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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...
“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!
that's an immigration thing. we're talking about terrorism here.
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.
"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".
Which is merely an extension to US citizens of US government policy for at least the past 20 years: the One Percent Doctrine. As enunciated by Dick Cheney, it ran as follows: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response".
In other words, it's better to kill lots of foreigners and destroy their country (with a 99% chance of doing so for no good reason) than to take a 1% chance that Americans might be hurt or incur loss.
Mind you, the logic becomes a bit less convincing if you replace "foreigners" with "Americans".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
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...
As long as you don't get involved in a trial against the no-fly list, you're probably OK.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... for those who need a refresher.
-- I have monkeys in my pants.
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.
Meh. The joke's been around forever, except it's no joke:
There was a inter-agency meeting where various federal agents discussed what makes a person getting off a plane suspicious. They came to a conclusion that:
Anyone who gets off first, or near the front, is obviously rushing, and thus is suspicious.
Anyone who gets off last, or near the back, is obviously being cautious, and thus is suspicious.
And anyone who gets off in the middle is trying to lose themselves in the crowd, and thus is suspicious.
Point is, if they want you on 'a list', they'll put you on the list, no matter what you do or don't do. /isn't that a 'police state'? //...I mean "I love Big Brother!"
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'?
Sounds like security clearance language. That is an odd sieve to use.
actually it makes a lot of sense. Why should the govt have to go around proving that people are terrorists? Under PATRIOT 2.0, now every citizen plays a part because each of us has to prove to the govt that we are not a terrorist.
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"
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 !
Re "Point is, if they want you on 'a list', they'll put you on the list, no matter what you do or don't do."
Reworking the old Soviet "owning a western watch" joke:
Three frequent flyers in a military prison get to talking about why they are there.
"I am here because I always got to airport five minutes late, and they charged me with sneaking in", says the first.
"I am here because I kept getting to airport 2 hours early, and they charged me with spying" says the second.
"I am here because I got to airport on time," says the third, "and they charged me with owning a watch."
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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.
I've read many articles already that suggests that there is a purge that is happening within the ranks of the military already. Over 200 top brass have been forced out over the past 5 years for various reasons. http://www.washingtontimes.com...
Combine that with the rumored questionnaire that surfaced at "29 Palms" training facility around 1995, and has made a comback in headlines, of the military personnel being asking questions like "would you fire on American citizens", and posing circumstances like "if guns were outlawed, and civilians were ordered to turn them in, would you aid in forceful confiscation of [aka shooting at] those who refused to voluntarily turn them in?"
I know many people pass this stuff off as 'tin foil hat' territory, but in today's political climate, with mass surveillance, government lying to us on a daily basis, half of the bill of rights being eroded down to mean nothing... I don't think it's out of the realm of plausible. I might have a 'tin foil' hat on, but if you think this is even remotely possible, then you would have to have your head in the sand.
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.
It is the logic of totalitarianism and it has nothing to do with "protecting Americans" (not that that is somehow inherently more desirable than, say, protecting Europeans). It has everything to do with creating and maintaining a vast, diffuse threat from "the outside" to keep the population quiet and in fear and behind their leaders. This is a very old tactics, perfected in the 3rd Reich. The Nazis also documented this approach well, and what has been going on in the US for more than a decade now is straight from their playbooks.
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.