Fast Redress Act Of 2009

Statement

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Ms. CLARKE. Mr. Speaker, nearly everyone in the homeland security community agrees that having a single comprehensive list of terrorist suspects is an important tool in keeping America safe. However, there are flaws in how the terrorist watch list is maintained and used.

Over the years, this list has grown to have over 1.1 million entries. With so many different names on the list, it is not surprising that every single day countless Americans are misidentified as terrorists.

The errors most commonly occur when an innocent person's name happens to be similar to the one listed in the database. For example, if your name is Al Smith and there is an A. Smith on the list, guess what? You're going to be caught. This is even worse for the millions of American residents who have names which can have different pronunciations or ways of spellings.

This wastes time both for law enforcement, because they're using resources investigating innocent people, and for the general public who face the prospect of being wrongfully detained and possibly altogether prevented from going about their business. Most commonly, this affects air travelers who are screened against a watch list more often than anyone else.

Currently, each time a reservation is made, airlines must determine whether a customer is a potential match based on information from us, from the government. Every day, thousands of people are pulled aside, required to go through special procedures, detained, or even denied boarding altogether at great personal and financial costs to the frustrated travelers who've missed flights. For private citizens, this can lead to ruined plants. These practices have, in essence, begun the process of eroding the foundation on which our civil liberties were built.

However, at a time when we're doing everything we can to stimulate the economy, this problem can be catastrophic for business travelers and companies. The inability for thousands of people to travel for work puts jobs in jeopardy. And for every employee unable to make a meeting because of being mistakenly denied boarding, companies needlessly lose productivity. This is a waste when Congress is spending money to help commerce grow.

Furthermore, because the terrorist watch list is used by many different screening agencies, other people have also been impacted by this problem, including anyone whose license plates are run by local law enforcement; port workers who have been incorrectly denied a Transportation Worker Identification Card, which is now required to work at port facilities in the U.S.; international travelers delayed or denied entry into the country by CBP, and potential foreign visitors denied visas by the State Department.

In the future, this will likely become a greater issue as more potentially sensitive activities are tied to screening against the watch list.

This is why I originally introduced the FAST Redress Act, which I'm proud to say passed the House last year with very strong bipartisan support. Unfortunately, despite more bipartisan support in the Senate, the other chamber ultimately failed to move this forward.

Therefore, I have reintroduced this bill in the 111th Congress in the hope that this time we can push it through and help millions of people. The FAST Redress Act solves the misidentification problems by granting DHS the tools to create a department-wide office of redress and appeals--a one-stop shop for any individual who feels they're being incorrectly identified as a terrorist whenever they have contact with the government.

This bill will greatly streamline the process for the countless people who, just because of their names, are regularly misidentified as a terrorist, creating a single, highly visible office within the government for everyone who wants to clear their names.

I'm glad to see the U.S. House of Representatives taking up this bill once again--and doing so with such speed--
demonstrating the strong show of support to help the people affected by this issue.

I'm very thankful to Chairman Thompson and Ranking Member King for their great bipartisan leadership in pushing the FAST Redress Act forward; Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee and ranking member, I also thank them. I thank the staff on both sides of the Homeland Security Committee for their hard work and the time they put into this bill, and my own senior legislative aid for Homeland Security, Mr. Daniel Hattis, for his hard work, his vigilance, and his commitment for making the FAST Redress Act the law of the land.

Further, this bill has received strong support from the National Business Travelers Association, which has recognized that the problem of misidentification hurts the economy and how this bill benefits the business travel committee.

I ask my colleagues to join me in support of this bipartisan support

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