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US No-Fly List Uses 'Predictive Judgement' Instead of Hard Evidence
HughPickens.com writes: The Guardian reports that in a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the US Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping U.S. and other citizens from traveling on airplanes is a matter of "predictive assessments about potential threats." "By its very nature, identifying individuals who 'may be a threat to civil aviation or national security' is a predictive judgment intended to prevent future acts of terrorism in an uncertain context," Justice Department officials Benjamin C Mizer and Anthony J Coppolino told the court. It is believed to be the government's most direct acknowledgment to date that people are not allowed to fly because of what the government believes they might do and not what they have already done. The ACLU has asked Judge Anna Brown to conduct her own review of the error rate in the government's predictions modeling – a process the ACLU likens to the "pre-crime" of Philip K Dick's science fiction. "It has been nearly five years since plaintiffs on the no-fly list filed this case seeking a fair process by which to clear their names and regain a right that most other Americans take for granted," say ACLU lawyers.
The Obama administration is seeking to block the release of further information about how the predictions are made, as damaging to national security. "If the Government were required to provide full notice of its reasons for placing an individual on the No Fly List and to turn over all evidence (both incriminating and exculpatory) supporting the No Fly determination, the No Fly redress process would place highly sensitive national security information directly in the hands of terrorist organizations and other adversaries," says the assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, Michael Steinbach.
The Obama administration is seeking to block the release of further information about how the predictions are made, as damaging to national security. "If the Government were required to provide full notice of its reasons for placing an individual on the No Fly List and to turn over all evidence (both incriminating and exculpatory) supporting the No Fly determination, the No Fly redress process would place highly sensitive national security information directly in the hands of terrorist organizations and other adversaries," says the assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, Michael Steinbach.
The downside is that they may be giving up a weapon that, for all its bad, is a net good. (As in, inconveniencing a few million people is worth saving a few hundred lives.)
Last time I checked, airport security theatre had not saved one single life or stopped one single terrorist attempt.
Uh....you know that this all started under Bush, right?
Right?
And the current administration utterly failed to change it.
Are you trying to justify racial/religious profiling, or suggest that doing so against Muslims would *not* be islamophobic? Or suggest that anyone who can recognize simple bigotry against Muslims is a terrorist sympathizer/appeaser? Because I don't think it's working outside of your own head.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
That list includes journalists who embarrassed the government, a few actors, some folks who had similar names to dangerous people, etc. This would have never become an issue if the government actually took people off the list when there was a mistake, but they didn't until forced by judicial sanction. For the longest time they refused to acknowledge that such a list existed at all, and refused to verify if anyone had ever been placed on it. How do you resolve mistakes in a list that's top secret? That was the whole problem; excessive secrecy led directly to the abuse they promised wouldn't happen. If they had acted responsibly we wouldn't be here now.