking "a meaningful resolution" to the couple's case but said there is no timetable for doing so.
Meanwhile, a federal judge has the case under review. He asked that Colgan move Scherfen's termination date to October 1. The airline has done so, allowing more time for a possible resolution.

"Unfortunately, it is a problem that is shared by countless individuals who have no connection to terrorism, have no connection to crime and don't belong on this list," said Walczak, the ACLU lawyer.
Walczak acknowledged the need for the government to protect the country from threats with a watch list but said, "The problem with what the government is doing is that they really don't care about innocent casualties."

Scherfen said the pain of his situation is accentuated by the fact that he spent 13 years in uniform protecting the country.

"We served honorably," he said. "We served in a war. And they're thumbing their noses at us, basically, and that makes me feel ... really sad about this situation."http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/22/pilot.watch.list/index.html

I hope he can get off that list as soon as possible and keep his job. I hate seeing these sorts of things happening.

[Mu-Meson]

Scherfen is a convert to Islam (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Islam). His wife emigrated from Pakistan when she was 17 and is now a U.S. citizen. She runs a small business selling books and DVDs about Islam, publications she describes as nonpolitical.

Not much info on why he is on the list. If it is nothing more substantial than this then he should clearly not be on it. However, I would like to know more about these "nonpolitical" books and DVD's. I'd like to know if they are "non-ideological". What about the mosque he attends? So many in the US are funded by Saudi Wahabists. If the journalist was doing a proper job, they would check this stuff out. It can't be that hard to determine who their imam is, and what kind of books they sell.

[StukaJr]

It's possible to get on the "Watch List" because the name was once used as an alias by a person of interest - so every time the name comes up, they flag it and seek to confirm person's identity...

The fact that Department of Justice will neither confirm nor deny them being on the list, makes it kind of hard to determine why they are on the list - journalist has nothing to go by, other than DHS constantly flags this particular family...

[Hollis]

Article smacks of "political spin".

It doesn't say why and if it did, the spin might have spun out. Doesn't mean the government is 100% all the time, there are mistakes. If this is a mistake I wish him the best, if it is not a mistake......... good call.

[Macs.]

Not much info on why he is on the list. If it is nothing more substantial than this then he should clearly not be on it. However, I would like to know more about these "nonpolitical" books and DVD's. I'd like to know if they are "non-ideological". What about the mosque he attends? So many in the US are funded by Saudi Wahabists. If the journalist was doing a proper job, they would check this stuff out. It can't be that hard to determine who their imam is, and what kind of books they sell.

If he or she is doing anything illegal they should be investigated and brought to a court, like it's the normal way. And even if the Iman is having a difficult opinion doesn't mean that people who attent him should be on somekind of watch list without any basis... Is this some Soviet country or the USA ?

"Land of the free" etc.

And as if a real Terrorist was made unable to cause harm without being able to go on a flight - He would just choose another way to attack. Either way this seems to be a half-assed approach.

[Invisigoth]

Yeah, you can also get on the infamous list if you...are critical of the government *surprise*, or do you really believe that there are 1 mio. terrorists flying in and out of the U.S.?

whole load of ****, just makes it easier for real terrorists to get in.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/CNN_reporter_wants_off_terror_watch_0716.html

[Mu-Meson]

And as if a real Terrorist was made unable to cause harm without being able to go on a flight - He would just choose another way to attack. Either way this seems to be a half-assed approach.

So you are saying that since a terrorist could use a car bomb, there is no point to having airport security? Or are you calling for even greater security measures? No security or mandatory strip searches? Is that the choice?

[alphasixfour]

It's possible to get on the "Watch List" because the name was once used as an alias by a person of interest - so every time the name comes up, they flag it and seek to confirm person's identity...

The fact that Department of Justice will neither confirm nor deny them being on the list, makes it kind of hard to determine why they are on the list - journalist has nothing to go by, other than DHS constantly flags this particular family...

In this case both he and his wife have caught flack with the TSA, so it's very likely that they were put on there for a reason. I think this reporter was more out on a TSA flaming mission than digging up the whole picture.

Unfortunately, there are lots of AKA's and common names that conflict with actual passengers who have never done anything wrong. The no-fly list is a necessity in today's environment but it definitely needs some tweaking, as well as a forum/facility to contest the reason you're put there.

The TSA should start using bdays, addresses, or some other information as a cross reference. Doing it how they are just leaves too much room for error and gives leeching lawyers for the ACLU a reason to exist.

[Macs.]

So you are saying that since a terrorist could use a car bomb, there is no point to having airport security? Or are you calling for even greater security measures? No security or mandatory strip searches? Is that the choice?

It's not about airport security, it's about this particular list that includes that those on it are not allowed to fly.

If someone is such a threat that you won't even let him board a airplane he sure needs a little more attention than simply being on a list, no ?

