Political Quotes

“Ranking Member Lungren, nearly everyone in the homeland security community agrees that having a single comprehensive list of terrorist suspects is an important tool in keeping America safe. However, there are flaws in how the terrorist watch list is maintained and used. Perhaps the biggest problem is that every single day, countless Americans are misidentified as terrorists. These errors most commonly occur when an innocent person's name happens to be similar to one listed in the database. This results in wasted time, both for law enforcement, because they're using resources investigating innocent people, and for the general public who face the prospect of being wrongly detained and possibly altogether prevented from going about their business. Most commonly, this affects air travelers who are screened against the watch list more often than anyone else. Currently, each time a reservation is made, airlines must determine whether a customer is a potential match based on information they receive from our government. Every day, thousands of people are pulled aside, required to go through special procedures, detained, or even denied boarding altogether, at great cost to frustrated travelers who miss flights, which ruins plans, and at great cost to companies which depend on business travel whose employees miss meetings and lose productivity.”