Does the security drill at US airports really make you wonder? Chances are high that if you are routinely subjected to extra airport security or unable to print boarding passes for airline flights at US airport kiosks, then your name has somehow got trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of America’s bulging terrorist watch lists.
Unbelievably, even US senators have been tagged for extra screening along with nuns and war heroes with the same names as suspected terrorists on the watch list. Civil liberties advocates say the bulging watch lists spawn “faster than rabbits.”
There’s a good chance that our very own King Khan, who has been detained twice in three years at US airports, has probably ended up on the loopy watch list.
Shah Rukh Khan’s travails with US airport security officials is widely shared.
“I was really hassled perhaps because of my name being Khan. These guys just wouldn’t let me through,” Shah Rukh Khan said in a text message to Indian reporters after one infamous airport incident.
A spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said the agency is sensitive to the problems travellers face when they are “misidentified.” America’s terrorist watch list hit one million names in July 2008, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union, based on the US government’s own reported numbers for the size of the list. To be sure, hundreds of thousands of Indian and South Asian names have crept into the massive list.
“Misidentified travellers from anywhere in the world can file a complaint with us. We are very sensitive to the problems they face. Once we receive a complaint, we try to resolve the case as quickly as possible,” said a TSA spokesperson.
According to the agency, a foreign traveller who feels targeted should file an online complaint on TSA’s redress program (here) or mail a complaint to the agency’s redress office. You can also fill up an online redress/complaint form (here) on the TSA website .
Media reports, however, point out that the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program better known as TRIP which was launched in February 2007 has a crushing backlog of appeals. Congressional leaders have called on Homeland Security to come up with a speedier appeal system that will help innocent travelers clear their names.
The Homeland Security Department says it gets nearly 2,000 requests a month from people who want to have their names cleared. You have to allow for 7 to 10 business days before checking the status of an electronic redress form submission. The average processing time is roughly 40 days but could stretch.
Some individuals who have been able to clear their names say that airlines still give them a “terribly hard time” because they don’t have updated lists.
After a hue and cry from misidentified passengers, TSA developed a more sophisticated screening system called Secure Flight (details here) that attempts to cut down on the number of people mistakenly tagged for extra security. TSA now asks passengers to provide airlines with names, date of birth, gender and a redress number (if you have one) to cut down on glitches.
“It is to the passenger’s advantage to provide the required data elements as doing so may prevent delays or inconveniences at the airport, particularly for those individuals who have been misidentified in the past,” TSA says on its website.
Courtesy: Firstpost