Do You Know a Terrorist?
July 17, 2008 by Doug
Filed under Miscellaneous
I’m flying to Portland this fall to the GWA conference so it was with a great deal of “satisfaction” that I learned that the U.S. authorities now have over 1 million people on their “watch-list” for flying. This is a list that compares your name to a list of people who are “suspects” and need to be watched for terrorism activities. If your name happens to be on the list – you get pulled over and searched rather thoroughly.
The amusing (?) thing about this is many people share the same name. For example, there’s Doug Green the Old Testament Prof, Doug Green the Singing Ranger, Doug Green the football star, Doug Green the gardener, Doug Green the real estate sales guy and Doug Green the physicist. Not to mention Doug Green the convicted felon. Now if Doug Green the convicted felon makes a threat somewhere or somebody thinks he made a threat – all Doug Greens get pulled over and “checked”. No appeal to going on the list and no way of getting off the list. Some faceless bureaucrat puts you on and that’s all she wrote friends.
So do you know a terrorist on the watch list?
Don’t be so quick to say no.
Think about it for a minute. There’s approximately 350 million people in the U.S. and 1 million people on the list. So 1 in 350 people in the U.S. need watching. Give or take a few, here and there, mostly there.
According to research done in the U.K. by Drs. Hill and Dunbar the average person has a social network of 150 people.
So between you – your neighbor to the right and the neighbor to the left you know 450 people. Let’s take 50 off that for overlaps and the three of you know around 400 people.
1 in 350 is on the terrorist watch list – the three of you know 400 people.
The odds say that you or your immediate neighbors know somebody the U.S. government says needs watching.
1 million people sounds like a bit of overkill to me but in a world where that bastion on honest reporting, Fox news, describes arsonists as “domestic terrorists” I guess it all makes bizarre sense that one in 350 should be suspected of something and all who share that name should be equally branded.
Surreal – this could be a scene from Kafka.
Wow! Never even thought about that! Pretty interesting.
They keep people feeding at the trough of fear. Sickening.
And a coworker of mine has a name on the No Fly List – he gets stopped, checked, (and pestered/harassed) everywhere we fly.
@Katie -
I too have friends who no longer travel much – one is from Sri Lanka and even though he’s a well respected physician, he gets pulled over and grilled repeatedly.
My Veterinarian has a name “similar” to someone on the no-fly list and he and his family get harassed every time they go somewhere! He is also very well know and respected in his home state. Think have gone very strange down here.