The terrorist watch list has been beset with problems ever since it came into existence. Ted Kennedy showed up on the No Fly List, a cousin to the terrorist watch list, back in 2004. 8 year-olds can’t get themselves off it. Clearly, the smaller and more focused a watch list, the better for national security as well as civil liberties.

So of course, in reaction to the failure to track Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab last year, the federal government has gone in the opposite direction. Instead of double-checking the watch list and making sure resources were focused on legitimate threats, they made it comically easy to get placed on the watch list.

The failure to put Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the watch list last year renewed concerns that the government’s system to screen out potential terrorists was flawed. Even though Abdulmutallab’s father had told U.S. officials of his son’s radicalization in Yemen, government rules dictated that a single-source tip was insufficient to include a person’s name on the watch list.

Since then, senior counterterrorism officials say they have altered their criteria so that a single-source tip, as long as it is deemed credible, can lead to a name being placed on the watch list.