Reporting by The Intercept reveals that individuals placed on government “watchlist” based on “reasonable suspicion”<\/p>\n
Lauren McCauley<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cA source within the intelligence community\u201d has\u00a0leaked<\/a>\u00a0the government\u2019s secret guidebook to how it adds names to and manages its controversial terrorist \u201cwatchlist\u201d and was\u00a0published in full\u00a0<\/a>by\u00a0The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Reported\u00a0<\/a>by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, the\u00a0166-page document<\/a>\u00a0(pdf) issued by the National Counterterrorism Center\u2013and titled \u201cMarch 2013 Watchlisting Guidance<\/a>\u201d\u2013details the most up-to-date government rules for placing individuals on their main terrorism database, as well as the no-fly list and selectee list. It was developed by representatives from the nation’s top military and intelligence bodies including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI.<\/p>\n According to the report, in 2013 the Obama administration \u201cquietly approved a substantial expansion\u201d of the watchlist system, \u201cauthorizing a secret process that requires neither \u2018concrete facts\u2019 nor \u2018irrefutable evidence\u2019 to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist.\u201d It was developed behind closed doors by representatives of the nation\u2019s intelligence, military, and law-enforcement establishment, including the Pentagon, CIA, NSA, and FBI.<\/p>\n Scahill and Devereaux report that the guidelines permit \u201cthe elastic concept of ‘reasonable suspicion’ as a standard for determining whether someone is a possible threat.\u201d<\/p>\n They continue:<\/p>\n The document\u2019s definition of \u201cterrorist\u201d activity includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking, the guidelines also define destruction of government property and damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is \u201cdangerous\u201d to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation.<\/p>\n This combination\u2013a broad definition of what constitutes terrorism and a low threshold for designating someone a terrorist\u2013opens the way to ensnaring innocent people in secret government dragnets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Moreover, the government tracks both \u201cknown terrorists\u201d and \u201csuspected terrorists,\u201d allowing individuals to be placed on the list even if they are suspected of associating with potential terrorists.<\/p>\n \u201cInstead of a watchlist limited to actual, known terrorists, the government has built a vast system based on the unproven and flawed premise that it can predict if a person will commit a terrorist act in the future,\u201d says Hina Shamsi, the head of the ACLU\u2019s National Security Project. \u201cOn that dangerous theory, the government is secretly blacklisting people as suspected terrorists and giving them the impossible task of proving themselves innocent of a threat they haven\u2019t carried out.\u201d<\/p>\n The report further reveals the Catch-22 of being placed on the list based on the vague premise of \u201creasonable suspicion.\u201d<\/p>\n “The difficulty of getting off the list is highlighted by a passage in the guidelines stating that an individual can be kept on the watchlist, or even placed onto the watchlist, despite being acquitted of a terrorism-related crime,” Scahill and Devereaux report. “The rulebook justifies this by noting that conviction in U.S. courts requires evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, whereas watchlisting requires only a reasonable suspicion. Once suspicion is raised, even a jury\u2019s verdict cannot erase it.”<\/p>\n One of the more notable details revealed in the report is the ability to elevate an entire category of people from the watchlist to the no-fly or selectee list, also known as a \u201cthreat-based expedited upgrade,\u201d when there is a \u201cparticular threat stream\u201d that indicates that a certain category of individual \u201cmay commit a terrorist act.\u201d According to the report, the Guidelines do not reveal what categories of people have thus far been elevated in this manner.<\/p>\n Since 9\/11, the number of individuals listed on the government\u2019s no-fly list grew from just 16 to tens of thousands. In a\u00a0recent\u00a0<\/a>court filing, the government revealed that there were 468,749 nominations for \u201cknown or suspected terrorists\u201d in 2013 alone. Of those nominees, only 4,915\u2013a mere one percent\u2013were rejected.<\/p>\n This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reporting by The Intercept reveals that individuals placed on government “watchlist” based on “reasonable suspicion” Lauren McCauley \u201cA source within the intelligence community\u201d has\u00a0leaked\u00a0the government\u2019s secret guidebook to how it adds names to and manages its controversial terrorist \u201cwatchlist\u201d and was\u00a0published in full\u00a0by\u00a0The Intercept\u00a0on Wednesday. Reported\u00a0by Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, the\u00a0166-page document\u00a0(pdf) issued by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":132814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614],"tags":[688,689],"class_list":{"0":"post-132813","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother","9":"tag-leaks","10":"tag-watchlist"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}