..out of the dark

The NCTC's Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, established pursuant to the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, is the government's centralized master database of people with suspected terror links. Containing some half a million names, it is used to create more specific watchlists used by other government agencies, such as the Transportation Security Administration's much-derided "no-fly" list.

The current TIDE system has its own set of "serious, long-standing technical problems." It requires users to perform "cumbersome and complex" SQL searches rather than delivering straightforward text matches. And its data is scattered across 463 different, poorly-indexed tables.