No Fly List

This article is about the American list. For the Indian list, see No Fly List (India). For the Canadian list, see Passenger Protect. For other uses, see No Fly List (disambiguation).

The No Fly List, maintained by the United States federal government's Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), is one of several lists included in algorithmic rulesets used by government agencies and airlines to decide who to allow to board airline flights.[1] The TSC's No Fly List is a list of people who are prohibited from boarding commercial aircraft for travel within, into, or out of the United States. This list has also been used to divert aircraft away from U.S. airspace that do not have start- or end-point destinations within the United States. The number of people on the list rises and falls according to threat and intelligence reporting. There were reportedly 16,000[2] names on the list in 2011, 21,000 in 2012, and 47,000 in 2013.

The list—along with the Secondary Security Screening Selection, which tags would-be passengers for extra inspection—was created after the September 11 attacks of 2001. The No Fly List, the Selectee List, and the Terrorist Watch List were created by George W. Bush's administration and have continued through the administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Former U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein said in May 2010: "The no-fly list itself is one of our best lines of defense."[3] However, the list has been criticized on civil liberties and due process grounds, due in part to its potential for ethnic, religious, economic, political, or racial profiling and discrimination. It has raised concerns about privacy and government secrecy and has been criticized as prone to false positives.

The No Fly List is different from the Terrorist Watch List, a much longer list of people said to be suspected of some involvement with terrorism. As of June 2014, the Terrorist Watch List is estimated to contain over 2,484,446 records, consisting of 1,877,139 individual identities.[4][5]

  1. ^ ""Put them on the no-fly list!"". Papers, Please!. The Identity Project. January 20, 2021. Archived from the original on October 28, 2021. Retrieved January 23, 2021.
  2. ^ "Ten years after: the FBI since 9/11". FBI. 2011. Archived from the original on October 28, 2021. Retrieved September 27, 2017.
  3. ^ Shane, Scott (May 11, 2010). "Senators Demand Tighter Rules on No-Fly List and Addition to Terror Group List". The New York Times. Washington. p. A9. Archived from the original on March 4, 2021. Retrieved November 27, 2010.
  4. ^ Number and rate of growth from: Follow-up Audit of the Terrorist Screening Center, U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, Audit Division, Audit Report 07-41, September 2001; http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/FBI/a0741/final.pdf Archived May 31, 2009, at the Wayback Machine; (4/30/2007 – 724,442 records, growth rate 16,000/mo.)
  5. ^ "Congressional Testimony". FBI. September 9, 2008. Archived from the original on August 5, 2009. Retrieved December 27, 2009.