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Washington: A US watchlist of terrorism suspects has exceeded 1 million records, corresponding to about 400,000 people, and a leading civil rights group said on Monday the number was far too high to be effective.
The Bush administration disagreed and called the list one of the most effective tools implemented after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks, when a federal "no-fly" list contained just 16 people considered threats to aviation.
The American Civil Liberties Union publicised the 1 million milestone with a news conference and release.
It said the watchlist was an impediment to millions of travellers and called for changes, including tightening criteria for adding names, giving travellers a right to challenge their inclusion and improving procedures for taking names included erroneously off the list.
Symbol
"America's new million-record watchlist is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources [and] treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought," ACLU technology director Barry Steinhardt said in a release.
President George W. Bush ordered the current list in September 2003 as a way to wrap several growing terrorism watchlists into a single government database compiled and overseen by the FBI, through a terrorist screening centre.
Suspected terrorists or people believed to have links to terrorism are included on the list, which can be used by a wide range of government agencies to conduct security screenings.
About 50,000 individuals are included on the Transportation Security Administration "no-fly" or "selectee" lists that subject them to travel bans, arrest or additional screening.
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