government provides for those who have been wrongly or mistakenly included on a watchlist are wholly inadequate. And it has refused to disclose the standards by which it places individuals on other watchlists, such as the No Fly List.Ĭompounding this unfairness is the fact that the “redress” procedures the U.S. It has adopted a standard for inclusion on the master watchlist that gives agencies and analysts near-unfettered discretion. It has expanded its master terrorist watchlist to include as many as a million names, based on information that is often stale, poorly reviewed, or of questionable reliability. It has placed individuals on watchlists, and left them there for years, as a result of blatant errors. Yet the government fails these basic tests of fairness. Given the gravity of these consequences, it is vital that if the government blacklists people, the standards it uses are appropriately narrow, the information it relies on is accurate and credible, and the manner in which watchlists are used is consistent with the presumption of innocence and the right to a hearing before punishment-legal principles older than our nation itself.
Watchlisting can prevent disabled military veterans from obtaining needed benefits, separate family members for months or years, ruin employment prospects, and isolate an individual from friends and associates. or foreign authorities-to say nothing of shame, fear, uncertainty, and denigration as a terrorism suspect. visa or permission to enter to the United States and detention and questioning by U.S. government watchlist can mean an inability to travel by air or sea invasive screening at airports denial of a U.S. The watchlists in this system are shared widely within the federal government, with state and local law enforcement agencies, and even with foreign governments, heightening the negative consequences for listed individuals. government today maintains a massive watchlisting system that risks stigmatizing hundreds of thousands of people, including American citizens, as “known or suspected terrorists” based on secret standards and secret evidence, without a meaningful process to challenge error and clear their names.
0 kommentar(er)
