Comment by ChuckFrank | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckFrank | Hacker News Reader

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It makes no sense to say that this document is based upon preserving the rights of the individual, while actively stripping those rights.

The idea that you can be added to a watchlist, but you can know why, or by whom, or how to get yourself removed, because you are preserving an individuals right seems counter intuitive to what those rights should be.

Unless, I'm misunderstanding you.

There is also a huge difference between being a suspected criminal and being a suspected terrorists, by how those definitions are actively managed. Suspected criminals are not barred from boarding planes, nor are they barred from banking, or housing, or otherwise. They are simply surveilled in a different capacity, until they are no longer suspected, or a case is developed to charge them. The process does have public components to preserve the rights of the individual.

And as to my cursory reading - you are correct. I didn't see those standards as detailed. I will review them. But my point remains, why not publicize the specifics of those placed on the watchlist, just like we publicize the charges against those in criminal and civil proceedings. How is this different?

It makes no sense to say that this document is based upon preserving the rights of the individual, while actively stripping those rights.

This conversation will go better if you don't start out with straw man arguments; I said no such thing.

The idea that you can be added to a watchlist, but you can know why, or by whom, or how to get yourself removed, because you are preserving an individuals right seems counter intuitive to what those rights should be.

...but not if you don't take time to actually read the document we're talking about, which includes sections on challenging inclusion and removal from lists. Absent a satisfactory administrative outcome, petitioners still have resort to the courts. This is consistent with the Constitutional design.

Courts have found that the Watchlist is not consistent with Constitutional design:

"The No Fly List, once distributed, clearly infringes upon a citizen's right to travel; and the Court cannot conclude based on the present record that there are no means less restrictive than an unqualified flight ban to adequately assure flight security, such as comprehensive preflight screening and searches. Second, the current record is inadequate to explain why judicial involvement before a person is placed on the No Fly List is either unnecessary or impractical, other than perhaps within the context of an emergency based on a specific, imminent threat that requires immediate action. Nor does the record conclusively establish that there cannot be any opportunity, either before or after an American citizen is placed on the No Fly List, to know of or challenge any of the information used to list him, even where such information could be summarized in a way that does not compromise sources or methods." [1]

[1] http://www.cair.com/images/pdf/Gulet-Order.pdf

The watchlist and the no-fly list are two different things, notwithstanding the degree to which they may overlap.

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