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.
DHS hasn't learned from Star Trek's "Nomad" (Score:3, Interesting)
In "The Changeling", the probe "Nomad" seeks to sterilize anything that is "imperfect" -- and of course, everything is imperfect to Nomad.
So essentially, *everyone* is a terrorist, and everyone is duty-bound to report their neighbors. Until everyone is watching everyone and we're all ready to shoot our neighbors to maintain the peace.
Those Aliens are coming to Mulberry street alright.
And I got to reference two 1960's TV shows that warned us of this very event, and we're too dumb to listen. Amurica f*ck Yeah!
Suspecion is acceptable for some things (Score:2, Interesting)
Its okay to say someone is a "suspected terrorist" with no hard evidence in the same way the police can suspect you of murder even though they can't really prove it yet. Suspicion doesn't mean you get hit with hellfire missiles from a drone of course. That should require proof especially if they're americans.
That said, if you're walking around in a war zone talking to terrorists... I wouldn't blame the pentagon for lighting you up at a certain point. If you're going to go to those places, at least tell someone first so you don't get people's imaginations running wild.
We have to keep in mind this is war. If you went to Nazi Germany and started hanging around with Nazi leaders and military personnel I'm not going to feel bad if you got killed one afternoon by a B-17 carpet bombing the area. Its war.
Kindly don't associate with the enemy until hostilities have concluded or at least signal to both sides that you're a non-combatant and those that care will try to avoid taking you in the cross fire. Short of that... via con dios.
Actually, (Score:4, Interesting)
McCarthy was not spying on all Americans, tapping all their phones, reading all their mail, groping them at the airport, sifting through their medical records (after forcing those records to be electronic and part of a national system) and so on.
Furthermore, McCarthy was onto a real problem before he went way overboard (I hate being in a position that looks like I am defending him, which I am NOT). There actually were a few commies in the government (as we learned decades later after the collapse of the soviet union and the opening of the archives) and there actually were a few commies in Hollywood having secret meetings (though they were more like social gatherings and the form of communism was more of an innocent idealism about "some other way" borne from the great depression). There also really were spies in the US transferring military (particularly nuclear) tech to the Soviet Union, which really was an actual national security matter. A drunken, bloated, publicity-hungry man with no sense of self-restraint and common sense was not the best person to dig into these issues.
In the current situation, 99% of the population is easily identifiable as being NO threat at all... the people trying to harm us are all Muslim extremists and the vast majority are from outside the US. Oh, and SOMEBODY always injects Tim McVeigh in here as a "domestic terrorism" counter-point - it's not. He was a vile criminal who attacked a specific Federal Building associated with the Waco raid, NOT a terrorist randomly attacking civilians.... very bad and deadly, BUT a very different matter requiring a response not connected to the "war on terror" (lumping McVeigh in with Muslim extremists is precisely the sort of thing that wrongly enables the feds to pretend their universal spying is necessary). If the goal is to stop terror attacks (rather than eliminate all crime, which is an impossible goal) there's simply no reason to spy on any American atheist, Jew, Christian, Buddist, Hindu, Seikh, etc and very little reason to give even a second look at any Muslim who's not forcing his wife and daughters into personal body tents, not trying to slice-and-sice his daughter's "naughty bits", not trying to send his daughters "home" to the middle-east for arranged marriages, and not trying to cut-off the hand of a guy at the local mosque (as happened in Philly recently)... in other words: there's even a difference between "moderate" Muslims and the crazy evil bloodthirsty whackjob Muslims who we need to be spying on intensely. Groping little children of non-muslims, and elderly nuns at the airport is NOT security - it's "security theater". Snooping on a bunch of young guys who play Halo because your phone taps caprtured the word "explode" is just plain idiotic.
We currently have, in Barack Millhouse Hussein McCarthy a man who is completely out of control. His political opponents have found themselves being probed by the IRS, the ATF, the FBI, and the EPA, while he has declared that he has the right to single-handedly re-write the clear text of laws and choose to not enforce laws he does not like. He has taken programs originally designed to snoop on people outside the US (normal spying activity done by all nations) but expanded post-9-11 to also snoop on people within the US wo were in contact with outsiders who were possible threats (Constitutionally-dubious, but an understandable temporary reaction to thousands of dead bodies) and transformed it into a permanent program of spying on EVERYBODY at all times. When you unite universal comprehensive spying with using government agencies to hassle political opponents and a disregard for any inconvenient law you have totalitarianism. If people were looking at this clearly, they would be FREAKING OUT right now (Imagine if a "President Cheney" was doing it and the people in the cross-hairs were progressives...) but since Obama is supported by all but one of the news media outlets, most Amercians are being spoonfed a supportive view of some of this and not told about the r
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
These days, you don't even have to be a dirty commie, or Chinese, or both, to be Anti-American; the Commander-in-Chief hisself is one.
How does the current POTUS fair ... (Score:5, Interesting)
These days, you don't even have to be a dirty commie, or Chinese, or both, to be Anti-American; the Commander-in-Chief hisself is one
I can't help but wonder if Obama's own dossier is to go through the same expanded terrorist watchlist system would Obama be labeled as one of the terrorists?
Especially when neither "concrete facts" nor "irrefutable evidence" is required
Re:Terrorist is an impossible label (Score:5, Interesting)
I've read many articles already that suggests that there is a purge that is happening within the ranks of the military already. Over 200 top brass have been forced out over the past 5 years for various reasons. http://www.washingtontimes.com... [washingtontimes.com]
Combine that with the rumored questionnaire that surfaced at "29 Palms" training facility around 1995, and has made a comback in headlines, of the military personnel being asking questions like "would you fire on American citizens", and posing circumstances like "if guns were outlawed, and civilians were ordered to turn them in, would you aid in forceful confiscation of [aka shooting at] those who refused to voluntarily turn them in?"
I know many people pass this stuff off as 'tin foil hat' territory, but in today's political climate, with mass surveillance, government lying to us on a daily basis, half of the bill of rights being eroded down to mean nothing... I don't think it's out of the realm of plausible. I might have a 'tin foil' hat on, but if you think this is even remotely possible, then you would have to have your head in the sand.
Re:How does the current POTUS fair ... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a Stanley Kubrick kind of question and I can picture something of a Kubrickian rendition of an answer...
Kubrick? I'm thinking this is more of a David Lynch work, presuming we're constraining ourselves to use film analogies. Otherwise, this is effectively the definition of Kafkaesque [merriam-webster.com].
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:4, Interesting)
American politicians keep saying "they hate our freedom". No, we hate your war on freedom, and your utter contempt for it. You have become worse than the monster you were trying to defend against.
I do sometimes wonder if they know they are the bad guys, or if they have yet to come to that realization.