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The watchers need watching

Since 9/11 governments have taken various steps to allegedly protect us all from terrorism. Just reflect on how many Ministers or public officials now respond to a question that they are unable to answer it on the grounds of security reasons.

The Washington Post reports on the American scene:

"Each day, thousands of pieces of intelligence information from around the world -- field reports, captured documents, news from foreign allies and sometimes idle gossip -- arrive in a computer-filled office in McLean, where analysts feed them into the nation's central list of terrorists and terrorism suspects.

Called TIDE, for Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, the list is a storehouse for data about individuals that the intelligence community believes might harm the United States. It is the wellspring for watch lists distributed to airlines, law enforcement, border posts and U.S. consulates, created to close one of the key intelligence gaps revealed after Sept. 11, 2001: the failure of federal agencies to share what they knew about al-Qaeda operatives.

But in addressing one problem, TIDE has spawned others. Ballooning from fewer than 100,000 files in 2003 to about 435,000, the growing database threatens to overwhelm the people who manage it. "The single biggest worry that I have is long-term quality control," said Russ Travers, in charge of TIDE at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean."

Troubling and of concern! Coincidentally this week sees the release in Australia of the Academy award-winning movie "The Lives of Others". A "story" dealing with the ramifications of the infamous Stasi regime in East Germany in the 1980's it is not only a must-see film but a moving and powerful portrait of how a "security" apparatus can get totally out of hand - and with all that entails. Read about the movie in this piece in The New Yorker.

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