Terror database too vague to flag Boston suspect
Source: LA Times
WASHINGTON — When a Russian intelligence service told the CIA that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become an Islamic radical looking to join underground groups, the agency put his name in the government's catch-all database for terrorism suspects.
The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, known as TIDE, was the government's attempt after the Sept. 11 attacks to consolidate a hodgepodge of watch lists, and ensure that every law enforcement agency would be alerted when it came into contact with a possible terrorist.
But TIDE has ballooned to 875,000 records, and critics say it is so all-encompassing that its value has been diminished. The database includes the names of young children of suspected terrorists and of people who have been cleared of suspected links to terrorism, officials say. A single credible tip raising "reasonable suspicion" is enough to add someone to the list.
TIDE is not a watch list — it is a highly classified intelligence database, a master list that feeds information at various secrecy levels to agencies that maintain their own watch lists.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-boston-tide-20130503,0,5848906.story
