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The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist
Advocatus Diaboli sends this report: The Obama administration has quietly approved a substantial expansion of the terrorist watchlist system, authorizing a secret process that requires neither "concrete facts" nor "irrefutable evidence" to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist, according to a key government document obtained by The Intercept. ...The heart of the document revolves around the rules for placing individuals on a watchlist. "All executive departments and agencies," the document says, are responsible for collecting and sharing information on terrorist suspects with the National Counterterrorism Center. It sets a low standard—"reasonable suspicion"—for placing names on the watchlists, and offers a multitude of vague, confusing, or contradictory instructions for gauging it. In the chapter on "Minimum Substantive Derogatory Criteria"—even the title is hard to digest—the key sentence on reasonable suspicion offers little clarity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
I recently posted on social media how easy it would be to simply replace a DVD player on a laptop with explosives, clearly and simply showing the meaninglessness of the TSA's requirement to power on devices to get through security. I think it's perfectly likely that this, along with my consistent criticism of the US government and its policies, can put me on a list.
Conspirator just doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? You can't be a terrorist unless you've actually done something terrorizing, so what the authorities have to do is predict, based on association, what you're going to do. And since we've all seen Minority Report, having to predict if someone is going to be a terrorist or not is a pretty lousy way to go about doing things.
The Hope and Change you voted for. No, I'm not saying that "The Guy With The (R)" would have been better. The (R) and the (D) are basically the same thing these days, just one is more honest about wanting a big all-encompassing nanny state.
If the (R) and the (D) people both hate someone then that person must be doing something the right way. Look for those kinds of people, like that guy Thad Cochran screwed in a primary election with underhanded, shady, and probably illegal tactics. When the establishment is devouring its own people in order to keep hold of power, the establishment needs to go.
“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,”
I thought that was an exceptionally silly idea when it used in Captain America Winter Soldier. Is Armin Zola running the DHS ?
The overreach of this goal, is very worrisome. Especially when you consider that the inevitable failures will likely result in its promoters just doubling down on what they claim it needs to work.
Finally, silly bureaucratic holdups will no longer preclude Mr. Archibald Buttle's addition to the terror list!
The whole freaking govt has become infected with "Nixon" disease. An enemies list to end all enemies lists.
Sounds like security clearance language. That is an odd sieve to use.
that's an immigration thing. we're talking about terrorism here.
Not shocked at all. Which is sad.
Soon enough (if not already), they will have "reasonable suspicion" to add all Slashdot users to the list.
that's an immigration thing. we're talking about terrorism here.
Really?
Prove it.
Yes, tell me again how you have direct access to the National Counterterrorism Center database and can confirm that the list doesn't include 1.5 million people. Including everyone who has poured over our borders (as if we wouldn't have a reason to suspect them), along with natural-born US citizens who talk about things like "Rights" and "Constitution". Those aren't history references anymore, they are direct threats.
In "The Changeling", the probe "Nomad" seeks to sterilize anything that is "imperfect" -- and of course, everything is imperfect to Nomad.
So essentially, *everyone* is a terrorist, and everyone is duty-bound to report their neighbors. Until everyone is watching everyone and we're all ready to shoot our neighbors to maintain the peace.
Those Aliens are coming to Mulberry street alright.
And I got to reference two 1960's TV shows that warned us of this very event, and we're too dumb to listen. Amurica f*ck Yeah!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I for one am glad they are continuing their rampant overreach.
The more they delve into the land of ridiculousness, like the McCarthy era "Un-American Activities" Lists, the quicker we will have those Congressional Hearings where it all blows up in their faces.
At least I hope history repeats itself...
...are as interesting as the actual lists of people.
I want to see what I am on, if anything. I want to see how I'm graded. I would proudly publish my rating.
My ex's family work and my activist past will almost certainly have me on some low interest lists, especially because I'm a non-citizen (actually, I left the US again several years ago), but I would really be interested to know what they say!
Sounds like security clearance language. That is an odd sieve to use.
