As concerns about terror rises here in the United States, new shortcomings within in our prevention methods are coming under intense scrutiny. The Daily Sheeple has now published a report that undermines the effectiveness of our terror watchlist program:
The US had 875,000 people in its terrorist watchlist system as of December 2012. Those secretly blacklisted have no real path to challenge their status, states a new report, thus indefinitely restricting those listed from travel or simply getting a job.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans and foreigners languish in the watchlist system, considered “known or suspected terrorists”based on secret rules and evidence that are basically impenetrable should the average suspect attempt to contest them, says a new report by the ACLU that highlights these challenges.
The US terrorist watch list system, which is shared with state and local law enforcement agencies, can stifle overseas travel, the ability to obtain a US visa or entry into the US, and can lead to invasive screenings or detentions by authorities at airports and the like. This is not to mention the social pressure of being considered a terror suspect by the US, which can lead to a host of problems ranging from separation from family to ostracization from a community or place of employment, for example.
Despite the endless effects that can stem from being placed in the watchlist system, the US has not taken proper care to avoid the basic fairness principle of innocent until proven guilty, according to the ACLU.
“It has placed individuals on watchlists, and left them there for years, as a result of blatant errors,”the ACLU says of the bureaucratic punitiveness of the system. “It has expanded its master terrorist watchlist to include as many as a million names, based on information that is often stale, poorly reviewed, or of questionable reliability. It has adopted a standard for inclusion on the master watchlist that gives agencies and analysts near-unfettered discretion. And it has refused to disclose the standards by which it places individuals on other watchlists, such as the No Fly List.”
While preventing terror is perhaps our number one priority as a nation, the prevention of rights from innocent citizens should not, and can not be a consequence of the fight being led by an incompetent government.
Source: The Daily Sheeple
