Needles And Haystacks

Airline passengers are being entered into a potential threat database base. The reason is the Department of Homeland Security wants federal air marshalls to meet a monthly quota.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.

These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. Air marshals told 7NEWS that managers in Las Vegas created and continue to maintain this potentially dangerous quota system.

"Do these reports have real life impacts on the people who are identified as potential terrorists?" 7NEWS Investigator Tony Kovaleski asked.

Besides the obvious problem of civil liberties being violated - the quota is needlessly filling the database with nonthreats. Former Deputy Sec of Defense John J. Hamre summed it up best.

Using the metaphor "finding the needle in the haystack," since September 11 government agencies have been basically adding more hay to the pile, not finding needles. Finding the needles requires that we undertake more focused, rigorous and thoughtful domestic intelligence collection and analysis not collect mountains of information on innocent civilians.