Watch Lists in United States and Canada: An Intricate Web

Abstract

After the failed attempt to blow up the Northwest Airlines flight 253 departed from Amsterdam on Christmas Eve, 2009, one question arose time after time: How the alleged bomber managed to board the plane? An extraordinary simple and straight answer replies that the suspect was actually included in one of the several currently existing terrorism databases, but not particularly in the so-called American “No-fly list”. Indeed, several records are simultaneously kept by the American Government, and although sometimes their contents overlap, sometimes they do not. To achieve a clear outlook of what these lists are and how they work, those databases - along with the one currently in effect in Canada - are revised in this paper.