Not at all. "Reasonable suspicion" is legal language, which is why they use it in both contexts. It is the minimum amount of information that a police officer (or other federal agent) can have to stop you on the street, even if they lack a warrant, without violating the Constitution. It basically means they have to point to specific facts that under the circumstances suggest you may be up to something criminal. (They don't have to identify those facts to you when they stop you, necessarily, but they can make a reasonable inquiry to dispel their suspicion.) Otherwise they have violated the Constitution, which doesn't help you a lot sometimes, but still sometimes results in either evidence they find being excluded or you being able to sue them.
Whether it should be the standard here is a different question, but the government wants it to be because it's a pretty low standard.
What's terrifying about this is, there has been a precedent set that being a "terrorist" voids your constitutional rights. If you're a terrorist, the US government can assassinate you, even if you're a citizen. They can lock you up indefinitely in secret prisons. They can spy on all of your communications, and conduct searches that are otherwise illegal. They can torture you. They can do anything they want in the name of "winning the War on Terror".
So once you have that kind of policy towards terrorism, there's only one thing, in theory, protecting your constitutional rights: a strict definition of 'terrorist'.
If terrorist have no rights, and anyone can be considered a terrorist, then nobody's rights are protected. Now someone might respond, "No, you still have your rights. You can speak freely, you can bear arms, there are no soldiers in your house, and the government isn't searching through your belongings." And you're right. I currently have all of those freedoms. However, if those freedoms are contingent on the will of a government official, and those freedoms can be arbitrarily taken away, then they aren't 'rights' anymore.
Keep lowering the bar. Eventually it'll be so low that everyone will be a terrorist... and then what will there be left to terrify?
The list will always be finite. Don't be ignorant. There will be people who will NEVER be on this list no matter what they do or say. However, we need to stop assuming the government does not have the ability to enslave (incarcerate) far more than you could ever imagine.
I never imagined that the city of Boston could be turned into a Stazi police state in a matter of hours. It happened. Right under our eyes. With ten times the law enforcement resources we thought we had on hand.
That capability can now be deployed to every major city across the US. Within hours.
Don't wonder or assume where your tax dollars go. It's the armored troop carriers and drones staring you in the face that ALL law enforcement agencies suddenly NEED to do their job. Regardless of the threat yesterday or over the last decade, Bubba Joe Sheriff apparently can't do his job tomorrow without it, so it's automatically approved in the budget. Fuck you and your privacy. Stop bitching. You're "safe" now.
Ahhh, can't you just smell the freedom in the air...
I mean, if I had to name someone a terrorist, I'd start with Rupert Murdoch, and then think about the CEO of Goldman Sachs (Blankenfein?)... Then there's that bank HSBC, that knowingly laundered money to terrorists and drug cartels.
If you really think about it, the 1% are the nastiest bunch of terrorists around, but I'll bet you the entire planet (which the 1% own), that these terrorists never, ever, ever get their names on any terrorist list.
So, what's a terrorist then? Someone, I guess... who represents a threat to the real terrorists running the world.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This is the real problem. We have no knowledge of who and what are on these lists, nor do we have any way of obtaining that knowledge. Every single person on them could be someone who trained in Pakistan with known terrorists or every single one of them could be regular people who have done absolutely nothing to warrant surveillance (which is what a "watch" list is, if you didn't gather by the name). We don't know, we can't know. The system is entirely and completely opaque to anyone outside it (and probably the vast majority of those tasked with updating it).
This is the most blatant disregard for constitutionally protected rights I've ever seen. I'll make sure I carry copies of "Catcher In He Rye" and "Anarchists Cookbook" wherever I travel. I'm surprised that this has been allowed to continue but it's utter nonsense and just the first fucking page of the document shows how fucked we are with all these shields representing stakeholders into the system. I especially like the part where one person in the White House can immediately include a group or individual on the terrorist watch list as they see fit. Have any political enemies? They're on the list.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
From the article: 'As the rulebook notes, “watchlisting is not an exact science.”'
'science'?
