875,000 names on the 'watch list'

[Ichingcarpenter]

The U.S. government's “massive” watchlist database risks stigmatizing hundreds of thousands of people as known or suspected terrorists – including some its own citizens, a leading civil liberties group has warned.

Around 875,000 names are believed to be on the list, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said. Many are included "based on information that is often stale, poorly reviewed, or of questionable reliability," it added in a report published Friday. Moreover people are being put onto the watch list based on secret evidence and secret standards, with no meaningful process to challenge mistakes, the ACLU warned.

The consolidated Terrorist Watchlist was created in 2003, in part a response to the 9/11 attacks. It provides for a single database of identifying information on individuals suspected by the US to be potentially involved in terrorist activity.

The U.S. government has said the database is “one of the most effective counterterrorism tools for the U.S. government." But the report highlights the negative consequences for anyone finding themselves on the list. It states that traveling by air or sea can become more difficult – and individuals on the list are often subjected to invasive screening, denial of visas, detention and questioning.

Redress procedures for those who have been wrongly or mistakenly included on the list are inadequate, the ACLU said, and can result in innocent people languishing on the list without any real way to challenge their status, according to the ACLU.

What's more, the lists are "shared widely within the federal government, with state and local law enforcement agencies, and even with foreign governments," the ACLU said in a press release.


http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/15/aclu-us-terror-watchlistrisksstigmatizinginnocentamericancitizen.html





Of course no metadata was used to decide who was on the watchlist

[Rex]

1. Don't worry, some government fan will be along to tell you that you are wrong

and that the NSA is harmless. So go ahead and start feeling better now...that way you don't have to wait!

[bigwillq]

7. How is anyone a fan of government?

Our government is screwing us all over.

If one doesn't believe that, THEIR HEAD IS SO FAR BURIED UNDER THE SAND.

[hfojvt]

27. "Government isn't the solution to the problem.

Government IS the problem." Ronald Reagan

"The scariest words in the English language 'I am from the government and I am here to help.'" Ronald Reagan

I use that last line a lot, since I work for the city government.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. It would be very interesting to see the names on that list.

Of course, the list is kept secret for our own security....or something.

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. Lord Acton

[Ichingcarpenter]

3. And remember,

where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

Lord Acton

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. History has proven that. - Over, and over, and over. We are always urged to trust our "leaders".

The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same. Marie Beyle (Stendahl)

[bvar22]

5. This is a shameless outrage,

...brought to you by our ever-expanding Surveillance/Security State,
but don't worry!
Big Brother LOVES you,
and only wants what is best for YOU!

Besides, if you have nothing to hide, my dear,
you have nothing to fear.
Trust Me.
Would General Clapper LIE to you?

[1000words]

6. You know who loves lists?

Fascists.

[jsr]

9. No Shit.

[Progressive dog]

11. Statisticians

[awoke_in_2003]

21. And Santa Claus. nt

[Dr Hobbitstein]

8. 875,000 people...

If that were ONLY American citizens, that would be about 0.27% of the population. That's not a very high number, statistically speaking.

[MNBrewer]

13. Statistically speaking? Using what statistic??

[Dr Hobbitstein]

15. Mathmatically speaking?

Would that be more appropriate?

[JoePhilly]

26. Percentages.

Percentages are considered to be "descriptive" statistics.

[MNBrewer]

30. 0.27% of the population

It might be descriptive, but it's certainly not meaningful.

Not a very high percentage? If we're talking about people who poop at least once a day it's pretty low.

However, this is a list of people who are considered possible terrorists, isn't it?

0.27% on a "watch list" seems fairly high to me. That's 27 in 10,000 people on the watch list. That means that about 1,000 people from my home in Minneapolis are on this watch list, if not more.

My guess is that way WAY fewer than 1000 people in Minneapolis have a terroristic viewpoint, although there are some who do, e.g., the Somali men who head off to fight with al-Shebab.

[JoePhilly]

31. You asked which statistics.

I told you which statistic was being used.

A percentage, is a statistic.

As for whether its a meaningful statistic, clearly, just based on your reaction, it is.

And I wonder how many right wing whack jobs live in Minneapolis. I wouldn't be surprised to find that a city that size had 1,000 such nuts in it. There's been an increase in right wing hate groups in recent years.

As luck would have it, there is an article on such groups out today.
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/08

[MNBrewer]

32. Right wing nutjobs probably aren't listed, but I agree with your pointing out their danger.

[yuiyoshida]

14. Thats more than AN NFL stadium can hold...

85,000 seats. FED EX stadium is the largest.


edited to note:
The Great Strahov Stadium (Czech: Velký strahovský stadion) is a stadium in the Strahov district of Prague, Czech Republic. With a capacity of around 250,000, it is the largest stadium in the world, and the second largest sports facility worldwide after the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

[functioning_cog]

23. That's an odd comparison. That number is also less than

0.3% of US population.

