The House overwhelmingly approved legislation this week mandating the creation of a database of people who aren't terrorists, but are routinely flagged at airports anyway.
The U.S. government maintains a list of about a million names of suspected terrorists that is crosschecked with passenger names as they check in for air flights. The flawed list has been criticized for years, due to sloppy name matches that have ensnared innocent travelers, children, prominent politicians and government officials, and (at one time) all men named David Nelson.
Under the new plan, innocent victims of the terrorist watchlist will be allowed to establish that they are not terrorists. They would then get their names put on what the legislation calls the "Comprehensive Cleared List."
The legislation is the latest step in the Obama administration's efforts to reverse or correct a long list of Bush-era fuck-ups. The legislation is intended to assist wrongly flagged passengers and would supersede the troubled DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program, which has been criticized for being slow or unresponsive to flier complaints. The FAST Redress Act, if approved by the Senate, requires the government to report within 240 days on its progress in implementing the new list.
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