Its okay to say someone is a "suspected terrorist" with no hard evidence in the same way the police can suspect you of murder even though they can't really prove it yet. Suspicion doesn't mean you get hit with hellfire missiles from a drone of course. That should require proof especially if they're americans.
That said, if you're walking around in a war zone talking to terrorists... I wouldn't blame the pentagon for lighting you up at a certain point. If you're going to go to those places, at least tell someone first so you don't get people's imaginations running wild.
We have to keep in mind this is war. If you went to Nazi Germany and started hanging around with Nazi leaders and military personnel I'm not going to feel bad if you got killed one afternoon by a B-17 carpet bombing the area. Its war.
Kindly don't associate with the enemy until hostilities have concluded or at least signal to both sides that you're a non-combatant and those that care will try to avoid taking you in the cross fire. Short of that... via con dios.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
See people, this is why we need civics in schools again
I definitely agree that we need civics, but most schools already have it, as far as I know; like everything else, it's just taught very, very poorly. Our education system is abysmal (focusing on rote memorization, teaching to the test, propaganda, and being a one-size-fits-all 'solution'), and it only works in favor of the government.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
McCarthy was not spying on all Americans, tapping all their phones, reading all their mail, groping them at the airport, sifting through their medical records (after forcing those records to be electronic and part of a national system) and so on.
Furthermore, McCarthy was onto a real problem before he went way overboard (I hate being in a position that looks like I am defending him, which I am NOT). There actually were a few commies in the government (as we learned decades later after the collapse of the soviet union and the opening of the archives) and there actually were a few commies in Hollywood having secret meetings (though they were more like social gatherings and the form of communism was more of an innocent idealism about "some other way" borne from the great depression). There also really were spies in the US transferring military (particularly nuclear) tech to the Soviet Union, which really was an actual national security matter. A drunken, bloated, publicity-hungry man with no sense of self-restraint and common sense was not the best person to dig into these issues.
In the current situation, 99% of the population is easily identifiable as being NO threat at all... the people trying to harm us are all Muslim extremists and the vast majority are from outside the US. Oh, and SOMEBODY always injects Tim McVeigh in here as a "domestic terrorism" counter-point - it's not. He was a vile criminal who attacked a specific Federal Building associated with the Waco raid, NOT a terrorist randomly attacking civilians.... very bad and deadly, BUT a very different matter requiring a response not connected to the "war on terror" (lumping McVeigh in with Muslim extremists is precisely the sort of thing that wrongly enables the feds to pretend their universal spying is necessary). If the goal is to stop terror attacks (rather than eliminate all crime, which is an impossible goal) there's simply no reason to spy on any American atheist, Jew, Christian, Buddist, Hindu, Seikh, etc and very little reason to give even a second look at any Muslim who's not forcing his wife and daughters into personal body tents, not trying to slice-and-sice his daughter's "naughty bits", not trying to send his daughters "home" to the middle-east for arranged marriages, and not trying to cut-off the hand of a guy at the local mosque (as happened in Philly recently)... in other words: there's even a difference between "moderate" Muslims and the crazy evil bloodthirsty whackjob Muslims who we need to be spying on intensely. Groping little children of non-muslims, and elderly nuns at the airport is NOT security - it's "security theater". Snooping on a bunch of young guys who play Halo because your phone taps caprtured the word "explode" is just plain idiotic.
We currently have, in Barack Millhouse Hussein McCarthy a man who is completely out of control. His political opponents have found themselves being probed by the IRS, the ATF, the FBI, and the EPA, while he has declared that he has the right to single-handedly re-write the clear text of laws and choose to not enforce laws he does not like. He has taken programs originally designed to snoop on people outside the US (normal spying activity done by all nations) but expanded post-9-11 to also snoop on people within the US wo were in contact with outsiders who were possible threats (Constitutionally-dubious, but an understandable temporary reaction to thousands of dead bodies) and transformed it into a permanent program of spying on EVERYBODY at all times. When you unite universal comprehensive spying with using government agencies to hassle political opponents and a disregard for any inconvenient law you have totalitarianism. If people were looking at this clearly, they would be FREAKING OUT right now (Imagine if a "President Cheney" was doing it and the people in the cross-hairs were progressives...) but since Obama is supported by all but one of the news media outlets, most Amercians are being spoonfed a supportive view of some of this and not told about the r
Thats interesting AC but recall the FBI infiltration program called Patcon (Patriot Conspiracy) around 1991? :)
The laws, funding, interest was always ready. This new more simple legal listing is just a new next step to gather more people onto new and existing databases.