And when you hear that there a hundred of thousands of Names on that list (Including Aliases) it sounds like there is a possible Terrorist around ever corner in the US.

The other part seems that this list has a large percentage of errors, when you hear that even in some cases children weren't allowed to board a plane because they had the wrong name, I can't believe that people tolerate such bull**** in the name of fighting terrorism.

[Calanen]

I've had arguments before on here about this list. It is ridiculous to have a list, that nobody knows how you get on it, you cant challenge the fact you are on it and which has major implications for your rights to travel within the US or externally.

There needs to be due process, so that if you are on the list, you can confront your accusers, and say, this has nothing to do with me. If you are a real terrorist, there is no way you will actually voliuntarily go within a bull's roar of a real court.

I referred in passing about the nun who was on the terrorist watch list, here is the article about her adventures. It really is keystone cops stuff.


Nun Terrorized by Terror Watch

Ryan Singel http://www.wired.com/images/icon_email.gif (http://www.wired.com/services/feedback/letterstoeditor)09.26.05
Sister Glenn Anne McPhee is a busy woman.

As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' secretary for education, Sister McPhee oversees Catholic education in the United States, from nursery school through post-graduate. Her job includes working with the Department of Education, speaking frequently at conferences and scrutinizing religious textbooks to clear them with the teachings of the church.

For nine months in 2003 and 2004, Sister McPhee also took on the task of clearing her name from the government's no-fly list, an endeavor that proved fruitless until she called on a higher power, the White House.

"I got to the point I could hardly go to the airport, because I couldn't anticipate what would happen and I couldn't do anything," she said in an interview with Wired News. "I missed key addresses I was to give. I finally got to the point where I always checked my bag, because after I got through the police clearance, then they would put me through special security where they wand you from head to foot all over. They would dump out everything in your bag, then roll it into a ball and hand it back to you."

McPhee is not the first high-profile individual to be caught by the government's watch lists. Sen. Edward Kennedy and former presidential candidate John Anderson both found that their names matched names on the list, but like McPhee, were able to resolve the problem by contacting powerful officials.

But, thanks to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, her ordeal offers one of the most illuminating illustrations of the failures of the airport screening system that has come to light since 9/11. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (http://epic.org/) plans to release the results of the FOIA request this week, Wired News has learned, handing the latest black eye to a government initiative aimed at preventing terrorists from boarding commercial flights that originate in the United States.

EPIC obtained the call logs of the Transportation Security Administration, the agency in charge of maintaining and enforcing the no-fly list, and found a pattern of complaints from citizens who charged they were mistakenly scooped up time and time again by the anti-terrorist program. In addition, innocent people whose names wound up matching the suspect list, like McPhee, found they had no way to fix the situation, short of pulling strings.

One caller expressed his humiliation at being pulled off a flight. A woman named Elizabeth Green wanted to know how her name ended up on the watch list. A self-described "well-dressed, 100-pound, 69-year-old, gray-haired grandmother" wanted to know why she was always selected for extra screening. Several expressed frustration at the call center's unwillingness to help them get off a government watch list.
Sister McPhee's chronicle of frustration began in mid-October 2003, after she was stopped at Baltimore Washington International airport on her way to Providence, Rhode Island.

Unable to check in using the airline's kiosks, McPhee handed her driver's license and reservation to an airline employee, who keyed her name into the computer system and then disappeared with her license into an internal door.
When he returned an hour later, he was accompanied by two police officers.

The officers flanked the 62-year-old Dominican nun, one standing with his hand on his gun, the other using a cell phone to run a security check.
Three hours later, having missed two planes, Sister McPhee was cleared to enter the security line, where she was wanded from head to toe with a magnometer.

"This was the beginning of nine months of hell," McPhee said.

Before flying back to Washington, D.C., McPhee called a family connection who works at an airline and who had access to the watch lists provided by the government to the airlines.

Sister McPhee was being stopped because the list said that an Afghani man was using the last name McPhee as an alias. The list had no first name for him, and the intensive checks would continue until she cleared her name with the ombudsman at the Transportation Security Administration, according to this family connection.

McPhee, who travels two or three times a month for her work, tried contacting the TSA's call center, but had to continue traveling until her name was cleared.

"I was now leaving three hours ahead, being at airports ahead of time, only to still miss planes. I was delayed up to five hours," McPhee said.
Sister McPhee prides herself on being a law-abiding citizen and says the only time she has been in trouble with the police was when she got a speeding ticket at age 23.

She admits that once while undergoing screening, she made a "smart remark" to an officer.

"I said something to the effect that 'If this were Northern Ireland, I would understand,'" McPhee said. "And the police officer said, 'Ma'am, I'll pretend I didn't hear that, or otherwise I would have to arrest you.' After that, I didn't say anything."

When she was not traveling, however, Sister McPhee tried to say something to the TSA.

