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: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: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.
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Question is, just how low will they set the bar?
Posted sarcastically on Slashdot = one demerit. Brother-in-law waited on a table of Americans of Arabian descent at the Steakhouse = one water-boarding.
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I believe it is current welded at "-1"
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This suggests a very fun way to fight back. We could all just start snitching on each other left and right until EVERYONE is on the list.
An alternative is to start fingering our elected representatives. I heard Wyden was having meetings with Terrorists, and I'm pretty sure I saw Merkeley come out of a mosque once... Etc....
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
We have always been at war with Eastasia!
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.
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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.
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I think this is the most missed part by the general public. There's too little focus on what is probably the biggest issue, politicians' ability to control intelligence bureaus.
Consider for a moment one of the best aspects of having functional dragnet surveillance in democratic society with need to get re-elected and at least partially functioning anti-corruption legislation. Dragnet surveillance means that you have the ability to unseat and discredit any politician at any time when you need to. You can't o
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No, they'll still nail you for associating with the wrong people. This is just how they'll nail you.
I think they took a page Object based programming. They just do:
#include
varMinority = "Jews"
For each person
{
If Person(i) = varMinority
Then
Terrorist.arrest(Person(i))
else
Terrorist.propaganda.Person(i)
}
etc...
excuse my horrible syntax. I'm not fluent in fake code.
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You should write it into a language.
Instead of Java, it would be called Jalalala!
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.
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I don't know why this is marked troll. We may not be there yet, but all it's going to take is one guy in a position of power with the will to use it the way McCarthy did. That's a pretty damn small barrier between "freedom" and "blacklists".
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: McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
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It wouldn't be at all fair to blame Obama solely for the problem. However, given that he could wipe out large chunks of this with the stroke of a pen, it's reasonable enough to grant him considerable blame. Before GOP supporters get too smug, Bush could have wiped it out with a stroke of his pen as well and didn't.
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
Actually, (Score:4, Informative)
The laws, funding, interest was always ready. This new more simple legal listing is just a new next step to gather more people onto new and existing databases.
Patriot Games
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/a... [foreignpolicy.com]
If you want to go back further you had Project MINARET http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
i.e. "watch lists" of American citizens around 1967 and 1973.
No judicial oversight, no warrants for interception and even got some UK help too
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.
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You're confused who the 'leaders' are. It certainly isn't the politicians, and it was never the people.
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If race doesn't matter, why was it neccesary to bring out his middle name? Hussein? You're assuming I meant racist against black, but frankly, we're not facing a lot of racism against those of middle eastern descent. yeah. Barack HUSSEIN! Obama!
As for the incidents of white christian shootings, have you been paying attention to the news? They don't get labeled terrorists. They get labeled fringe lone incidents... The latest was the recent couple that shot everything up and then shot themselves...
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So we don't grope britons and a guy named Richard tries to set fire to his shoe. We don't grope black people and some guy named umbawumba blows off his balls.
Let them. It will be definite improvement over typical in-flight entertainment.
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
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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...
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That's a Stanley Kubrick kind of question and I can picture something of a Kubrickian rendition of an answer...
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].
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Of course he approved it! The Democrats put a retard in office, because he would be easy to control! He obviously suffers Microcephilia, he has a head the size of a baseball! http://www.halloweenforum.com/... [halloweenforum.com] , http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... [wikimedia.org] Contrast and compare.
Re:McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:4, Informative)
Simple, it's the same people who get into a hissy fit whenever someone posts something that's contrary to their view of the world. The group think on /. is thick, and the site is screaming in decline as noticed by the lack of comments on topics and poor commenting.
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I do not think it is "groupthink". IT showed up some years ago and it has (had) US business hours. A discussion would take off reasonably, moderations were reasonably, but then, at the start of the US work-day, suddenly everything changed with postings down-modded from 5 to -1 in a short time, trollish comments, sometimes straight out of a psyops manual, and the like. They have gotten more subtle, but my guess is this is commercial, paid-for "opinion" manipulation.
Re: McCarthyism v2.0 (Score:2)
There are hundreds of thousands of government engineers and analysts who have time to surf the internet at work. It is where most of the tech activity went after manufacturing went to China. Most of them have views consistent with how they live. The vast majority of them are not being explicitly paid to astroturf.
Can I even fly any more? (Score:2)
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As long as you don't get involved in a trial against the no-fly list, you're probably OK.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/... [slashdot.org] for those who need a refresher.
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:Can I even fly any more? (Score:5, Funny)
Reworking the old Soviet "owning a western watch" joke:
Three frequent flyers in a military prison get to talking about why they are there.
"I am here because I always got to airport five minutes late, and they charged me with sneaking in", says the first.
"I am here because I kept getting to airport 2 hours early, and they charged me with spying" says the second.
"I am here because I got to airport on time," says the third, "and they charged me with owning a watch."
