Daarnaast omvat deze groep maar liefst 280.000 personen:
Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.
Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.
En dit is in meer dan één opzicht problematisch:
“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”
Nog een saillant detail: deze conclusie is gebaseerd op een geheim document dat niet door Edward Snowden is gelekt. Er is dus nog een tweede klokkenluider die toegang heeft tot geheime documenten van de Amerikaanse inlichtingendiensten.
