Post by Ardbeg... innit on Jan 26, 2011 7:02:42 GMT -6
... and no, not in the Special Olympics kind of way
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The No-Fly List: FBI Says It's Smaller Than You Think
Gulet Mohamed, a Virginia teenager, is back home after being forced to stay in Kuwait for more than a month. He says he couldn't return because he was on the U.S. no-fly list.
The government refuses to say whether he is or isn't on it. And while the no-fly list has grown in recent years, the FBI says the list is not nearly as big as people think.
"We don't confirm or deny that you're on the watch list, and candidly, people just assume they are, and 99.4 percent of the time they are wrong," says Timothy Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the list.
In the case of Mohamed, his lawyer points to the fact that the Kuwaitis tried to force him onto a flight to the U.S. and failed. "At that point, it was clear it was the U.S. and not the Kuwaitis that were mainly responsible for his detention. It really simplified our legal argument," Gadeir Abbas says.
A district court judge agreed and ordered Mohamed home. His lawyers are now suing the government and waiting to find out if he's on the list.
So how many people are on the list?
"About 10,000," Healy says. "And [the number of] U.S. citizens on the no-fly list is even much smaller, between 500 and 1,000." So Dr Bob doesnt quite make it to 1 in a million status here in the US, but he is getting there.
Gulet Mohamed, a Virginia teenager, is back home after being forced to stay in Kuwait for more than a month. He says he couldn't return because he was on the U.S. no-fly list.
The government refuses to say whether he is or isn't on it. And while the no-fly list has grown in recent years, the FBI says the list is not nearly as big as people think.
"We don't confirm or deny that you're on the watch list, and candidly, people just assume they are, and 99.4 percent of the time they are wrong," says Timothy Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the list.
In the case of Mohamed, his lawyer points to the fact that the Kuwaitis tried to force him onto a flight to the U.S. and failed. "At that point, it was clear it was the U.S. and not the Kuwaitis that were mainly responsible for his detention. It really simplified our legal argument," Gadeir Abbas says.
A district court judge agreed and ordered Mohamed home. His lawyers are now suing the government and waiting to find out if he's on the list.
So how many people are on the list?
"About 10,000," Healy says. "And [the number of] U.S. citizens on the no-fly list is even much smaller, between 500 and 1,000." So Dr Bob doesnt quite make it to 1 in a million status here in the US, but he is getting there.