Illustration: Joelle L / Flickr via Creative Commons |
The US government’s web of surveillance is vast and
interconnected. Now we know just how opaque, inefficient and discriminatory it
can be.
As we were reminded again just this week, you can be pulled
into the National Security Agency’s database quietly and quickly, and the
consequences can be long and enduring. Through ICREACH, a Google-style search
engine created for the intelligence community, the NSA provides data on private
communications to 23 government agencies. More than 1,000 analysts had access
to that information.
This kind of data sharing, however, isn’t limited to the
latest from Edward Snowden’s NSA files. It was confirmed earlier this month
that the FBI shares its master watchlist, the Terrorist Screening Database,
with at least 22 foreign governments, countless federal agencies, state and
local law enforcement, plus private contractors.
The watchlist tracks “known” and “suspected” terrorists and
includes both foreigners and Americans. It’s also based on loose standards and
secret evidence, which ensnares innocent people. Indeed, the standards are so
low that the US government’s guidelines specifically allow for a single,
uncorroborated source of information – including a Facebook or Twitter post –
to serve as the basis for placing you on its master watchlist.
Of the 680,000 individuals on that FBI master list, roughly
40% have “no recognized terrorist group affiliation”, according to the
Intercept. These individuals don’t even have a connection – as the government
loosely defines it – to a designated terrorist group, but they are still
branded as suspected terrorists.
The absurdities don’t end there. Take Dearborn, Michigan, a
city with a population under 100,000 that is known for its large Arab American
community – and has more watchlisted residents than any other city in America
except New York.
These eye-popping numbers are largely the result of the US
government’s use of a loose standard – so-called “reasonable suspicion” – in
determining who, exactly, can be watchlisted.
Reasonable suspicion is such a low standard because it
requires neither “concrete evidence” nor “irrefutable evidence”. Instead, an
official is permitted to consider “reasonable inferences” and “to draw from the
facts in light of his/her experience”.
Consider a real world context – actual criminal justice –
where an officer needs reasonable suspicion to stop a person in the street and
ask him or her a few questions. Courts have controversially held that avoiding
eye contact with an officer, traveling alone, and traveling late at night, for
example, all amount to reasonable suspicion.
This vague criteria is now being used to label innocent
people as terrorism suspects.
Moreover, because the watchlist isn’t limited to known,
actual terrorists, an official can watchlist a person if he has reasonable
suspicion to believe that the person is a suspected terrorist. It’s a circular
logic – individuals can be watchlisted if they are suspected of being suspected
terrorists – that is ultimately backwards, and must be changed.
The government’s self-mandated surveillance guidance also
includes loopholes that permit watchlisting without even showing reasonable
suspicion. For example, non-citizens can be watchlisted for being associated
with a watchlisted person – even if their relationship with that person is
entirely innocuous. Another catch-all exception allows non-citizens to be
watchlisted, so long as a source or tipster describes the person as an
“extremist”, a “militant”, or in similar terms, and the “context suggests a
nexus to terrorism”. The FBI’s definition of “nexus”, in turn, is far more nebulous
than they’re letting on.
Because the watchlist designation process is secret, there’s
no way of knowing just how many innocent people are added to the list due to
these absurdities and loopholes. And yet, history shows that innocent people
are inevitably added to the list and suffer life-altering consequences. Life on
the master watchlist can trigger enhanced screening at borders and airports;
being on the No Fly List, which is a subset of the larger terrorist watchlist,
can prevent airline travel altogether. The watchlist can separate family
members for months or years, isolate individuals from friends and associates,
and ruin employment prospects.
Being branded a terrorism suspect also has far-reaching
privacy implications. The watchlist is widely accessible, and government
officials routinely collect the biometric data of watchlisted individuals,
including their fingerprints and DNA strands. Law enforcement has likewise been
directed to gather any and all available evidence when encountering watchlisted
individuals, including receipts, business cards, health information and bank
statements.
Watchlisting is an awesome power, and if used, must be exercised
prudently and transparently.
The standards for inclusion should be appropriately narrow,
the evidence relied upon credible and genuine, and the redress and review
procedures consistent with basic constitutional requirements of fairness and
due process. Instead, watchlisting is being used arbitrarily under a cloud of
secrecy.
A watchlist saturated with innocent people diverts attention
from real, genuine threats. A watchlist that disproportionately targets Arab
and Muslim Americans or other minorities stigmatizes innocent people and
alienates them from law enforcement. A watchlist based on poor standards and
secret processes raises major constitutional concerns, including the right to
travel freely and not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.