‘No-Fly’ List: A Big Guessing Game
Click here for reuse options!The Obama administration’s no-fly lists and broader watchlisting system is based on predicting crimes rather than relying on records of demonstrated offenses, the government has been forced to admit in court.
In a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the US Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping US and other citizens from travelling on airplanes is a matter of “predictive assessments about potential threats”, the government asserted in May.
“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 on 28 May.
“Judgments concerning such potential threats to aviation and national security call upon the unique prerogatives of the Executive in assessing such threats.”
It is believed to be the government’s most direct acknowledgement 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 Justice Department said it must meet a standard of “reasonable suspicion” that a blacklisted individual poses a threat, a step below probable cause.
The declaration comes in a longstanding case, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), arguing that the government does not provide significant steps for someone caught in the “predictive assessments” to get off the blacklists.
Copyright 2015 Liberaland
By: dave-dr-gonzo
David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.
* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.
2 responses to ‘No-Fly’ List: A Big Guessing Game
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illinoisboy1977 August 11th, 2015 at 16:24
That practice is a complete and total violation of the 5th Amendment. You HAVE to be CONVICTED, before you can be punished. That’s the way the law works. Anything else, is a violation of due process. Punishment CANNOT come before the crime!
Warman1138 August 12th, 2015 at 05:59
The TSA and HS are a cruel enabling of easy ignorance to create victims, they don’t stop or protect squat, merely suck money for the sake of bureaucracy.