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| Boston bomb suspect's name was on classified government watch lists |
| 2013-04-24 |
| The name of one of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was listed on the U.S. government's highly classified central database of people it views as potential terrorists. But the list is so vast that this did not mean authorities automatically kept close tabs on him, sources close to the bombing investigation said on Tuesday. The sources said Tamerlan Tsarnaev's details were entered into TIDE, a database maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center, because the FBI spoke to him in 2011 while investigating a Russian tip-off that he had become a follower of radical Islamists. The FBI found nothing to suggest he was an active threat, but all the same placed his name on the "Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment" list. The FBI has not said what it did find about Tsarnaev. But the database, which holds more than half a million names, is only a repository of information on people who U.S. authorities see as known, suspected or potential terrorists from around the world. Because of its huge size, U.S. investigators do not routinely monitor everyone registered there, said U.S. officials familiar with the database. As of 2008, TIDE contained more than 540,000 names, although they represented about 450,000 actual people, because some of the entries are aliases or different name spellings for the same person. Fewer than 5 percent of the TIDE entries were U.S. citizens or legal residents, according to a description of the database on the NCTC website. What percentage actually live in the U.S? |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #3 That database is so highly secret, it couldn't spell his name right. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2013-04-24 15:07 |
| #2 If only they had Palantir. [Sarc off] |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-04-24 08:58 |
| #1 So 22.5 thousand Americans on the list. That's not beyond the ability to routinely monitor, at least electronically... Also they seem to cluster together so less to monitor using people. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2013-04-24 08:26 |