One Person Successfully Removed From US No-Fly List

An anonymous reader writes "In February, Judge William Alsup ruled in favor of Rahinah Ibrahim, who sued the U.S. government in 2006 after she was mistakenly added to the no-fly list and subsequently denied entry to the country. Now, the Department of Justice has finally decided it won't appeal the ruling, making Ibrahim the first person to challenge the list at trial and get herself removed. 'But Ibrahim's case, as just one of hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been placed on such lists, shows the system's opacity. First, the only surefire way to even determine if one is on such a list in the U.S. is to attempt to board a flight and be denied. Even after that happens, when a denied person inquires about his or her status, the likely response will be that the government "can neither confirm nor deny" the placement on such lists. The government's surrender in Ibrahim comes on the heels of a new report by the American Civil Liberties Union that shows just how insanely difficult it is to contest one's status on the government blacklists (PDF).'"

Comments

Fun fact

[pegr]

Judge William Alsup also ruled on the Oracle/Google case. The more you know! ;)

Re:Fun fact

[Daniel Hoffmann]

The guy is the patron saint of common sense. One would think that common sense would not need a patron saint, being, you know, common...

Re:Fun fact

[kylemonger]

Too bad getting to common sense took eight years.

Re:Fun fact

[Methadras]

He should have further ruled to make this list public and let DoJ fight it out in the courts.

Re:Fun fact

[geekmux]

The guy is the patron saint of common sense. One would think that common sense would not need a patron saint, being, you know, common...

Uh, in case you hadn't noticed, we should look to change the name, because common sense...isn't so common anymore.

In fact, it's become an absolute bitch to find.

Apparently the only mentality that is common anymore is a corrupt one.

Re:Fun fact

[noh8rz10]

you're assuming a lot of competence on the part of the govt.. but what if you got married in another country, and took on a different last name?

Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[romanval]

I'm not too sure how a no-fly list works since many people can have the same name.
If that's the case, what's stopping someone from legally changing their name to something more american/western-european and re-issuing their passport?

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Anonymous Coward]

No-fly lists simply shouldn't exist, regardless of whether or not they can work. The idea that you can be considered too dangerous (Without a trial!) to fly and yet not dangerous enough to arrest is absurd. As others have said, this is just used for oppression.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Anonymous Coward]

No fly lists where you can not get off but only can add names is even worse. At some point the list just gets long and worthless. If everybody is on the list then no terrorist can do harm with a airplane...

By the way: I have a friend who's son is on the no-fly list since he's 3 years old! He's twin brother is not. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. No way to get him off. There is just nobody responsible you could apply to.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[spire3661]

"No papers? State to state?"

"No papers."

"Then i will live in Montana...."

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Anonymous Coward]

It is interesting to look at this in the perspective. The one that shows the reasons and arguments used by founding fathers of the republic to make something different than opaque, corrupt and inefficient regimes of old continent to create something different: where transparency, the rule of the law etc are basic principles. Now look at what happened: this funny secrete courts of which decisions you may not talk, the no-fly lists which you cannot question because you will never know you are on one. Add to this: enhanced interrogation techniques, extrajudicial killings, the whole nonsense of war on drugs, the violence and inefficiency of US judicial and penal systems as well as lies used to send troops all over the planet (Collin Power etc). I wonder if that was unavoidable (I think it was). Every being and republic too gets old and starts seeing ghosts generated by the old brain, accumulated fat causes the body to stop functioning properly, Just wondering. Right now even Germany is more transparent and has more efficient state than US does. I guess the only branches of US gov. that still work kind of well are military and 'security' industry. I wonder how does that feel to become what one tried to escape from?

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

You're missing the point. EVERYONE is required to notify the government in advance before they fly.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Anubis IV]

The idea that you can be considered too dangerous (Without a trial!) to fly and yet not dangerous enough to arrest is absurd.

I generally agree, but it's relatively trivial to imagine cases where they can't arrest someone, despite having every intention of doing so should the opportunity present itself. If local authorities are uncooperative, should the American government allow a criminal who they believe may be a danger to the flight board the plane and hope that the person just sits there nicely until they can be arrested when they land?

I don't have an easy answer for that, and I don't know whether that sort of a situation would even be sufficient to justify a (much smaller) no-fly list. But at the very least, it's something to consider. And it's also a slippery slope of which we need to be extremely wary, because if you start to loosen the definition of "criminal" a bit (e.g. people we think are bad, people our allies want to arrest, people who associate with bad people), it can easily end up where we are now, which is in no way acceptable.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Anonymous Coward]

I generally agree, but it's relatively trivial to imagine cases where they can't arrest someone, despite having every intention of doing so should the opportunity present itself.

Then too bad. If they don't have enough evidence to arrest someone for committing crimes, they don't get to punish someone without trial. Freedom has risks, and ones I'm more than willing to take.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[un1nsp1red]

I have a friend who's son is on the no-fly list since he's 3 years old! He's twin brother is not. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Makes sense to me. There's *always* an evil twin. Always....

