Filtering the 500 Hits

According to raw data being used in Washington, 500 “hits” were registered on the US government’s terror watch by US Customs and Border Patrol for travellers coming from Canada.

In light of recent comments from Janet Napolitano, this number suggests that maybe she’s not all that off. Maybe Canada *is* a legitimate border concern.

But hold on…let’s take a closer look at that number.

The Toronto Star ran an article recently on this whole situation, and what they found was that when you break it down, only a small number of those 500 hits were actually Canadian passport holders. In fact…

…the vast majority of the individuals in question are either U.S. citizens or U.S. landed immigrants.

Furthermore, while land-based border crossings are tightening up their security, most of those hits were air travellers. As the Star’s Canadian source stated:

We're talking people, in quite a lot of the cases, whose journey began overseas. They typically would board a connecting flight in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver – and when they trigger a hit on the U.S. watch list suddenly it seems like they are `Canadian' because they spent two or three hours in an airport,

Even more frustrating is the reaction from a US security source that confirmed off the record that Canada’s breakdown of the hits was correct, but that the US doesn’t get into that level of detail. In probably the most infuriating comment from the US source:

But I understand Canada's concern about the raw statistic. It's a valid concern. Nobody should take that number as any kind of proof that Canada is wildly more dangerous for us. That just isn't the case.

Considering that the 9/11 Canada connection myth is still considered truth by some US politicians, spinning these numbers does nothing to serve the security of the American people or further US relations with Canada.