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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?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 25 2014, @04:31PM
The thing is, these are deep currents. They have a massive effect, but you don't see the effects on the surface right away. The NSA, Wall Street, DC, and the other Masters of the Universe (MoU) have publicly, openly blown away even the fiction that we live under the rule of law. That's not going to lead to revolution overnight. People have to rearrange their lives, search their souls, decide where they stand, and determine what to do about it. It's a big decision, not at all like hopping in the car and going down to the 7-11 to pick up a six pack of soda, because of its consequences for you and everyone else. 99% of human beings, even the sociopaths, would take precipitous action on a matter of this magnitude because there are so many angles to consider. For non-sociopaths, there's a lot of agonizing about whether you have the will to act even though your friends and family and neighbors might not understand or even oppose you.
But because it's such a fundamental shift, the jettisoning of our Constitution, the rule of law, and our notions of freedom and democracy, it will not go away and not stop nagging you. You cannot ignore it. And you can be sure there are plenty of actors, malefactors, who will be spurred to greater crimes with the same intensity as honest, law-abiding folk are appalled and dismayed and angered by it. That will further dismay and anger the latter group. Eventually, person by person, red lines will be crossed and revolutionary action will spontaneously arise.
If you look back through history, the history of the Russian Revolution, the French Revolution, etc, etc, it has always played out that way. Even now, even here, in a country that went through a foundational revolution a short 200 years ago, some people argue that revolution is an artifact of the past that will never occur again, or, at least, never occur again here. Revolution, though, recurs.
There will be a second American Revolution, and the MoU, NSA and Wall Street included, will hang.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by dcollins on Friday July 25 2014, @05:35PM
When was the last time a revolution was successful, anywhere? I would argue that in the developed world, the military, law-enforcement, surveillance, and social control methods are so much more advanced today that it's effectively impossible. Crime is way down, the capacity to imprison people is way up, and people are much softer and more sheltered than they used to be.
Both your examples of the French and Russian revolutions were cases triggered by simultaneous drubbings in major wars, with spikes in food prices such that hunger was widespread, and with old-style royalty still in charge. We're close to none of that today. When did any revolution ever work in a republic, ever?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by metamonkey on Friday July 25 2014, @05:59PM
Egypt did it twice. And their military and domestic police was like 10% of their country, and they pretty well stood by and did nothing. Occupy sprung up overnight.
I think the elites are terrified, hence the surveillance state and the militarized police. They've done a really good job of dividing the poor and middle classes for, well, basically since the start of civilization, over mainly petty differences. Race, sex, religion. But overt racism is practically dead (despite what the media would have you believe). The sexes are equal. They probably thought they'd get at least a few more decades out of gay hate, but gay marriage went from a thing that's never existed since the beginning of time to a right in about 12 years. The drug war, used for locking up undesirables and controlling south America is on its last legs, with state after state legalizing weed. Cocaine will follow (give it 10 years). The mask has been thrown off the war on terror. They're running out of things to make the lower and middle classes fight each other over instead of turning on them. And their response to growing dissatisfaction with their institutions of control will be exactly wrong, because they always double-down on stupid.
I don't think there will be violence, but I think a massive upheaval is inevitable. It happens every 80 years. 1776...1861...1941...2021? It's going to be an interesting decade.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 1) by dcollins on Saturday July 26 2014, @02:55AM
But Egypt is right back with the same military dictatorship they had before, except more entrenched. As hopeful as I was for the Arab Spring, all it's accomplished is to flush out the dissidents and get them imprisoned. There was a brief window where the possibilities of social networks caught the old guard unprepared... but they won't be caught flat-footed again, and have all rushed to step up NSA-style network monitoring and capacity to shut down things they don't like.
The fact that you're reaching for numerology support (80 years, classic cherry-picking) ends the conversation, I think.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Saturday July 26 2014, @03:42PM
It's not numerology. It's a generational pattern. See Strauss-Howe generational theory [wikipedia.org]
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 26 2014, @04:49AM
You must be very new to the world, or you pay scant attention. I've seen at least a dozen successful revolutions in my 42 years. Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, East Germany, Romania, Russia (remember Boris Yeltsin facing down the tanks in their whitehouse?), Albania, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Serbia (the overthrow of Milosevic), Croatia, Slovenia, South Sudan, Yemen, Georgia. There's also Afghanistan, when they drove out the Soviets. And you could technically count Vietnam, though I don't remember it. You could count Moldavia as well, though most Americans don't even know where that is.
Revolutions happen all the time. They haven't happened in the United States for 200 years, but they certainly happened to our opponent in the Cold War so if you need proof it can happen to a superpower, there you go.
Revolutions don't have to be violent, but the more the MoU fight it, the likelier it will turn that way.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by metamonkey on Friday July 25 2014, @05:41PM
Change is inevitable. Polybius told us so. It starts with anarchy, then a loose feudalism (Dark Ages). The strongest feudal lord unites or conquers everybody else to establish a monarchy (Charlemagne, Bill the Conquerer). The monarch's descendants do not appreciate or understand the power they are born into and are spoiled and corrupted. The monarchy degenerates into despotism (George III). The wealthy grow tired of the despot's abuses and depose him, establishing an aristocracy (T.J., Sam Adams & pals). The aristocrats' descendants are corrupted just like the despots and the aristocracy descends into an oligarchy. This is where we are now. Eventually the people can no longer bear the oppression of the oligarchs and depose them, establishing a democracy. Then demagogues arise and fracture the democracy into anarchy, starting the process all over again.
I think there will be a sea change, but I do not think it will involve violence. Primarily because there's no one to attack. The cops? The army? They're just doing their jobs. The politicians? The bankers? A hydra. Violence is so 20th century.
I'm not sure what form the destroyer will take, but I imagine it will have something to do with the Internet disrupting the two-party power base. The Internet has democratized everything except democracy. It's amazing at eliminating middlemen, and politicians are the ultimate middlemen.
I'm really curious to see what happens with the 2016 elections, and what kind of issue is made of domestic spying.
Regardless, I think it's fairly obvious that the elites are terrified. I think Occupy and the Arab Spring scared them shitless, that massive demonstrations could pop up overnight. Hence the curfew laws, the militarization of the police, the surveillance state. It'll be an interesting next ten years.
Okay 3, 2, 1, let's jam.