McPhee said she called the TSA's complaint line and left numerous messages. Though the recording promised that someone would call her back in 72 hours, the TSA never called her back.

Call logs from TSA's call center acquired by EPIC have no notation of contact with McPhee until May 13, 2004.
TSA paid Landover, Maryland-based Systems Integration more than $2 million to handle calls to the TSA complaint line from Oct. 21, 2002, to Jan. 21, 2004. Of that $2 million, $452,000 was specifically earmarked for the company to deal with the voicemail backlog.

Still, no one ever called her back.

Finally, in May 2004, word of Sister McPhee's crusade made its way up to the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Rev. Monsignor William P. Fay.

"(Fay) said, 'How are you doing your job?' and I said, 'Barely,'" McPhee said.

Fay then personally wrote to Karl Rove, the top political adviser to President Bush, who contacted then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, who passed the task to a top Homeland Security lawyer.

McPhee said the lawyer immediately got the TSA to respond, and also gave her his cell-phone number in case she was ever stopped again.
TSA spokeswoman Deirdre O'Sullivan confirmed that the TSA called McPhee in 2005 after receiving a letter from the Conference of Bishops via the White House, and placed her name on the cleared list this summer. But she said it is highly unlikely that the agency would have failed to log numerous voicemails from the same person over an extended period of time, since a number of employees share the responsibility of keeping call records. She also said that the agency sent McPhee a form to fill out in May 2004 after getting an earlier letter from the Conference of Bishops, but that it has no record she returned the form.

"When I came off that list, it was like a miracle had happened, and the relief I can't begin to describe to you. It did help my faith," McPhee said.

"Those nine months were the closest thing to hell I hope I will ever experience."

Still, McPhee believes that if she didn't have political connections, her name would still be on the list.

"For me, it was trauma," McPhee said. "What would it be for people who don't speak English, for new immigrants, for people who don't have the benefit of the education I have had? If this is America, this is a pretty sad commentary."

Over the last six months, government auditors have also questioned the quality of the government's watch lists and whether the TSA is ready to roll out a long-delayed replacement for the current airline passenger-screening system.

The TSA hopes the new system, dubbed Secure Flight, will reduce the number of false positives by having the government, not the airlines, check passenger names against an expanded watch list.

But that initiative too is drawing fire. On Friday, a TSA-appointed oversight group comprising outside privacy and security experts released a damning report (http://www.tsa.gov/public/interweb/assetlibrary/SFWG_Report_September_19_2005_Final_V_1_.4.pdf) (.pdf) on the agency. The findings included a recommendation that Congress prohibit the testing of Secure Flight in the nation's airports until the secretary of Homeland Security outlines key policy decisions about how the system will work and protect privacy.

An earlier proposal, named CAPPS II, was killed off after a series of revelations about secret data transfers from airlines to the government and its contractors.

Secure Flight will use a unified list containing the names and dates of birth of 120,000 to 160,000 people, according to recent government reports.
The Justice Department's top watchdog warned earlier this month, however, that the Terrorist Screening Center -- which compiles the unified watch list -- had to transfer its top person in charge of cleaning up the lists to working on coordinating technologies with Secure Flight.

The TSA says it has hired more personnel and started new procedures to clear up false positives, according to a Justice Department report (http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0534/final.pdf) (.pdf).
The TSA needs to improve its customer service and the quality of the watch-list data, according to Marcia Hofmann, the EPIC staff counsel who filed the FOIA request.

"Certainly the accuracy of the watch list is going to (be) very important as the TSA moves forward on Secure Flight," Hofmann said. "The Terrorist Screening Center and the TSA have to make sure the data is of good-enough quality to make important decisions about people, and if they cannot, then that raises questions about whether this technique should be used for aviation security."


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http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2005/09/68973?currentPage=all

[By the way, the anti-jihad author Robert Spencer is on the list, even though AQ has released a tape saying they are going to kill him.]

[angry cow]

A good article on the current status of WSJ, pretty harsh, wonder how the editors managed to sneak this one past Murdoch?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121937117186362585.html?mod=googlenews_wsj


Flaws Found
In Watch List
For Terrorists
By SIOBHAN GORMAN
August 22, 2008; Page A3

The government's main terrorist-watch-list system is hobbled by technology challenges, and the $500 million program designed to upgrade it is on the verge of collapse, according to a preliminary congressional investigation.

The database, which includes an estimated 400,000 people and as many as 1 million names, has been criticized for flagging ordinary Americans. Now, the congressional report finds that the system has problems identifying true potential terrorists, as well.

[martinexsquaddie]

either he's a genuine bad guy charge him or put him in front of a court.
or let him go about his lawful buisness until such time as you have enough evidence to convict him.
he's a muslim and his wife sells books that may not smell of apple pie does'nt make him a terrorist.
mind you robbing someone of his livelihood for no good reason