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Of course think of all the fun if you knew you were on the terrorist watch list. Sending properly worded private emails to all the people private or public you dislike. The higher up the list you are the greater the damage mwah ha ha. Is there a way to leak a copy, are you rated alphabetically or by threat level, we want UID scores, yeah. The all new social networking game, get yourself on the Terrorist Watch list and see how high you can raise your threat level, without actually getting arrested. Publicat
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i think all you need is a redress number from the TSA. or just get a known traveler number
This leapt out at me (Score:3)
“Instead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,”
I thought that was an exceptionally silly idea when it used in Captain America Winter Soldier. Is Armin Zola running the DHS ?
The overreach of this goal, is very worrisome. Especially when you consider that the inevitable failures will likely result in its promoters just doubling down on what they claim it needs to work.
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You need to see the movie. I highly doubt that the DHS used it as propaganda.
Tuttle (Score:5, Funny)
Finally, silly bureaucratic holdups will no longer preclude Mr. Archibald Buttle's addition to the terror list!
Clearance (Score:2)
Constitutional (Score:2)
Sounds like security clearance language. That is an odd sieve to use.
Not at all. "Reasonable suspicion" is legal language, which is why they use it in both contexts. It is the minimum amount of information that a police officer (or other federal agent) can have to stop you on the street, even if they lack a warrant, without violating the Constitution. It basically means they have to point to specific facts that under the circumstances suggest you may be up to something criminal. (They don't have to identify those facts to you when they stop you, necessarily, but they can
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spies, terrorists. it's all the same really.
it used to be that foreigners blowing up bombs in USA were spies, now they would be terrorists. except if they're part of the cartel, then that's just "crime"(and almost a hundred years ago blowing bombs in NYC was not enough to get USA choose sides in a war, haha).
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Sounds like security clearance language. That is an odd sieve to use.
actually it makes a lot of sense. Why should the govt have to go around proving that people are terrorists? Under PATRIOT 2.0, now every citizen plays a part because each of us has to prove to the govt that we are not a terrorist.
Not shocked. (Score:2)
Not shocked at all. Which is sad.
Slashdot Users (Score:2)
Soon enough (if not already), they will have "reasonable suspicion" to add all Slashdot users to the list.
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?
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Post under a pseudonym? Check
Use encryption for email? Check
Don't use Facebook? Check
Use DuckDuckGo? check
Use Tor? check
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Use DuckDuckGo? Strike.
Use startpage.com? Check!
Wheww. That was close.
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Big ol' check for one Penny.
Totally like to be the one to initiate.
I would add: high percentage of regulars who can spell TOR, sympathize with Snowden, and are familiar with the Bitcoin and Silk Road.
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Yes we are AC
Recall Quantum insert? "GCHQ Created Spoofed LinkedIn and Slashdot Sites To Serve Malware"
http://news.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po... [arstechnica.com] (Nov 11 2013)
We are of interest to some part of the intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. What one nation finds is shared with the other 5
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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!
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Sorry, it was "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street", not aliens on Mulberry... My brain is shot at this hour without coffee.... Either way, you get it, I hope! ..... screw you slashdot lameness filter.
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:Speaking of McCarthyism... (Score:4, Insightful)
the quicker we will have those Congressional Hearings
Unless, of course, you don't.
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What Congressional hearings? We've already had the whole NSA thing blow up, and half of Congress was frothing at the mouth at any suggestion of legislative action to restrict the surveillance, because "we need it for teh terrorists!".
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.
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The government is chosen by and working for the rich and wealthy. That is how many
permille of the entire population?
That means the great 99 point umpty is being screwed, for taxes, for wars, for bailouts,
for coprorate subsidies, for tax breaks for the rich, you name it.
Everybody knows this.
Who is the greatest threat to that shameless paradise for the wealthy?
That grand mass of the population. The country's own population. Nothing to do with
terror, nothing to do with foreigners. When the motto is
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.
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Are you sure you know what the word terrorist means? The 1% likely can just buy their politicians and political favors- they wouldn't need to resort to terrorism. And no, being a greedy douche or a stingy bastard does not make someone a terrorist.
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I've lived here a lot longer than that and to date have not. I've experienced corrupt cops, greedy bosses, incompetent politicians, but never this 1% terrorism.
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terror can be defined as 'control by fear'.
you don't agree that the rich control us and help keep us in fear? they fund the politicians who do the direct fear-creation, to us. they fund the media who echo this sentiment and drill it into us, over and over.
The Power of a single Word (Score:2)
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Indeed. Concentration camps soon to follow. Oh, wait...
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The 1% are just playing the game that US politicians were happy to sell to them. I can't fault them for their scummy behaviour. I can't hate them for taking advantage of a system that is broken.
Your elected officials are supposed to be standing up for the citizens, not selling out their office - and their country - to the lobbyists that basically seem to control the fate.
The really sad part is everyone feels stuck in this two party system, this horrible false dichotomy that has been carefully manoeuvred by
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You are doing this wrong. This is not about friends of the government that may have done the one or other evil thing. It is about all the people the government does not like.
