Spiff

St. Paul Pioneer Press Article

"U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who privately reviewed the government's "sensitive" data, ordered the government in June to further explain why it hasn't disclosed certain documents in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act request.

Breyer said the government has refused to say why the number of people on the list should not be disclosed. He also wonders why the government classified its procedure for adding names to the list as "non-disclosable sensitive security information."

"In many instances, the government has not come close to meeting its burden, and, in some cases, has made frivolous claims of exemption," Breyer wrote.

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zhadum

Every government employee at every level responsible for harassing innocent passengers with the no-fly list and stonewalling their efforts to get off the list should be fired, banned from government service for life, have their pension invalidated, have their names published in newspapers as traitors, be subject to lawsuits from their victims, and be forced to go to public meetings with their families where they must listen to the bile and rage of their victims about what horrible people they are.

Spiff

^ ^

Arthurrs

From the article:
Sheeple!

Xyzzy

Yes but what they *really* mean is "They're trained and they have the intelligence" and the liability for making a mistake falls on their shoulders not on ours.

IamSpartacus

Well, no one has a Constitutional right to fly, so this whole thing lacks merit. If you got on a "no fly" list, it was because you were some kind of jack--- for one reason or another, so basically, you reap what you sow.

GUWonder

Sorry to inform you, but plenty of innocent people who were not "some kind of jack---" are popping up on the list. Having a name that is similar to someone who is a person of interest to law enforcement or intelligence is not good grounds to ground someone.

Plenty of people with common first and last names are going to pop up on the list. David Nelson is just one example. People with common last names like Brown, Nelson, Phillips, Smith, etc are on the list too. In the US, they get harassed the most.

To keep it simple, most individuals are reaping what they did not sow (despite what you wish to believe).

Standby4321

Or maybe you have weapons of mass destruction? While the unalienable rights to 'liberty and pursuit of happiness' and the concept of governments 'deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed' are in the declaration of independence, rather than the Constitution of the U.S., they seem like principles worth upholding to me.

richard

I think people do have a constitutional right to fly. That is, to travel freely and I think anonymously seems to me to be a bedrock of privacy. There are a lot of rights to privacy that are found in the constitution implicitly. For instance, only those things specifically given to the Federal government are in its power and everything else is reserved for the states and the people. This to me includes right of free and anonymous travel.

Think of the former Soviet Union where you needed to register with the authorities when you wanted to travel anywhere. This is known as "internal borders" and is essentially what you have with a "no fly" list...it is just more automated and less in your face, but it is the same deal.

Our constitution was founded on the rights of people to be free. That means free from the clutches of the government except in certain specific cases with specific reason, due process etc. If I require permission from my government to fly, that means I need to tell them I am flying (either explicitly or through a third party such as the airline telling them) and they have to let me. That completely flies in the face of the constitution, if you pardon the pun!

I think a better way to do it is this: the government is required to get a COURT ORDER that I can't fly. I am served with the order, and I can respond in the usual manner. If I choose to fight it, I have my day in court. It is a preliminary injunction, and can be obtained by the government showing the court that if I fly it is an immediate threat, so they can obtain a preliminary injunction almost immediately if necessary. But I have my day in court. To me, that is required under our constitution.

Doppy

Exactly.

Now obviously you haven't been following the issue closely. The problem is precisely that people who have not done anything wrong are on the list. Lots and lots of them.

No one has a problem with a no-fly list of people who are confirmed to be dangerous. What people do have a problem with is the current state of affairs where some people are on the list because someone at the government doesn't like them (e.g. peaceful political dissenters), or because someone else has a name that's spelled like theirs, etc.

There was an article about a guy in SYR who travels a lot for business, but his name is on the no-fly list. Every time he wants to travel he has to call the FBI ahead of time so they can OK it.

richard: ^

PTravel

There is a constitutional right to travel between the states -- there is no constitutional right to fly. However, the government depriving someone of the privilege of flying without due process of law is a violation of the 5th Amendment.

Arthurrs

Maybe I should have made myself more clear in the previous posting, but doesn't it seem ironic to anyone here that the people in government who put together this list, are in desperate need of serious intelligence and training, and furthermore need to correct the information they already have?

IamSpartacus

and none of which says you have an unfettered right to fly on a particular flight. And the "consent of the governed" has been abrogated to the vote-whores in Congress long ago.

People who may "pop" up on a list due to similiar names, etc. are easily resolved, just as similiar names are resolved at a traffic stop. What the GU's of this world want you to think it is the Joseph Smiths or David Browns who have this problem, but it is not, unless that person somehow has attracted the attention of law enforcement. It's the Mohammed Whatevers that (rightly) ping on the list.

GUWonder

The truth of the matter is that the lists that NW uses impacts the Michael Browns and Dave Nelsons of the world more than the Mohammed Whatevers far more. Why? Because there are far more of them travelling in/to/from the US than Mohammed Whatevers. [And the overwhelming majority of the Michael Browns, Dave Nelsons and Mohammed Whatevers are innocent and did nothing to personally attract the attention of law enforcement. Some other individual named Dave Nelson, Michael Brown and Mohammed Whatever may have attracted the attention of law enforcement, but the majority of those people with such names are not guilty of attracting law enforcement's attention for anything worthy of putting their name on a no-fly or watch list.]

The "no-fly" list people are not "easily resolved" and it can take up to nearly three years to get off. The "watch list" people are more "easily resolved", but it's anywhere from a ten minute to two-day process depending if the local FBI office is available and has the resources at the time to conduct a phone interview or in person interview. Simple facts.

The only thing I want people to think is to think for themselves and use facts. The thing that you want people to believe is to think as you think regardless of the facts. Apparently, the IamSpartacus's of the world do not let the facts get in the way of their opinions.

Hint: That which the government aims at a minority is sooner or later also aimed at the majority too.

Doppy

But clearly if you've been keeping up with the news on this issue you'd know this is not the case. It takes a long, long time to get your name off the list, if you can even get it off at all.

And it is affecting people with a lot of different names, and not just the "bad" names that those darn brown-skinned people have.