Patriot Games
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/a...
If you want to go back further you had Project MINARET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
i.e. "watch lists" of American citizens around 1967 and 1973.
No judicial oversight, no warrants for interception and even got some UK help too
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The person you heap your hatred upon (Rupert Murdoch) is the ONLY media person opposing Obama and his massive overreach ... you seem very suspicious to me. Obama keeps whining and complaining that there's this ONE media outlet that disagrees with him, and YOU decare that the owner of that channel is a "Terrorist"....
Have you ever heard of the word "Irony"? I suggest you look it up.
Why do they hate America so much?
According to the US government, apparently the terrorists hate America so much because of all the Freedoms that American citizens have.
Ill admit, it took some work, but I actually said that out loud without falling off the chair in laughter at the delicious irony.
Terrorist: No right to a speedy trial, no right to habeus corpus, No constitutional rights at all. Actually it's the Cold War equivalent of hauling people from their homes in the middle of the night... except that once you affix that label to them, you can operate in broad daylight.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
These days, you don't even have to be a dirty commie, or Chinese, or both, to be Anti-American; the Commander-in-Chief hisself is one
I can't help but wonder if Obama's own dossier is to go through the same expanded terrorist watchlist system would Obama be labeled as one of the terrorists?
Especially when neither "concrete facts" nor "irrefutable evidence" is required
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Aside from doing anything illegal, hurting anyone, etc. Seems that if enough of us buy the Get On The Terrorist List for Dummies then the problem sort of solves itself by making the list useless.
Makes the Patriot Act seem kind of quaint, no?
So now we're going to tar and feather the current President over this, right? Since he's far worse?
What's that, no? Just vaguely complain?
The word for this is witch hunt. A simple correlation is enough.
Just as merely being unusual marked a person as a witch when a plague broke out, posting unusual comments in social media, right before or after a terrorist incident, now marks you as a terrorist.
Download PDF here: http://s3.documentcloud.org/do...
~comfortably numb~
Come and get me fuckers.
On the page 48 of this document
EXAMPLES OF TERRORISM AND/OR TERRORIST ACTIVITIES
3.18.1 destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities ..... ... ...
3.18.13 damaging a protected computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or that is used exclusively by a financial institution or the United States Government
3.18.18 damage to Government property
3.18.19 destruction of communication lines, stations, or systems
Well, AFAIC under these definitions the IRS are terrorists.
3.18.29 the use of weapons of mass destruction
3.18.34 harboring TERRORISTS
3.18.35 providing material support to TERRORISTS
3.18.36 providing material support to terrorist organizations
3.18.37 financing TERRORISM
3.18.38 receiving military-type training from a FTO
3.18.39 torture
3.18.40 developing, transfering, possessing, or threatening to use atomic weapons
3.18.46 manufacturing, distributing, or possessing controlled substances intending to provide anything of pecuniary value to a FTO, member, or group
Under these definition USA government is a terrorist organization.
You can't handle the truth.
while the history of American politicians doing temporary bits unsavory spying or supression goes all the way back to John Adams' "Alien & Sedition Act", most have been limited and truly were aimed at something a president believed was a true threat (Adams, one of the founders and a prolific writer who was concerned about the rights and privacy of the individual was trying to keep French agitators from dragging the fledgling America into a foreign war). This current mess is a culmination of the actions of two Presidents of opposite parties who pretend to dislike eachother but who have both completely disregarded the rights of the people in favor of their goals of a super-surveillance state, aided by a congress with many members getting campaign cash from vendors who sell the equipment the surveillance state needs.