Who watches the Watchers? (Score:3)
This is the most blatant disregard for constitutionally protected rights I've ever seen. I'll make sure I carry copies of "Catcher In He Rye" and "Anarchists Cookbook" wherever I travel. I'm surprised that this has been allowed to continue but it's utter nonsense and just the first fucking page of the document shows how fucked we are with all these shields representing stakeholders into the system. I especially like the part where one person in the White House can immediately include a group or individual on the terrorist watch list as they see fit. Have any political enemies? They're on the list.
Say what? (Score:3)
'science'?
Re:Say what? (Score:4, Insightful)
"As the rulebook notes, "witch hunting is not an exact science."
FTFY.
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 some
How do I get on this list? (Score:2)
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?
Irony is so thick here... (Score:3, Informative)
On the page 48 of this document [firstlook.org]
EXAMPLES OF TERRORISM AND/OR TERRORIST ACTIVITIES
3.18.1 destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities ..... ... ...
3.18.13 damaging a protected computer used in interstate or foreign commerce or that is used exclusively by a financial institution or the United States Government
3.18.18 damage to Government property
3.18.19 destruction of communication lines, stations, or systems
Well, AFAIC under these definitions the IRS are terrorists.
3.18.29 the use of weapons of mass destruction
3.18.34 harboring TERRORISTS
3.18.35 providing material support to TERRORISTS
3.18.36 providing material support to terrorist organizations
3.18.37 financing TERRORISM
3.18.38 receiving military-type training from a FTO
3.18.39 torture
3.18.40 developing, transfering, possessing, or threatening to use atomic weapons
3.18.46 manufacturing, distributing, or possessing controlled substances intending to provide anything of pecuniary value to a FTO, member, or group
Under these definition USA government is a terrorist organization.
Peasants revolt (Score:2)
Thoughts of a free man:
"Execuitive branch"?
State, Treasury, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Defense, Health and Human Services, ...Agricultural terrorist? Actually that makes sense with all the amfo they have. They probably have more of it than some states have in TNT equivalent nuclear arms.
Housing and Urban Development,
Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security
On a completely unrelated note, farmers need drones, don't they? Big ones, for dusting crops, herding
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
that's an immigration thing. we're talking about terrorism here.
Really?
Prove it.
Yes, tell me again how you have direct access to the National Counterterrorism Center database and can confirm that the list doesn't include 1.5 million people. Including everyone who has poured over our borders (as if we wouldn't have a reason to suspect them), along with natural-born US citizens who talk about things like "Rights" and "Constitution". Those aren't history references anymore, they are direct threats.
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).
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You are naive. There are maybe something like 20-30 active terrorists in the world. They could not be a threat to the US if they tried really hard. This is about mechanisms to mark "undesirables" and make their life miserable in order to keep all the sheep in line.
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"You can't be a terrorist unless you've actually done something terrorizing, so what the authorities have to do is predict, based on association, what you're going to do".
Which is merely an extension to US citizens of US government policy for at least the past 20 years: the One Percent Doctrine. As enunciated by Dick Cheney, it ran as follows: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response
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What was the quote from the Vietnam war era? "In order to save the village we had to destroy it"... something along those lines anyway. Except this time round the "village" is the "freedom" that so many claim to champion.
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It is the logic of totalitarianism and it has nothing to do with "protecting Americans" (not that that is somehow inherently more desirable than, say, protecting Europeans). It has everything to do with creating and maintaining a vast, diffuse threat from "the outside" to keep the population quiet and in fear and behind their leaders. This is a very old tactics, perfected in the 3rd Reich. The Nazis also documented this approach well, and what has been going on in the US for more than a decade now is straig
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It's plausible, but not guaranteed. Another quite plausible scenario has the US collapsing economicly and everyone who can bailing out. There are other plausible scenarios.
OTOH, it does seem like most of the US govt. should be put in a home for the bewildered.
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.
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True enough. But it's hardly a "nanny state" they are aiming for. More like a gradual, unobtrusive return to something as close to slavery as they can procure.
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"This led to a situation where the only way the parties could get more voters was to compete for those ideologically between them leading to a race to the middle".
I think it's more that most active voters have come to believe that no candidate or party can be credible or viable unless it spends billions on PR.
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You sure about that? Last I heard that line was nothing but a Thad Cochran get out the vote lie. Do you have a creditable source?
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By reducing the powers of the government, you create a power vacuum
So getting rid of the TSA, the NSA's mass surveillance, stop-and-frisk, and other unconstitutional powers is fascist because it'll create a power vacuum, merely because it reduces the government's power? The fact is, the government has many powers now that it should not have. Those need to be gotten rid of. The unconstitutional ones, for starters.
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Since your parent poster is probably a European where liberal means something different.
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...
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See people, this is why we need civics in schools again
I definitely agree that we need civics, but most schools already have it, as far as I know; like everything else, it's just taught very, very poorly. Our education system is abysmal (focusing on rote memorization, teaching to the test, propaganda, and being a one-size-fits-all 'solution'), and it only works in favor of the government.
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and things ultimately got fixed.
As long as a no-fly list exists in any way, shape, or form, nothing has been fixed. The government should have to take these people to court, not deny them the ability to fly without due process; that's just unconstitutional.