Let's Do Away With the Terrorist Watch List

Based on materials derived from Alternet.org

Do you know how someone winds up on the "terrorist watch list" or on the TSA "No Fly List"? Of course you don't, and almost no one else knows how either. There are now about 1 million names on the watch list, and there are virtually no clear criteria for being placed there. Among the hardened terrorists found on the government watch list? Nelson Mandela, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Georgia Democratic Rep. John Lewis, countless civilians (with the misfortune to be named Gary Smith, John Williams or Robert Johnson), and numerous dead people.

There is also a law afoot which would deny anyone on the list the ability to purchase a firearm. And what is the quality of the intelligence that leads to list inclusion. Well, it's not good. Here's an example of what was discovered. With Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, 60 Minutes spent months going over the names on the No Fly List. While it is classified as sensitive, even members of Congress have been denied access to it. But that may have less to do with national security than avoiding embarrassment.Asked what the quality is of the information that the TSA gets from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI, Trento says, "Well, you know about our intelligence before we went to war in Iraq. You know what that was like. Not too good."... 60 Minutes certainly didn't expect to find the names of 14 of the 19 9/11 hijackers on the list, since they have been dead for five years. 60 Minutes also found a number of high-profile people who aren't likely to turn up at an airline ticket counter any time soon, like convicted terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, now serving a life sentence in Colorado, and Saddam Hussein, who, at the time, was on trial for his life in Baghdad.

The list has become an embarrassment and a civil rights disaster. It's inaccurate, arbirtary and it violates the principle that before people are punished and denied rights (such as the right to fly and own a firearm), there ought to be an establishment of probably cause done judicially, in public. These are founding principles of American political and civil life. Denying them now is merely part of a pattern of disolving the Constitution, and turning the United States into something in never intended to be--a police state.