In the past, a President of one party taking over from a guy from the other party would have eliminated such policies (often to satisfy some portion of his supporters, but sometimes because he thought them ineffective or just plain wrong) and then gone on to make his own new errors [grin]. The current POTUS, however, seems to have warmly embraced the things he loudly condemned while campaigning and then built his empire of spying on top of it. This is BAD, and I personally do not care WHO is doing it; it was bad enough when Bush did it and it's worse now under Obama NOT because he is a Democrat, NOT because he is black, NOT because "he is from Kenya" (or any other foil hat garbage), but because it is MORE bad stuff heaped on top of a mountain of stuff he too previously agreed was really BAD. If McCarthyism had been immediately followed by a Democrat who doubled-down on McCarthy and added more people to the secret lists and more actions to the lists of suspicious activity, THAT would a mini version of the current situation. That did not happen though because the opponents of McCarthy were genuinely oppposed to his actions, not just pretending to dislike them until thay could get in power and take control of the process.
If race doesn't matter, why was it neccesary to bring out his middle name? Hussein? You're assuming I meant racist against black, but frankly, we're not facing a lot of racism against those of middle eastern descent. yeah. Barack HUSSEIN! Obama!
As for the incidents of white christian shootings, have you been paying attention to the news? They don't get labeled terrorists. They get labeled fringe lone incidents... The latest was the recent couple that shot everything up and then shot themselves...
You are naive. There are maybe something like 20-30 active terrorists in the world. They could not be a threat to the US if they tried really hard. This is about mechanisms to mark "undesirables" and make their life miserable in order to keep all the sheep in line.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
By reducing the powers of the government, you create a power vacuum
So getting rid of the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, stop-and-frisk, and other unconstitutional powers is fascist because it'll create a power vacuum, merely because it reduces the government's power? The fact is, the government has many powers now that it should not have. Those need to be gotten rid of. The unconstitutional ones, for starters.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
and things ultimately got fixed.
As long as a no-fly list exists in any way, shape, or form, nothing has been fixed. The government should have to take these people to court, not deny them the ability to fly without due process; that's just unconstitutional.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Terrorism seems to be the new white card for power abuse.
I wonder how tourists would feel about visiting the US now when they can easily be labelled as a terrorist for no reasons at all.
Thoughts of a free man:
"Execuitive branch"?
State, Treasury, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Defense, Health and Human Services, ...Agricultural terrorist? Actually that makes sense with all the amfo they have. They probably have more of it than some states have in TNT equivalent nuclear arms.
Housing and Urban Development,
Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security
On a completely unrelated note, farmers need drones, don't they? Big ones, for dusting crops, herding cattle and what not.
All rites reversed 2010
'Fuck the wheat; I want the chaff.'
This is about control of your average citizen. If they are watching everything we say and do, they will know the instant one of us says something they consider a "threat". And just what is it that they consider a "threat", anyway? Blowing up a building? Nope.
It's thoughts and ideas that they consider a threat. Thoughts and ideas that might, for example, lead to the people realizing that they no longer "need" government so much anymore, now that were are so hyper-connected. Eventually more and more of us will realize we can do thing more efficiently ourselves, and render many of the government functions superannuated.
Yes, my friends. The real "threat" is that we may render government irrelevant by way of creating alternative infrastructures.
Once they catch wind something like that is budding, mark my words they will come along and nip it in the bud. By whatever means they choose.
I say all this at risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist. I hope I am wrong on all of this, but I am just trying to understand everything that is going on now. You have to ask yourselves what is the real plan since there is not enough "terrorism" to justify these enormous efforts and assaults to our basic freedom, liberty, and privacy.
when everyone is on the list.
The probable good news is that, given the incredible computing power at play, this should not take a very long time, since the reasonable suspicion criterion make it easy to add names.
Biden wears diapers. Get off my lawn!!!
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Good pic.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Germany did that in 1933 but they weren't after 'terrorists'. God help you if you were a Jew, though.
I strongly suspect this Eric Holder fellow is a sniveling weenie.
He's prominently featured on a very long list of useless, fucked-up people.
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.