[functioning_cog]

24. Exactly. Less than people out of every 1000.

So it's not like this is overwhelming our freedoms.

[progressoid]

12. Makes me feel safe!

There shure are lotsa terrists out there!!11

[Ghost Dog]

16. Anything about this ACLU report in your MSM?

... There is a lengthy article here, from yesterday, as well as at aljazeera as quoted in the OP...

[treestar]

17. What are they to do then?

Are there any suggestions for making a better watch list? Or are we to do without that?

[Octafish]

18. Now why would they do that?

The Last Gasp of American Democracy

By Chris Hedges
TruthDig.org, Posted on Jan 5, 2014

EXCERPT...

The most radical evil, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, is the political system that effectively crushes its marginalized and harassed opponents and, through fear and the obliteration of privacy, incapacitates everyone else. Our system of mass surveillance is the machine by which this radical evil will be activated. If we do not immediately dismantle the security and surveillance apparatus, there will be no investigative journalism or judicial oversight to address abuse of power. There will be no organized dissent. There will be no independent thought. Criticisms, however tepid, will be treated as acts of subversion. And the security apparatus will blanket the body politic like black mold until even the banal and ridiculous become concerns of national security.

I saw evil of this kind as a reporter in the Stasi state of East Germany. I was followed by men, invariably with crew cuts and wearing leather jackets, whom I presumed to be agents of the Stasi—the Ministry for State Security, which the ruling Communist Party described as the “shield and sword” of the nation. People I interviewed were visited by Stasi agents soon after I left their homes. My phone was bugged. Some of those I worked with were pressured to become informants. Fear hung like icicles over every conversation.

The Stasi did not set up massive death camps and gulags. It did not have to. The Stasi, with a network of as many as 2 million informants in a country of 17 million, was everywhere. There were 102,000 secret police officers employed full time to monitor the population—one for every 166 East Germans. The Nazis broke bones; the Stasi broke souls. The East German government pioneered the psychological deconstruction that torturers and interrogators in America’s black sites, and within our prison system, have honed to a gruesome perfection.

[font color="green"]The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant. [/font green]

The object of efficient totalitarian states, as George Orwell understood, is to create a climate in which people do not think of rebelling, a climate in which government killing and torture are used against only a handful of unmanageable renegades. The totalitarian state achieves this control, Arendt wrote, by systematically crushing human spontaneity, and by extension human freedom. It ceaselessly peddles fear to keep a population traumatized and immobilized. It turns the courts, along with legislative bodies, into mechanisms to legalize the crimes of state.

CONTINUED...

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

[DeSwiss]

19. K&R

"Every nation gets the government it deserves." ~Joseph de Maistre

[JEB]

20. That list should be leaked.

Isn't anybody watching the watchers?

[functioning_cog]

22. So less than 0.3% of US population

[Octafish]

25. Halliburton has homes away from home waitin'...

KBR, the engineering and construction subsidiary of Halliburton Co. /quotes/zigman/228631/quotes/nls/hal HAL -.00% , said Tuesday it has been awarded a contingency contract from the Department of Homeland Security to supports its Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in the event of an emergency. The maximum total value of the contract is $385 million and consists of a 1-year base period with four 1-year options. KBR held the previous ICE contract from 2000 through 2005. The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to expand existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs, KBR said. The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster, the company said.

CONTINUED...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/kbr-awarded-homeland-security-contract-worth-up-to-385m

[woo me with science]

28. Secret lists, secret laws, secret courts,

secret government.

Anyone who tries to tell you this is acceptable is not working on your behalf.

[bobthedrummer]

29. Dana Priest & William Arkin's Top Secret America was published in 2011, they cited higher figures

and all this was before the release of some of the Snowden data which we know exponentially ups all these "lists", some of which I'm been on since the early to mid-60's when a minor.

Fwiw, they last a lifetime and include extended family and social networks. Be that as it may here are but a few of the latest "threats" which now are covered by the so called "cyber threat" shield.

US military (Wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command

FBI
Guardian Threat Tracking System (SourceWatch)
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Guardian_Threat_Tracking_System

FBI launches cyber threat info-sharing platform (Amber Corrin 7-30-13 FCW)
http://www.fcw.com/articles/2013/07/30/fbi-information-sharing.aspx

The absolutely worst lists to be on are those of the private sector contractors, groups and individuals imo and experience. It literally is open season with them, forever.

[woo me with science]

33. K&R