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Government Secrecy Spurs $4 Million Lawsuit Over Simple 'No Fly' List Error
An anonymous reader writes "After a seven-year lawsuit costing nearly $4 million, a judge has concluded that Rahinah Ibrahim's student visa was revoked because an FBI agent checked the wrong box on a form. That simple human error resulted in the detention of Rahinah Ibrahim, the revocation of her student visa years later and interruption of her PhD studies. The Bush and later Obama administrations obstructed the lawsuit repeatedly, invoking classified evidence, sensitive national security information and the state secrets privilege to prevent disclosure of how suspects are placed on the 'no-fly' list. The dispute eventually involved statements of support from James Clapper, Eric Holder and several other DOJ and TSA officials in favor of the government's case. The defendant was not allowed to enter the United States even to attend her own lawsuit trial and in a separate incident, her daughter, a U.S. citizen, was denied entry to witness the trial as well. The case exemplifies how government secrecy can unintentionally transform otherwise easily corrected errors into a multi-year legal and bureaucratic nightmare and waste millions of taxpayer dollars in doing so."
Who said it was unintentional?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Ah but that will never happen to me" - The Mainstream American Mentality. Source - American, living in U.S. of America.
Now imagine how many people get to enjoy this sort of thing on a daily basis, and either don't want to go through the trouble of challenging it or can't afford to.
Sometimes I think the biggest weapon against humankind is our inability to admit when we are wrong. An obscene amount of money and time is fucking wasted everyday because we can't man up and admit to being wrong. I understand the need for operational secrecy, but sometimes just saying: "Yeah, I fucked up." Would be a much better approach.
Regards,
MBC1977,
to Rahinah Ibrahim, not only for the financial loss that this has caused her but the inconvenience, emotional anguish, etc, etc. This should be paid by the individuals who acted to cover this up - not the organisations that they worked for, where the fine would just be added to the national tax bill. The fine must be high enough so that it really hurts all the individuals who contribute to the fine.
The fine should not be paid by the FBI agent who made the original error, he screwed up (we all do occasionally) and I doubt that he made the mistake maliciously. The fine should be paid by the individuals who were asked to review the case and who conspired to pervert the law of the USA, those who thought it more important to protect a decision by a government department than to see the right thing done. If these individuals are allowed to get away with it then expect this sort of thing to continue.
“...Under this policy, the Department of Justice will defend an assertion of the state secrets privilege in litigation, and seek dismissal of a claim on that basis, only when necessary to protect against the risk of significant harm to national security,...”
They did the right thing. They were protecting against the risk of significant harm to (the reputation of) national security i.e. they'd look like a bunch of incompetent cock-smokers if it ever came out.
I know. The willful obstruction of justice isn't important. And even if it was, we don't have to worry because they'd never do that to a citizen. I know the summary and article note how a US citizen was also denied travel, but I'm sure there was a good reason for that too, that we don't need to understand.
I'm not sure why we're even talking about this -- it's not like Canadians are human beings in the first place
It seems to me we have become the very thing we used to criticize about the rest of the world.
We have become the terrorist, the religious intolerant, the torturer, the nation that spies on its own citizens, the nation with secret courts, the suppressor of voters, and the nation that uses government to quell protesters. When fear is our motivation, the most irrational statements begin to sound reasonable and take on a life of their own and strange combinations of bedfellows develop.
I imagine that even Bin Laden would be surprised the extent to which a single organized attack could inject its backward thinking into a nation that claimed to be so different than the rest.
It's called confirmation bias. Once Ibrahim was branded a "bad guy", mere lack of evidence was not enough to get her un-branded.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
More and more bright foreign students will choose a country with a friendlier climate to study. Let the US continue like this and remember how THEY got their leadership position in research: all those scientists who fled from Europe before, during and just after WW2. If the US becomes a country people don't want to travel to they can do the same for themselves when Germany did when it threw all Jewish scientists out.
Ah. But Obama was specifically elected on a platform of overturning the abuses of the "EVULLL" Bu$hitler administration.
So, which is more evil? That which openly proclaims its evil and laughs about it, or that which claims to be good but is actually more evil than its predecessor?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!