from Chelsea Green Publishing, via AlterNet:
Are You on the Government's 'No Fly' List?By Naomi Wolf, Chelsea Green Publishing. Posted September 13, 2007.
A new book reveals how thousands of Americans who do not fit a terrorist profile are routinely harassed and detained at the airport.The following excerpt is from Naomi Wolf's latest book, End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007) and is used by permission of the publisher. In this timely call to arms, Wolf compels us to face the way our freedoms are under assault, and that each of the ten classic steps used by dictators to close down open societies are underway in the United States today.ARBITRARILY DETAIN and RELEASE CITIZENS
The Press Department of the Foreign Ministry judged that ... I was urging the "spread of counterrevolutionary developments in the GDR." Because of the role I was clearly playing "in the ideological war of imperialist media against the GDR" I should be placed on the list ... -- Timothy Garton Ash
Protest has been lively in our nation throughout most of our history because being free means that you can't be detained arbitrarily. We have also felt free in the security of our homes, believing that the state can't break in and go through our possessions. All that is changing.
The ListIn 2002, I began to notice that almost every time I sought to board a domestic airline flight, I was called aside by the Transportation Security Administration and given a more thorough search. When this was happening on nine flights out of ten, I asked the officials about the special search. They told me that the search was due to the quadruple "S" that routinely came up on my boarding pass. There are several reasons why one might receive a quadruple "S" on one's boarding pass if one doesn't fit a terrorist profile: buying a ticket at the last minute, for instance, or paying in cash. But those circumstances didn't apply to me. I kept asking, but not getting real answers.
This stepped-up search became so routine as I traveled that companions who were flying with me began to simply say, "I'll meet you at the gate," even before we got through the security line.
On yet another preboarding search, I asked yet again. The TSA agent searching me, a young woman, said pleasantly, "You're on the list."
"The list?" I asked. "What list?" Her supervisor abruptly ended our exchange, took over from her, and then moved me on.
Indeed, the TSA Administration does keep a "list." The American citizens on the list who do not fit a terrorist profile range from journalists and academics who have criticized the White House to activists and even political leaders who have also spoken out. .....(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/rights/62407/
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