American security chief apologises to Praful Patel

US homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano was quick to apologise to India’s civil aviation minister Praful Patel after his name popped up on a terrorist watch list and he was tagged for extra security at the busy Chicago O’Hare Airport.

“The secretary gave the minister a promise that the US homeland security will do whatever it takes to make sure he is not misidentified in future,” a diplomat in the Indian consulate in New York told DNA.

Still, Patel may be better off flashing a diplomatic passport as this is his second brush with US airport security.

He was earlier hassled in New York when his name first popped up on the same terrorist watch list. Despite the airport stress, the minister who is now in Montreal, has been Zen-like and unflappable: “Nothing serious happened... There is a person with a similar name and birth date on a watch list. That’s why they just double-checked.”

It is actually very tough to figure out if your name is on the terrorist watch list because US officials like to keep the list secret and never come right out and spill the beans.

But 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 mixed up with those on Uncle Sam’s bulging terrorist watch list.

Unbelievably, even US senators have been tagged for extra screening along with toddlers and military veterans with the same names as suspected terrorists on the watch list.

Civil liberties advocates say the bulging watch list spawns “faster than rabbits”. There was a great hubbub when Shah Rukh Khan ended up on the loopy watch list in August last year after shooting My Name is Khan in the US.

Ann Davis, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), earlier told DNA the agency was sensitive to the problems travellers faced when they were “misidentified”.

The FBI-administered Terrorist Screening Center that consolidates the terrorist watch list has compiled over 420,000 names as of 2010 and the list includes many common Indian and South Asian names. Thousands of new names are added to the list every month.

“Misidentified travellers from anywhere in the world can file a complaint with us... We are very sensitive to their problems. Once we receive a complaint we try to resolve the case as soon as possible,” Davis said.

According to the agency, a foreign traveller who feels targetted, should file an online complaint on TSA’s redress programme at www.dhs.gov/trip or mail a complaint to the agency’s redress office. Unfortunately, the Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP) launched in February 2007 has a crushing backlog of appeals.

The Homeland Security Department says it gets nearly 2,000 requests a month from people who suspect they are on a watch list and want to have their names cleared. The average processing time is roughly 40 days. However, some who have been able to clear their names say airlines still give them a “hard time” because they don’t have updated lists.

Indians who have been placed in a cleared list complain that they still get security pat-downs and a barrage of questions because airline reservation systems seem to be working with old information.
US’ No Fly List, the Selectee List and the terrorist watch list were made by the Bush administration after the September 11 terrorist attacks.