A proposed public registry of terrorists in New York could include tens of thousands of individuals who have never been convicted of a crime.
State Senator Thomas Croci, a freshman Republican from Long Island who is chair of the Senate’s homeland security committee, sponsored a bill creating the list. As the bill is currently written, it would currently apply to more than one million people tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, few of whom have ever been convicted of a crime.
Croci has said that he will amend his bill, which passed a Senate committee without debate last month.
The “New York State Terrorist Registry Act” would create a public list of people similar to that which exists for sex offenders. It is aimed at individuals like the “Lackawanna Six,” who were convicted in 2003 of aiding Al Qaeda and have since been paroled.
“These are people who I think we all agree are bad,” Croci said. “They’re roaming around somewhere in upstate New York.”
The proposal would require anybody who has been either convicted of a terrorist offense or committed a “verifiable act of terrorism” to put their name on a publicly accessible list of terrorists residing in New York. As defined in the bill, committing a “verifiable act” includes having one’s name appear on the FBI’s “terrorist screening database.” Read more at Capital New York.
{Matzav.com Newscenter}
The bill makes no mention of the FBI database. A person in the database would be included on the list only if his inclusion in the database were because he committed a terrorist act.