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Snotnose]

No, hack it to include names like John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[radarskiy]

The evil twin is the one NOT on the list, because he submitted false evidence about his brother.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[utoddl]

I have a friend who's son is on the no-fly list since he's 3 years old! He's twin brother is not.

Oh yeah, will I'm DEAD and on the no-fly list, and they can't fly my body back to my hometown for burrial. So there!

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[geekmux]

You're missing the point. EVERYONE is required to notify the government in advance before they fly.

Recent information brought forth as to the activities of the NSA pretty much fucking guarantees that EVERYONE DOES notify the government in advance before they fly, whether you're required to or not, and whether you wanted to notify them or not.

Perhaps you missed that point.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[AnalogDiehard]

No-fly lists simply shouldn't exist, regardless of whether or not they can work. The idea that you can be considered too dangerous (Without a trial!) to fly and yet not dangerous enough to arrest is absurd. As others have said, this is just used for oppression.

There was one case of the no-fly list being used against US Sen Edward Kennedy, proof that it is a tool that can be exploited for political retaliation and oppression.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Wycliffe]

My dad, an old white american, got detained because he bought a one-way ticket from missouri to
north dakota on the same day of travel. Apparently that was enough to set off red flags and they
almost didn't let him fly. He was going to a funeral but apparently one-way same-day tickets are
suspicious. I would think they would be somewhat common for funerals but apparently not.

Re:Hack it to add American names like "John Smith"

[Jeremy Erwin]

I approve of my own representative in Congress wholeheartedly. But Congress as a whole is a despicable institution, and other people need to vote their representative out. Repeat 435 times, and nothing will change.

2006-2014

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

So, 8 years for one person to be taken off the no-fly list. At this rate, ,by around 1,000,000 AD give or take, all innocent citizens denied their basic constitutional right to travel freely without trial will finally be allowed to board an airplane. Good news!

How is the no fly list legal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain how the government can impose penalties on a person without providing the evidence against them? Is the entire premise that you can't show standing because you can't know you're on the list? It seems we have a shitload of that going on right now, whereas we shouldn't have any.

Re:How is the no fly list legal?

[pegr]

Can someone explain how the government can impose penalties on a person without providing the evidence against them?

No.

Re:How is the no fly list legal?

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

A US Citizens gets put on this list. The US Citizen cannot fly from Denver to Chicago, Nothing to do with a foreigner.

Travel within and between the states is not a privilege it is a right. Not all rights are explicitly spelled out in the constitution. Look at the ninth and tenth amendments.

The SCOTUS needs to remember the existence of the ninth and tenth amendments sometimes. In my opinion they should be the most important amendments and I am not a states rights kind of guy.

Re:How is the no fly list legal?

[noh8rz10]

Idiot.

Re:How is the no fly list legal?

[bill_mcgonigle]

I believe their argument is that flying is a privilege, much like driving a car or getting a visa.

It's not even arguable:

U.S. Code S. 40103 - Sovereignty and use of airspace
(a) Sovereignty and Public Right of Transit.
(2) A citizen of the United States has a public right of transit through the navigable airspace.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc...

Driving is not a privilege either - it's essential to the right of Free Assembly (as is air travel in 2014, incidentally). Don't believe the claptrap in the driver's manual.

Face Palm

[Patent Lover]

The whole concept of a no-fly list so utterly asinine that it boggles the mind. Too dangerous to fly in a plane after going through security, not dangerous enough to arrest. Riiiiiiight.

Re:Face Palm

[Minwee]

It gets better. Would you believe that people who actually are suspected terrorists are kept off of the list to avoid tipping them off?

Re:Face Palm

[naasking]

I was just thinking this. The no-fly-list is counterproductive to intelligence work in which an important tool is surreptitiously tracking a person's movements to build a map of their contact network. All the no-fly-list does would do is make it harder to track the movement of terrorists because they would be forced to use less visible means of communication and transport, which means real terrorists probably aren't on the list at all, which completely contradicts the stated purpose of this "security measure". It's asinine.

Re:Shocked and saddened

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Tell that to the poor sods in Gitmo still awaiting trial - or charges, for that matter.

Didn't our current Glorious Leader promise to close down that shame of a concentration camp years ago, incidentally?

Re:Shocked and saddened

[Holi]

He did, and he tried, but some ass hats in Congress made it impossible. Please if you gon to cast blame, cast it in the right direction.

how is no fly not a first amendment violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

aren't all travel restrictions inherently an interference with the right to peaceably assemble?

of course since the new deal supreme court cases the constitution has been fundamentally meaningless so whatever carry on

There are still similar names and copies of lists

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Besides the possibility of a match to a similar name, even if only "official" copies of the the no-fly list are consulted, I would not be surprised if copies of her entry linger in the various copies of that list.

(A friend of mine who has a name similar to someone on a sex offenders' list was mistakenly added as a variant spelling of the original listing. Even after getting a court order to remove his listing, it had propagated to other copies and was eventually merged back in to the original as updates were passed around the various government agencies. He then got an order to amend his listing to state it was invalid, but (A) that merely added a new entry, with no guarantee which entry would show first, and (B), most checkers don't look beyond seeing of there is a match.)

