Review – HR 4971 Introduced – TSDB Quality Control

Last month Rep Thompson (D,MS) introduced HR 4971 the Terrorist Watchlist Data Accuracy and Transparency Act. The bill would amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002, adding a new §210H, Quality assurance reviews of departmental nominations to the terrorist watchlist and other terrorism databases. The new section would require DHS to conduct quality assurance checks of all new data prior to submission to the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB). Periodic audits would also be required. No new funding is authorized by the bill.

Moving Forward

Thompson is the Ranking Member of the House Homeland Security Committee to which this bill was assigned for consideration. This means that there may be sufficient influence to see the bill considered in Committee. I suspect that there might be some level of bipartisan support for this bill in Committee, but I am not sure that it would be enough to move the bill to the floor of the House under the suspension of the rules process. This bill is not politically important enough to consider under regular order.

Commentary

Last month the GAO published their most recent report on “Terrorist Watchlist: Nomination and Redress Processes for U.S. Persons”. The GAO spent most of their effort reporting on the redress processes for people who feel that they have been improperly been added to the TSDB or it related databases. Many (no one is sure of how many) of those ‘in error’ listings could have been prevented from occurring if there had been data quality assurance processes in place to reduce those questionable listings.

 

For more details about the provisions of this bill, including additional commentary, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/hr-4971-introduced-tsdb-quality-control - subscription required.