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posted by LaminatorX on Friday July 25 2014, @06:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the peeking-up-the-skirt-of-goverment dept.

The Intercept brings us Blacklisted : The Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist

The "March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance," a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government's secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place "entire categories" of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to "nominate" people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as "fragmentary information." It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.

Over the years, the Obama and Bush Administrations have fiercely resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names on the databases though the guidelines are officially labeled as unclassified. In May, Attorney General Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was on the no fly list. In an affidavit, Holder called them a "clear roadmap" to the government's terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding: "The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed ... could cause significant harm to national security."

"Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future," says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU's National Security Project. "On that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven’t carried out." Shamsi, who reviewed the document, added, "These criteria should never have been kept secret."

The fallout is personal too. There are severe consequences for people unfairly labeled a terrorist by the U.S. government, which shares its watchlist data with local law enforcement, foreign governments, and "private entities." Once the U.S. government secretly labels you a terrorist or terrorist suspect, other institutions tend to treat you as one. It can become difficult to get a job (or simply to stay out of jail). It can become burdensome or impossible to travel. And routine encounters with law enforcement can turn into ordeals.

In short; the Intercept is publishing the previously unavailable government guide for putting you, and another several million people onto a watchlist; that has a crippling effect on your ability to live and no means to remove yourself from the list or the suspicion that goes with it.

Sure I suspect most of you are going to say "Why does this matter to me? I'm not a terrorist." but it does. For a society to be "free" you need to have disclosure of the law; and you have to have due process. a lack of either and you are no longer a free citizen; rather you are just another suspect or worse.

I've seen the effect of this on people I know. Good people who happen to share a name with someone on the list; People who went and talked to Occupy Wall Steet protesters (and didn't stay to protest) who found themselves under the scrutiny of police. We shouldn't sit idly by and let this go on. How would you purpose to get the government back to arresting criminals, instead of just accepting that America is just one large prison system?

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @10:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @10:29AM (#73695)

    My name's on the terrorist watch list. And by my name, I mean the name I share with thousands of people in the U.S.

    I learned my name was on the list at the airport, years ago. I tried to check into my flight on the self check-in kiosk, and it told me I couldn't check-in automatically, see a human. The attendant punched my name into her machine and acted like something was going on she'd never seen before. She called her supervisor who took my driver's license away, to some back room, for around 15 minutes. When he returned he punched some keys on the computer, printed my boarding pass and told me have a nice flight.

    This was the drill for a couple years. Never checking in automatically, always the attendant had to type something. At first the attendants never knew how to handle it, and the ID went to the supervisor and I had to wait. Eventually, the attendants got much faster at giving me the boarding pass. I asked one what they had to do, and she told me "I have to enter your birthday from your drivers license." In short, the terrorist watch list is not just names, also birthdays.

    During those years, I stopped flying southwest airlines. That airline does not assign seats, instead it lets you board the plane roughly in the order you checked in. Since everyone else was checking in online 24 hours before the flight, and I couldn't check-in until I was in front of the person at the airport, I was always last on the plane.

    Hoping to save myself some time, I would walk directly to the humans at the check-in counter. Always they would gesture to the kiosk, like it was the only way to check-in. I'd explain my name is on the terrorist watch list. More often than not they'd act like I was crazy to not use the kiosk, but begrudgingly helped. One time when I said "terrorist watch list" the guy said "don't call it that" as if you're not allowed to say "terrorist" at the airport or something.

    Nowadays, for all U.S. airlines, you have to give your full name and birthday when buying the ticket online. Since the sites require a birthday, I've been able to use the kiosk or checkin online. I hate to give out my birthday on an online form, but basically I've given up on privacy to buy plane tickets. Because how else can you get one?

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by WizardFusion on Friday July 25 2014, @12:04PM

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 25 2014, @12:04PM (#73714) Journal

    Out of the thousands of people that share your name, 1/365 of them will be treated to extra "upgrades" because they will share the same birthday as the supposed terrorist. (not accounting for rounding errors and birth/conception patterns)

    Sucks to be them.

    • (Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Friday July 25 2014, @12:08PM

      by Sir Garlon (1264) on Friday July 25 2014, @12:08PM (#73715)

      Unless the birth date includes a year, in which case it would be more like 1/(365*80) assuming a life expectancy of 80 years and a uniform distribution of the name across ages. So if the birth date includes a year, odds are against a match within a population of thousands.

      --
      [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Friday July 25 2014, @01:11PM

        by sjames (2882) on Friday July 25 2014, @01:11PM (#73734) Journal

        On the other hand, there are enough names on the list that it is nearly inevitable that there is a group of people who share name and birthday with someone on the list.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @03:34PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @03:34PM (#73799)

        For the birthday problem [wikipedia.org] ignoring the year, the probability of one pair of a set of N people with the same name having the same birthday passes 50% at N=23. If you look at the ages of people riding airplanes, it's peaked around middle-aged people, mostly 30-60, so the 0-80 range is a bit broad. So for a common name, the probability of a false hit is relatively high.

        • (Score: 1) by cbiltcliffe on Monday July 28 2014, @01:30AM

          by cbiltcliffe (1659) on Monday July 28 2014, @01:30AM (#74504)

          The birthday problem is the chance that "any pair of people in a group have the same birthday." This isn't the same as the chance that "anyone in the group has the same birthday as this specific group member."
          You need a lot more than 23 people for the second to be true by chance.

      • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Friday July 25 2014, @03:35PM

        by Alfred (4006) on Friday July 25 2014, @03:35PM (#73800) Journal

        The guys we are "looking" for would be in the 18-35 year range. So if you happen to also be in that range I would expect more problems. At this rate I also expect profiling works better.

        I always wonder...who are their these old guys, still alive, to train suicide bombers if being a suicide bomber is such a great deal?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by jcross on Friday July 25 2014, @01:05PM

    by jcross (4009) on Friday July 25 2014, @01:05PM (#73730)

    If you can check in on-line now, I wonder how they verify that the birthday you enter is your actual one? I doubt there's anything stopping the actual person they're targeting from using your birthday, or some random one.

    • (Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday July 25 2014, @02:52PM

      by bradley13 (3053) on Friday July 25 2014, @02:52PM (#73775) Homepage Journal

      Indeed. A terrorist would never enter false information into a form.

      Seriously, this just shows yet again how lame the watch list is.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by mrider on Friday July 25 2014, @03:01PM

      by mrider (3252) on Friday July 25 2014, @03:01PM (#73780)

      And THAT is why the list is such a joke. If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, the last thing you want to do is add hay. (Paraphrased from Bruce Schneier)

      --

      Doctor: "Do you hear voices?"

      Me: "Only when my bluetooth is charged."

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @04:55PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 25 2014, @04:55PM (#73849)

    My name's on the terrorist watch list. And by my name, I mean the name I share with thousands of people in the U.S.

    So you're saying the list has an entry for Anonymous Coward?

    • (Score: 2) by jcross on Friday July 25 2014, @05:39PM

      by jcross (4009) on Friday July 25 2014, @05:39PM (#73877)

      Probably so. Have you seen the kind of subversive stuff that guy posts on the internet?