Not alerting the terrorists

[Firethorn]

My first thought was 'Given Fast&Furious*, yes'.

*Operation Fast&Furious, where the ATF actually ordered a number of gun stores to sell to obvious Mexican cartel related straw purchasers in order to bust cartel leaders and such, then lost track of the guns.

Re:Not alerting the terrorists

[bluefoxlucid]

Because you're conflating emotional judgment with rational judgment.

Why are you even trying to defend actions like this?

Well, your argument is this: Mexicans would be incapable of murdering as many people if we didn't give them guns.

Let's look at the facts. Illegal firearms trafficking is highly lucrative. There is a healthy economy for illegal firearms, and in fact firearms can be made at home with a hammer, an anvil, some fire, and metal. Blacksmithing guns is a common hobby. CNC machines and other manufacture capabilities are cheap and readily available, so without a supply of trafficked firearms the illegal firearms supply economy could readily develop the capacity to make their own. They haven't because it's cheaper and easier to acquire them from legal sources, by fraud or theft.

In the absence of concrete statistical evidence, the circumstances strongly suggest that Mexican cartels have many sources of firearms and can acquire them at relative ease from any of them. This is the same as how we have so many drugs available in America--herione, marijuana, cocaine--including major imports from Canada (marijuana) and central/south America (cocaine), as well as the ready availability of child sexual human trafficking. There is a market demand for illegal firearms, and historically contraband has been hard for the everyman to get but relatively easy for organized cartels to get.

Under these premises, the only logical conclusion you can draw from a Mexican killing someone with a firearm that was sold under a Federal intelligence program is... that's where that particular firearm got to. Trying to conclude that there would be one less firearm in the hands of Mexican drug cartels is like trying to conclude that there will be less popcorn in theaters if Orvelle Reddenbacker stops selling popcorn. Okay, your local super market may have a shortage; your local theater will contact an alternate supplier and not miss a beat.

Moral victories are not real; they're imaginary constructions made so that you can criticize peoples' non-harmful actions as being terrible and evil.

Re:Shocked and saddened

[iggymanz]

well, I'm not a fan of him but in this case he at least makes "pushes" to close it. most recent here:

http://www.politico.com/story/...

we can talk about dozen other campaign lies, but not this issue

Re:Shocked and saddened

[spire3661]

I am a native american. My family came from Sicily, but I was born here, thus i am a native American. This land is as much mine as any Native American's

Re:Time to change my name to something common

[Virtucon]

I prefer I.P. Freely.

Idea for replacing the lengthy appeals process

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the Supreme Court has upheld freedom of travel is a right, and given that the no-fly list violates that right of anybody whose name is on it:

Make the first step in the appeal process very confrontational:
Either the government describes in open court, within a short time (say, 72 hours) of the person being denied travel, that they have better-than-probable cause to prevent this person from flying -- more than just a matching or similar name -- else the government representative in court (or the first-level manager at the airport who denied travel, if the gov't is a no-show) gets locked up for contempt until the person is removed off the list and all copies.

In essence, the gov't has to submit prima facie evidence why they deny this person the right to travel; if they fail, they go to prison. And AFAIK there is no maximum limit on how long somebody can stay in prison for contempt of court.

Re:Idea for replacing the lengthy appeals process

[qbast]

Does it include right to demand any particular mode of travel? You can always walk. See you in a month or three.

Re:no reasonable options

[meta-monkey]

Not necessarily. I thought Obama was going to end this shit. Call me gullible, but that's the only reason I held my nose and voted for him in 2008. "At least we can stop bombing people and shut down gitmo..." Haha, nope, joke's on me!

Troops

[DarksideDaveOR]

All I can think of is the old Star Wars/Cops spoof Troops:

"Suspects are guilty, period. Otherwise they wouldn't be suspect, would they?"

Re:Shocked and saddened

[currently_awake]

put them on trial. If you have proof of criminal activity then that should be easy. If you don't have proof then send them home. Better a hundred criminals go free than a single innocent man languish in jail.

Re:Shocked and saddened

[ThatsDrDangerToYou]

I am a native american. My family came from Sicily, but I was born here, thus i am a native American. This land is as much mine as any Native American's

No it isn't! It belongs to the banks you insensitive clod! Now apologize to all of us Banko-Americans immediately.

Older than that

[dtmos]

[I]t's actually a very strategic piece of property that dates back to the cold war.

It's actually older than that. The US has been there since the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903.

Re:Shocked and saddened

[dryeo]

You mean you're a native of the United States of America.If you were actually a native American, you'd be able to show up at the Canadian border, show proof that you're a native American and enter with most all rights of a Canadian. Works the other way too, a Canadian citizen who is a native American can enter the USA and have most all rights of a citizen of the USA. This is one case where American means the North American continent and the founders of the USA agreed that certain peoples had these rights as part of the peace treaty with Great Britain and re-agreed as part of the treaty ending the war of 1812.
Note that treaties are just below the Constitution when it comes to law.