Muslim group seeks congressional probe on terror watchlist

A Muslim civil rights group called for a congressional investigation after its lawsuit revealed that the U.S. government has shared its terrorist watchlist with more than 1,400 private entities, including hospitals and universities. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Congress should look into why the FBI has given such wide access to the list, which […]

A Muslim civil rights group called for a congressional investigation after its lawsuit revealed that the U.S. government has shared its terrorist watchlist with more than 1,400 private entities, including hospitals and universities.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Congress should look into why the FBI has given such wide access to the list, which CAIR believes is riddled with errors. Broad dissemination of the names makes life more difficult for those who are wrongly included, CAIR says. Many on the list are believed to be Muslim.

“This is a wholesale profiling of a religious minority community,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “To share private information of citizens and non-citizens with corporations is illegal and outrageous.”

The FBI did not immediately respond to a call and emails seeking comment.

The council filed a class-action lawsuit in 2016 challenging the list’s constitutionality and saying those wrongly placed on it routinely face difficulties in travel, financial transactions and their dealings with law enforcement.

In response to the lawsuit, a federal official recently acknowledged in a court filing that more than 1,400 private entities received access to the list.

For years, the government had insisted that it did not generally share the list with private organizations.

The watchlist, which contains hundreds of thousands of names, is supposed to include only known or suspected terrorists. Critics say it is wildly overbroad and mismanaged. The government’s smaller no-fly list is culled from the watchlist.