Slashdot Mirror
People On No-Fly List Can Sue In District Court
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "According to a new ruling, those put on the No-Fly List can challenge their inclusion in federal court. Previously, they had to go directly to an appellate court, which would deprive them of any chance to subpoena documents or witnesses and make gathering evidence difficult or impossible. Knowing the government, they will get around this by creating a 'No-Sue' list and making it even harder to change your name."
Gotta love the government being immune to anybody on American soil suing them.
This whole list is a damn abomination to the constitution. I hope King George W. Bush is proud of the way he tore our freedoms up like one would a piece of paper. What next, national gun ownership registration lists?
If you can't sue for your rights in court, your only recourse is terrorism.
Denise Robinson says she tells the skycaps her son is on the list, tips heavily and is given boarding passes. And booking her son as "J. Pierce Robinson" also has let the family bypass the watch list hassle.
Capt. James Robinson said he has learned that "Jim Robinson" and "J.K. Robinson" are not on the list.
Terrorist's wouldn't even need to use fake names! They'd just need to abbreviate their real ones.
What a sad state of affairs.
Amnesty International
Oh, no. It'll be a much more nefarious list that maintained by an agency which nobody officially acknowledges exists and that they're not legally allowed to tell you about.
It'll be a special list for agitators and other enemies of the state who challenge the authority of the government and disagree with the official policies or who report on embarrassing truths.
Its existence and specifics will be deemed a matter of "Executive Privilege" and those who create it will claim they don't need to be accountable to the public since the president said it was OK.
And then, 1984 will have truly arrived. We get closer every day. *sigh* Where'd I leave my roll of foil?
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sure it works. No terrorist attacks on planes in the U.S. since they started using it....so it must work!
Our enemy has become, not the Muslim fundamentalists, but the federal government of the United States. We are spending a lot of time and bandwidth talking about and complaining about their actions. There is kind of a resigned tone to many of the comments that I hear and read. The US government has become sort of not "of the people, by the people, and for the people," but more "against the people." The corruption in congress and the White House is not helping at all.
Remind me to show you how to keep elephants away...
Clever, but I doubt it. They'll just do what this administration does every time they get sued: They'll claim that they can't provide any information for National Security reasons.
Watch yourself. Those who question The List are probably destined to end up on The List.
Understand.....whether or not it works for the stated purpose is utterly irrelevant. All that matters is that ignorant people believe that it works. It's like Homeopathic Government. Rule by Placebo.
And also understand.....all these draconian measures have little or nothing to do, really, with fighting terrorism. That's the "cover story." It's all about control -- control of "We, the people." The people who more and more are considered an utterly irrelevant nuisance to those in power.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
The no-fly list is also nothing compared to the rest of what the Bush administration had pushed through with the help of a Congress that either supports him or too spineless to stand up to him.
I don't know of people that were held indefinitely overseas without access to counsel or even a description of what they've been charged with as a result of alleged drug dealing. The Reagan and Clinton administration actually appeared to respect the anti-domestic spying laws passed in the wake of Nixon's abuses; now on top of spying laws that appear to be unconstitutional on their face, Bush's people are stepping beyond the modest limits set by their own laws.
Bush may not have opened the action, but he's certainly raised the stakes with the PATRIOT Act, his watered-down FISA law, and signing statements effectively saying he's not going to obey certain sections of laws that show up on his desk. It's not like he could have vetoed those laws and asked Congress to draft versions that Bush approved -- oh wait, he could have.
Now we've got the Nixon-era racketeering laws (not specifically drug-related, though he was certainly opposed to illicit drugs), the asset forfeiture you mentioned, the extremely harsh and internally inconsistent drug laws, and now a return of domestic spying and indefinite detention. The last, which before Bush hadn't been seen in earnest since WWII, is an especially troubling development. Now it's conceivable to spend the rest of your life in a military camp without trial if you're judged to be an enemy combatant.
Invasion of privacy and property are bad, but infringing on someone's physical freedom is much, much worse. And unfortunately, I agree that many judges don't even seem to care what the Constitution says; it wouldn't shock me at all if despite the 13th Amendment some federal court decided slavery was once again legal.
Just because his predecessors infringed liberties doesn't give G. W. Bush or his successors the right to do so. And I would argue that our current president has been the most aggressive in history, with Nixon a close second.
We now have "wars" against terrorism, drugs, child pornography, drunk driving, and probably some other domestic causes; in addition to two actual wars and possibly two more on the horizon (Iran and Georgia). Why can't some general come out and say that if you spend all your time and money starting wars, you won't win any of them? I guess our recent commanders-in-chief don't seem to grasp that concept.
I am too dangerous to fly but I can still buy an assualt rifle.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Strengthen and lock the flight deck door. If they cannot get into the flight deck they cannot hijack the aircraft. And no the pilots are trained professionals, they will not open the door untill they are on the ground. If the Israelie airline can do it why can't everyone else.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
The crazy principle is, by their logic you are not proving who you are, you are proving who you aren't. Now if that other person is such a threat that under no circumstance should they be allowed to board a plane etc. then why aren't they keeping track of their location sufficiently well to know that they are not at your current location attempting to board a plane.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
That's not a rhetorical question. I read things like this and on the one hand, I think, "It's OK, I'm not being a boiled frog about this, we still have our fundamental civil liberties, the mills of justice turn slowly but in the end the Constitution is upheld."
Then on the other hand, I think, "maybe the mills of justice can't keep up with the number of wooden shoes the Administration is able to toss into them." When did all the nonsense begin? The secret, no-appeal, the-reason-why-this-is-classified-is-classified lists... and the "oh, you have no right to appeal because you're not actually ON the no-fly list, it's just that you can't fly because your name RESEMBLES a name on the no-fly list, but of course we can't tell you the name that's really ON the no-fly list. The searches for which no warrant is required because they're "random," even though some people get "randomly" searched almost every time they fly and others never get "randomly" searched at all... ...the people held at Guantanamo without charges and without trial for five years, long than many prison sentences...
If the executive branch can abrogate a constitutional right instantly just by issuing an order, and it takes the judicial branch five to ten years to undo it, is the system working?
As I say, it's not a rhetorical question. Maybe that IS good enough.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
This says it all.
"Since airing a story this summer about how Correspondent Drew Griffin began getting told he was on the watch list -- coincidentally after he wrote a series critical of the TSA's Federal Air Marshal Service -- CNN has received dozens of e-mails and iReport submissions from viewers who also have found themselves on the watch list."
Some one in the U.S needs to sue TSA for corruption and illegal activate. Ending up on a terror watch list just for criticizing TSA is nothing but corruption.
Something is rotten in TSA.
The solution, however, is not to lay down and take it, which is how I read (misread?) your post.