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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: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 25 2014, @04:38PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday July 25 2014, @04:38PM (#73837) Journal

    The beautiful thing about a bureaucratic document like this is the infinitely deep loopholes they hide within pages of specificity. Note 3.13.2, where a Suspected Terrorist can be designated by any government agency (TSA, DHS, DIA, CIA, FBI, etc) through their own secret lists of criteria, which are not specified in this document. So, the FBI could have a criterion in its list, "Suspected Terrorist cut off FBI Director in traffic, forcing him to miss his highway exit and a very important meeting on the new Obamacare benefits," and flag you and there's nothing you can do about it.

    Another loophole is the Lone Wolf one, where they don't have to demonstrate any connections to terrorist groups or any actions of any kind, and call you a Lone Wolf suspected domestic terrorist. And the interpretation of "preparing to commit terrorist acts" is so broad, and so vague, that heading out to shoot targets on your back lot could constitute "terrorist preparation."

    We have an American government whose intelligence and security apparatus is rogue, completely out of control.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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