According to an investigation by CBS News, there are now upwards of two million people on the U.S. government terrorist watchlist. Moreover, the size of the watchlist “has nearly doubled in size in just six years,” CBS found.
Officially known as the Terrorist Screening Dataset, the program was created in the wake of 9/11 and initially comprised a list of about 120,000 people.
Being on the list doesn’t mean that a person is a terrorist, according former intelligence community professional Russ Travers who spoke to CBS. “It means there’s something that has led a department or agency to say, ‘This person needs a closer look,’” he said.
Supposedly, many or even most of the names on the list are not Americans. This assurance comes from Monte Hawkins, who “currently helps oversee watchlisting policy for President Biden.”
Given the rapid expansion of the watchlist during the Biden administration, concurrent with that administration’s attempted criminalization of its political opponents totaling some 70 million-plus Trump supporters, it would be reasonable to be skeptical of Hawkins’ assertion.
As CBS News points out, being on the watchlist has chilling ramifications:
“In countless civil lawsuits over the past 20 years, people have described how they believe the watchlist caused them to be stopped from flying home after a vacation, to fail a background check to get jobs, or to have their phones and computers searched. Others said it triggered law enforcement to handcuff them at gunpoint, or that they were detained and interrogated by foreign intelligence services.”
