More Secret Surveillance - the Watch List

[The] federal government’s main terrorist watch list has grown to at least 700,000 people, with little scrutiny over how the determinations are made or the impact on those marked with the terrorist label.

[...]

What’s more, the government refuses to confirm or deny whether someone is on the list, officially called the Terrorist Screening Database, or divulge the criteria used to make the decisions — other than to say the database includes “individuals known or suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to terrorism and terrorist activities.”

  NYT

We may “never forget 9/11,” but it seems we’ve forgotten McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

"In aid of" could encompass anything short of denouncing terrorists, couldn't it?

Even less is known about the secondary watch lists that are derived from the main one, including the no-fly list (used to prevent people from boarding aircraft), the selectee and expanded selectee lists (used to flag travelers for extra screening at airport checkpoints), the TECS database (used to vet people entering or leaving the United States), the Consular Lookout and Support System (used to screen visa applications) and the known or suspected terrorists list (used by law enforcement in routine police encounters).

[...]

The Terrorist Screening Center, which administers the main terrorist watch list, declined to discuss its procedures, or to release current data about the number of people on various watch lists, and how many of them are American citizens. A T.S.C. official did say that fewer than 1 percent of the people in the main terrorist database are United States citizens or legal permanent residents, but there is no way to confirm that number.

[...]

“When you have a huge list of people who are likely to commit terrorist acts, it’s easy to think that terrorism is a really big problem and we should be devoting a lot of resources to fighting it,” [Professor Bernstein of SUNY Buffalo] said. “As a society, we have choices about what we really think are the important problems.”

No choice if you don’t know what’s happening.

There are a couple of lawsuits currently underway attempting to get people off the list. But for “national security reasons,” they’re not even allowed to know why they got put there.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.