J. SCAHILL - "BLACKLISTED: The Secret Gov't Handbook for Labeling You A Terrorist"

[99th_Monkey]

BLACKLISTED: The Secret Gov't Handbook for Labeling You A Terrorist
BY JEREMY SCAHILL AND RYAN DEVEREAUX @jeremyscahill@rdevro

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 “March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,” a 166-page document issued last year by the National Counterterrorism Center, spells out the government’s secret rules for putting individuals on its main terrorist database, as well as the no fly list and the selectee list, which triggers enhanced screening at airports and border crossings. The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place entire “categories” of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to “nominate” people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as “fragmentary information.” It also allows for dead people to be watch listed.


Over the years, the Obama and Bush Administrations have fiercely resisted disclosing the criteria for placing names on the databases—though the guidelines are officially labeled as unclassified. In May, Attorney General Eric Holder even invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent watchlisting guidelines from being disclosed in litigation launched by an American who was on the no fly list. In an affidavit, Holder called them a “clear roadmap” to the government’s terrorist-tracking apparatus, adding: “The Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed … could cause significant harm to national security.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/23/blacklisted/

[Louisiana1976]

1. The thought of innocent people ending up on such watchlists due to mistaken identity is

especially scary. I've heard of children and other innocent people being thus stigmatized.

[99th_Monkey]

3. Yah. and this goes to "other private entities"

That makes my skin crawl.

[niyad]

2. "WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!"

[RKP5637]

4. Yep, ALL of DU! n/t

[grasswire]

5. great

While the nomination process appears methodical on paper, in practice there is a shortcut around the entire system. Known as a “threat-based expedited upgrade,” it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to elevate entire “categories of people” whose names appear in the larger databases onto the no fly or selectee lists. This can occur, the guidelines state, when there is a “particular threat stream” indicating that a certain type of individual may commit a terrorist act.

This extraordinary power for “categorical watchlisting”—otherwise known as profiling—is vested in the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, a position formerly held by CIA Director John Brennan that does not require Senate confirmation.

[99th_Monkey]

7. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck

This is what Fascism looks like.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. K&R. nt