Nun Terrorized by Terror Watch

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
Date: September 26, 2005 8:52:34 AM EDT
To: Blaster <rforno () infowarrior org>
Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Nun Terrorized by Terror Watch


Nun Terrorized by Terror Watch
By Ryan Singel

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,68973,00.html

02:00 AM Sep. 26, 2005 PT

Sister Glenn Anne McPhee is a busy woman.

As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' secretary for education,  
Sister
McPhee oversees Catholic education in the United States, from nursery  
school
through post-graduate. Her job includes working with the Department of
Education, speaking frequently at conferences and scrutinizing religious
textbooks to clear them with the teachings of the church.

For nine months in 2003 and 2004, Sister McPhee also took on the task of
clearing her name from the government's no-fly list, an endeavor that  
proved
fruitless until she called on a higher power, the White House.

"I got to the point I could hardly go to the airport, because I couldn't
anticipate what would happen and I couldn't do anything," she said in an
interview with Wired News. "I missed key addresses I was to give. I  
finally
got to the point where I always checked my bag, because after I got  
through
the police clearance, then they would put me through special security  
where
they wand you from head to foot all over. They would dump out  
everything in
your bag, then roll it into a ball and hand it back to you."

McPhee is not the first high-profile individual to be caught by the
government's watch lists. Sen. Edward Kennedy and former presidential
candidate John Anderson both found that their names matched names on the
list, but like McPhee, were able to resolve the problem by contacting
powerful officials.

But, thanks to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information  
Act, her
ordeal offers one of the most illuminating illustrations of the  
failures of
the airport screening system that has come to light since 9/11. The
Electronic Privacy Information Center plans to release the results of  
the
FOIA request this week, Wired News has learned, handing the latest  
black eye
to a government initiative aimed at preventing terrorists from boarding
commercial flights that originate in the United States.

EPIC obtained the call logs of the Transportation Security  
Administration,
the agency in charge of maintaining and enforcing the no-fly list,  
and found
a pattern of complaints from citizens who charged they were mistakenly
scooped up time and time again by the anti-terrorist program. In  
addition,
innocent people whose names wound up matching the suspect list, like  
McPhee,
found they had no way to fix the situation, short of pulling strings.

One caller expressed his humiliation at being pulled off a flight. A  
woman
named Elizabeth Green wanted to know how her name ended up on the watch
list. A self-described "well-dressed, 100-pound, 69-year-old, gray- 
haired
grandmother" wanted to know why she was always selected for extra  
screening.
Several expressed frustration at the call center's unwillingness to help
them get off a government watch list.

<snip>

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