The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist 242
Advocatus Diaboli sends this report: 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 heart of the document revolves around the rules for placing individuals on a watchlist. "All executive departments and agencies," the document says, are responsible for collecting and sharing information on terrorist suspects with the National Counterterrorism Center. It sets a low standard—"reasonable suspicion"—for placing names on the watchlists, and offers a multitude of vague, confusing, or contradictory instructions for gauging it. In the chapter on "Minimum Substantive Derogatory Criteria"—even the title is hard to digest—the key sentence on reasonable suspicion offers little clarity.
McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:1, Insightful)
No idea how you're modded a troll, but fuck anybody who did.
This is actually worse.
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, really - even McCarthyism required some sort of evidence by way of associations, party memberships, and etc.
In this case, you don't even get that.
Re:Slashdot Users (Score:5, Insightful)
Soon enough (if not already), they will have "reasonable suspicion" to add all Slashdot users to the list.
Hmm, let's see:
- technologically savvy? Check.
- Interested in/knowledgeable about cryptography/biology/chemistry? Check.
- Generally Libertarian (pro-individual-freedom) mentality? Big ol' check.
- NOT large donors to political campaigns? Good chance of another check here.
Sounds like yes, we as a group do indeed meet the Fascist, er Federal Government's definitions of "terrorist."
Any attributes I failed to list, that makes our community a target for clandestine government agencies?
Speaking of McCarthyism... (Score:3, Insightful)
The more they delve into the land of ridiculousness, like the McCarthy era "Un-American Activities" Lists, the quicker we will have those Congressional Hearings where it all blows up in their faces.
At least I hope history repeats itself...
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Right out of the East German playbook. Suspect everyone & have all neighbors fink on everyone else to generate mind numbing paranoia.
Kind of terrifying (Score:5, Insightful)
What's terrifying about this is, there has been a precedent set that being a "terrorist" voids your constitutional rights. If you're a terrorist, the US government can assassinate you, even if you're a citizen. They can lock you up indefinitely in secret prisons. They can spy on all of your communications, and conduct searches that are otherwise illegal. They can torture you. They can do anything they want in the name of "winning the War on Terror".
So once you have that kind of policy towards terrorism, there's only one thing, in theory, protecting your constitutional rights: a strict definition of 'terrorist'.
If terrorist have no rights, and anyone can be considered a terrorist, then nobody's rights are protected. Now someone might respond, "No, you still have your rights. You can speak freely, you can bear arms, there are no soldiers in your house, and the government isn't searching through your belongings." And you're right. I currently have all of those freedoms. However, if those freedoms are contingent on the will of a government official, and those freedoms can be arbitrarily taken away, then they aren't 'rights' anymore.
Re:Can I even fly any more? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh. The joke's been around forever, except it's no joke:
There was a inter-agency meeting where various federal agents discussed what makes a person getting off a plane suspicious. They came to a conclusion that:
Anyone who gets off first, or near the front, is obviously rushing, and thus is suspicious.
Anyone who gets off last, or near the back, is obviously being cautious, and thus is suspicious.
And anyone who gets off in the middle is trying to lose themselves in the crowd, and thus is suspicious.
Point is, if they want you on 'a list', they'll put you on the list, no matter what you do or don't do. /isn't that a 'police state'? //...I mean "I love Big Brother!"
Re:Keep lowering the bar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep lowering the bar. Eventually it'll be so low that everyone will be a terrorist... and then what will there be left to terrify?
The list will always be finite. Don't be ignorant. There will be people who will NEVER be on this list no matter what they do or say. However, we need to stop assuming the government does not have the ability to enslave (incarcerate) far more than you could ever imagine.
I never imagined that the city of Boston could be turned into a Stazi police state in a matter of hours. It happened. Right under our eyes. With ten times the law enforcement resources we thought we had on hand.
That capability can now be deployed to every major city across the US. Within hours.
Don't wonder or assume where your tax dollars go. It's the armored troop carriers and drones staring you in the face that ALL law enforcement agencies suddenly NEED to do their job. Regardless of the threat yesterday or over the last decade, Bubba Joe Sheriff apparently can't do his job tomorrow without it, so it's automatically approved in the budget. Fuck you and your privacy. Stop bitching. You're "safe" now.
Ahhh, can't you just smell the freedom in the air...
And what about Economic Terrorism? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, if I had to name someone a terrorist, I'd start with Rupert Murdoch, and then think about the CEO of Goldman Sachs (Blankenfein?)... Then there's that bank HSBC, that knowingly laundered money to terrorists and drug cartels.
If you really think about it, the 1% are the nastiest bunch of terrorists around, but I'll bet you the entire planet (which the 1% own), that these terrorists never, ever, ever get their names on any terrorist list.
So, what's a terrorist then? Someone, I guess... who represents a threat to the real terrorists running the world.
Mods, read the parent please! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the real problem. We have no knowledge of who and what are on these lists, nor do we have any way of obtaining that knowledge. Every single person on them could be someone who trained in Pakistan with known terrorists or every single one of them could be regular people who have done absolutely nothing to warrant surveillance (which is what a "watch" list is, if you didn't gather by the name). We don't know, we can't know. The system is entirely and completely opaque to anyone outside it (and probably the vast majority of those tasked with updating it).
Re: McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of blacklists, I think we're quickly moving towards whitelists. By default you're a terrorist or a criminal until proven otherwise.
Re:Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)
"As the rulebook notes, "witch hunting is not an exact science."
FTFY.
Re:Speaking of McCarthyism... (Score:4, Insightful)
the quicker we will have those Congressional Hearings
Unless, of course, you don't.
Re:How does the current POTUS fair ... (Score:3, Insightful)
What are they gonna do?
When you are a country that has over the past several decades committed and/or sponsored more acts of terror than everyone else in the world combined, the best course of action just might be have everyone point fingers everywhere else or maybe they just really are that paranoid - again, due to being massive terror-mongers themselves...
hmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes the Patriot Act seem kind of quaint, no?
So now we're going to tar and feather the current President over this, right? Since he's far worse?
What's that, no? Just vaguely complain?
Witchhunt (Score:4, Insightful)
The word for this is witch hunt. A simple correlation is enough.
Just as merely being unusual marked a person as a witch when a plague broke out, posting unusual comments in social media, right before or after a terrorist incident, now marks you as a terrorist.
Re: McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that at its best, Stasi had to employ massive amount of people and it still couldn't only keep an eye on about every seventh citizen and some key people abroad. That's it.
US already keeps an eye on every single one of its citizens, and most of the people around the globe, with additional more rigorous checks done against those it puts on various "watch lists".
Between the dragnet surveillance, extraordinary rendition, targeted killing campaigns, "advanced interrogation techniques" and highest incarceration rate in the world, Eastern Germans were like little inexperienced trainees in comparison to US when it comes to surveillance and control of its population.
Re:Actually, (Score:4, Insightful)
At this point, I think many are overlooking one important part of the whole dragnet surveillance.
They have compromising material on EVERYONE. The amount of surveillance they ensures it. That means it doesn't matter which politician gets into position of importance and power, because they have blackmail material on him/her. There's no such thing as a human being who's interested in power who doesn't have significant skeletons in his/her closet.
That's why it's pointless to point fingers at leaders at this point. They are part of the problem, but most definitely not the source of it, and haven't been for a while.