{"id":133561,"date":"2014-07-26T16:29:48","date_gmt":"2014-07-26T16:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=133561"},"modified":"2014-07-26T16:29:48","modified_gmt":"2014-07-26T16:29:48","slug":"federal-guidelines-lay-loose-criteria-terrorism-watch-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/federal-guidelines-lay-loose-criteria-terrorism-watch-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal guidelines lay out loose criteria for terrorism watch list"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Barrickman<\/em><\/p>\n

US officials have adopted procedures that allow virtually anyone to be designated a \u201csuspected\u201d or \u201cknown\u201d terrorist by intelligence agencies, subjecting them to increased monitoring.<\/p>\n

The \u201cMarch 2013 Watchlisting Guidance<\/a>,\u201d produced by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), is cryptically-worded and vague, intended to leave government officials with ample leeway to interpret guidelines designating someone a \u201cterrorist.\u201d A copy of the document was obtained by the\u00a0Intercept.<\/em><\/p>\n

One and a half million people have been placed on the terrorism watch list over the past several years, expanding rapidly under the administration of President Barack Obama. In fiscal 2013, the most recent year provided, so-called \u201cnominations\u201d to the list jumped to 468,749 from 227,932 in 2009.<\/p>\n

The analysis of the document in the\u00a0Intercept<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>article notes the destructive impact of being placed in such a database. \u201cOnce the US government secretly labels you a terrorist or terrorist suspect, other institutions tend to treat you as one. It can become difficult to get a job (or simply to stay out of jail). It can become burdensome\u2013or impossible\u2013to travel. And routine encounters with law enforcement can turn into ordeals.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NCTC document states that an individual need not be linked to terrorist actions or affiliations, but merely \u201csuspected\u201d of being so based upon \u201cthe totality of the circumstances.\u201d The document advises government officials to \u201crely upon articulable intelligence or information which, taken together with rational inferences… is known or suspected to be\u2026 related to terrorism and\/or terrorist activities.\u201d In other words, an individual may be placed on a federal watch list by just the mere suspicion that he or she may be involved or related in some way to a vaguely-defined terrorist activity now or sometime in the future.<\/p>\n

The document states, \u201cAlthough irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary, to be reasonable, suspicion should be as clear and as fully developed as circumstances permit.\u201d Likewise, in another blow to the basic right of due process, the document states that an individual\u2019s appearance on a terrorist watch list will be considered to be \u201cpresumptively valid\u201d by the NCTC, only to be challenged if officials manning the database possess \u201c[s]pecific and credible information\u201d stating otherwise.<\/p>\n

Intelligence agencies accept hearsay, or other \u201cuncorroborated\u201d forms of evidence against an individual: \u201cSingle source information, including but not limited to \u201cwalk-in\u201d, \u201cwrite-in\u201d, or postings on social media sites, however, should not automatically be discounted,\u201d it adds, going on to note, \u201cInstead, the [nominating agency] should evaluate the credibility of the source, as well as the nature and specificity of the information\u2026. assuming the information supports a [reasonable suspicion] that the individual is a [known] or [suspected terrorist] or there is another basis for watchlisting the individual.\u201d<\/p>\n

Implicitly acknowledging that these guidelines are inadequate to prevent abuse, the report adds that government intelligence officials \u201cshould incorporate processes designed to ensure that nominations are free of errors\u2026 have not come from sources known or determined to be unreliable.\u201d What is proposes to combat such practices, however, is not defined.<\/p>\n

A Government Office of Accountability (GAO) report, dated May 2012, state that though the expanded guidelines have allowed for an influx of individuals being designated as terrorists, \u201cno entity has acknowledged that it is responsible and accountable for routinely conducting government-wide assessments of how agencies are using the watchlist to make screening or vetting decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the document makes reference to the rights defined in the First Amendment, the terms which define the differences between a legally protected and unprotected act are sufficiently vague enough to include many forms of benign political expression. Among other things, someone who commits \u201c[v]iolent acts or acts dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure,\u201d that may be intended to \u201cintimidate or coerce a civilian population\u201d or \u201cinfluence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion,\u201d fits the definition of a terrorist.<\/p>\n

Taken in combination with the \u201cwalk-in\u201d clause pertaining to \u201cuncorroborated\u201d evidence, a person taking part in a protest in which property happens to be damaged would fall under the category of \u201csuspected terrorist.\u201d Similarly, a \u201cthreat-based expedited upgrade,\u201d implemented by a White House official, can elevate entire groups of people to the designation of terror suspect, allowing for the wholesale profiling of the population indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Underlining the arbitrary and unconstitutional methods that make up the \u201cwar on terror,\u201d the document asserts that individuals found innocent of any charges may still find themselves on the watchlist: \u201cAn individual who is acquitted or against whom charges are dismissed for a crime related to [terrorism] may nevertheless meet the [reasonable] standard and appropriately remain on, or be nominated to, the Terrorist Watchlist.\u201d On top of this, one cannot seek to find out if one is even on a watchlist, as the US government\u2019s \u201cgeneral policy\u201d is to \u201cneither confirm nor deny an individual\u2019s\u2026 status.\u201d<\/p>\n

The policy allowing the consolidation of hundreds of thousands of people into a national database was first implemented in 2003 under George W. Bush. The Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), operated by the FBI, oversees the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) which then collaborates with the much larger Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), the US government\u2019s central pool of information containing identities of persons both international and domestic. The network of agencies with access to the TSDB includes a vast array law enforcement and intelligence bureaus.<\/p>\n

The NCTC document was publicly released as a result of a case brought against the US government by a Virginia man who had been placed on the no-fly list and had suffered harm at the hands of FBI agents upon attempting to return to the US. In opposing the release of the federal guidelines, US Attorney General Eric Holder submitted an affidavit to the court in January, stating that \u201c[t]he Watchlisting Guidance, although unclassified, contains national security information that, if disclosed \u2026 could cause significant harm to national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Barrickman US officials have adopted procedures that allow virtually anyone to be designated a \u201csuspected\u201d or \u201cknown\u201d terrorist by intelligence agencies, subjecting them to increased monitoring. The \u201cMarch 2013 Watchlisting Guidance,\u201d produced by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), is cryptically-worded and vague, intended to leave government officials with ample leeway to interpret guidelines designating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,1614],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-133561","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-surveillance-big-brother"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133561","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=133561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}