Slashdot Mirror
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.
Tell me Mr Anderson, what good is a phone call if you can't speak?
Sure, feel free to walk to whereever you want to go.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
for racial /religious profiling
"Land of the free", indeed... I'm quite amazed how you Americans put up with all that.
Secret Laws and Rules do not create national security, they are the threat to national security. The problem is, without a clear set of rules, it's a law that is open to abuse towards whomever those who are in charge don't like. Secret laws & courts are what shows you that instead of caring about protecting it's citizen, the government is using it to further their own ends.
We can NOT have freedom when we have secret laws & courts.
Be seeing you...
So let me get this straight these people are so dangerous that they can't fly yet aren't dangerous enough to be brought in for questioning, gotten off the streets for the safety of the general public, and are likely not under direct surveillance? I am a bit confused here.
And before someone mods this troll that was sarcasm. I also happen to believe that if the administration were to reveal their "State Secrets" it would be something like the emperor has no cloths.
Time to offend someone
whilst others may quote george orwell 1984, philip k dick, V for Vendetta, minority report and so on, i'm reminded of the more recent film captain america winter soldier, in which a swiss nazi/hydra scientist, who was permitted to work in the US after the 2nd world war, creates an "algorithm" that can read people's online digital fingerprint, predicts whether they are likely to be a threat (to hydra's "new world order"), and the results are used to murder them... *before* they can act.
the justifications for such action - delivered by the character played by robert redford - sound so completely sane and rational that it's genuinely hard - rationally - to come up with a counter-argument. questions are asked such as "what if we could stop terrorists before they act?" and to be absolutely honest, the responses by the actors were really not that convincing, as they sounded lame in their "emotive" and "moral conscience" justification.
and that's really illustrative of what we're seeing here. these films merely reflect to us what's *actually* going on. these films are pointing out to us that there are *genuinely* people out there who can, with no moral conscience whatsoever and with a blatant disregard for the spirit of the U.S. Constitution, use purely rational logic to justify the removal of freedom and even of life itself.
the problem is, i feel, that the founding fathers had just been through a war that tore what is now known as the U.S. apart: the lesson was burned into their minds, and it brought together people with good conscience to make sensible and far-sighted committments, in the form of "The Constitution".
by contrast, i cannot honestly say that i can even guess at what truly drives the current power-hungry people who make decisions like the ones that they're making right now. we have people like bruce schneier "calling out" their "security theatrics", but that's just a symptom, not the underlying motivation. we see glimpses that something terribly strange is going on - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... - but it's sufficiently orwellian that even i have a hard time comprehending the implications.
so help me out here: someone please help me to understand why there are people in the world's leading nation - the one that all others look up to - who would blatantly disregard the principles on which the U.S. Constitution is founded.
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.