The federal government shares its terrorist watchlist with more than 1,400 private entities, including hospitals and universities, AP News reports.
Civil libertarians should be very concerned. Innocent people are put on that list.
The government’s admission that it shares the list so broadly comes after years of insistence that the list is generally not shared with the private sector, according to the AP.
The government lies to us.
Gadeir Abbas, a lawyer with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has filed a constitutional challenge to the government’s use of the watchlist, called the government’s admission shocking.
CAIR is a terror-tied organization, but we share Mr. Abbas’s concerns.
“We’ve always suspected there was private-sector dissemination of the terror watchlist, but we had no idea the breadth of the dissemination would be so large,” Abbas said.
THE LIST IS A JOKE
Clearly no terrorist should be able to get a gun, however, terrorist Omar Mateen was taken off the FBI list – just to give you an idea of how inadequate the terror list is.
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One bureaucrat can put a person on a list
The Intercept exposed some changes to the Federal government’s terrorist watchlist system under Obama that allows one man to put an American on a watch list without facts.
The government can now blacklist American citizens and foreigners as possible terrorists with “neither concrete facts” or “irrefutable evidence” for up to 72 hours in the face of “credible fear” as defined by Obama. After that, other unelected bureaucrats in the Obama cabinet or their deputies can extend it.
This comes from the “2013 Watchlisting Guidelines”. We don’t know if improvements have been made, but it’s not a list that should be shared.
A person can be put on the list because the FBI is interested in them, not because the FBI has a thing on them. They might have been “swept up” by accident.
The lists are overreaching
The databases have been a problem for a long time and the watch lists have been overreaching. Ted Kennedy was on the list. Your roommate’s uncle’s cousin might be on the watch list and you could end up there because of it.
The “explosive growth” by the watch list guardians has led to the entanglement of almost 300,000 people who have “no affiliation with known terrorist groups” but who fall under “reasonable suspicion” nevertheless, National Review reports.
The list is said to be up to as much as a million people with 40% who don’t belong there.
The terror watch list is not a vetted list of bad guys
It’s a really broad list of people who might have extremely distant connections to terrorism if any at all.
Look who is on the list
The “Terrorist Watch List,” like the “No-Fly List” and other secret government blacklists, includes the names of suspects, relatives of suspects, friends of suspects, former college roommates of suspects, and more. No doubt these inclusions are useful for FBI agents and other officials as they search for terrorists and their accomplices, but they are not vetted lists of bad guys, Forbes reported.
Huff Po listed seven ways you can be put on the watch list and it could be as simple as a post on Facebook, someone could think you’re a terrorist or you could maybe know a terrorist even if you don’t know you know one. That could put you could be in a “threat” category like the Tea Party and Libertarians, or you could simply be unlucky like Ted Kennedy or the 4-year old boy in 2005 on his way to visit his grandmother.
Nelson Mandela was on the list. Fox News pundit Stephen Hayes is on the list. A 2-year old and the Ford Motor Co. were on the list.
