The move is a response to criticisms of the agency's procedures, which the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general said resulted in repeated questioning of individuals who were not on the U.S. government's watch list of known or suspected terrorists, but had the same or similar name as someone who was.

"It's enlightened self interest," U.S. Customs and Border Protection Senior Spokesman Bill Anthony told United Press International. "It is obviously better for (the individuals concerned), but it is also in our interest."

The agency, part of the troubled Department of Homeland Security, every day screens 1.1 million would-be entrants to the United States by land, sea or air at 324 ports of entry -- citizens, visitors and immigrants. It says its job is to filter out would-be illegal migrants, as well as terrorists or other malefactors, while facilitating the swift movement of legitimate travelers.

"If we're pulling people who are innocent into secondary," Anthony explained, referring to the more lengthy immigration interview that those on the watch list -- and anyone else who attracts special interest -- go through, "it is a waste of time. We should be looking for bad guys," not people already ruled out as a threat.

The inspector general's office had no comment on the changes.

Anthony said the new procedures were not designed to be transparent. "You're not told. You're not supposed to know you are on the watch list," so agency officials do not inform people of the correction.

He said all kinds of information -- like nationality, date of birth, or physical characteristics -- could be used to distinguish the innocent traveler from the suspected terrorist with the same name.

In most cases, he said, it was "a combination of factors."

He added that the procedures were "internal" and affected only the agency's own database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System, known as TECS. The information would be entered into the system "in such a way that they will not get put into secondary on that basis again."

He acknowledged that the corrections will not appear on the U.S. government's centralized terrorist watch list, formally known as the Terrorism Screening Data Base. That list is maintained by the FBI-led interagency Terrorism Screening Center.

And he added that the new measures were not designed to replace the redress procedures for individuals wrongly watch-listed or mistakenly identified as a watch-listed person. "People still have the right to complain," Anthony said.

Critics say the redress procedures lack transparency -- the Terrorism Screening Center's Web site says the U.S. government "cannot confirm or deny whether an individual is on the consolidated terrorist watch list, because this information is derived from classified and sensitive law enforcement and intelligence."

One Department of Homeland Security official told UPI that "denomination" -- removing those wrongly watch-listed -- was a fraught process. "All the incentives are in one direction," he said -- that of keeping someone on the list.

The official described a "decision chain" of agencies that had to be reached back to, in order to check or update the so-called "derogatory" -- the original intelligence reporting that had resulted in the person being watch-listed.

"Who wants to be the guy to say, 'Yeah, take him off,'" and risk being blamed for the next successful terrorist attack?" he asked.

The inspector general also found that -- though the agency had procedures for producing several reports summarizing any contact with a watch-listed individual, each providing "a different level of detail, and distributed to a different readership," -- it was "unclear ... how details of the encounter and the information obtained from the suspected terrorists are disseminated for analysis."

The report said some agency personnel did not have the security clearances they needed to discuss details of watch-listed individuals with their superiors or with other federal and intelligence agencies. Some times they were even barred from sitting in on interviews because they lacked clearances.

These criticisms echo some made about U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services, another element of the Department of Homeland Security. A former senior security official at that agency told Congress many adjudicators there lacked the secret clearances they needed to properly check whether those applying to become citizens, or for other immigration benefits, might pose a security risk.

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