No Fly List and Limits on our Freedom

Dear Friends,

A few days ago The New York Times ran an article illustrating the terrible problems that are caused by the No Fly List, entitled "Ensnared by Error on Growing U.S. Watch List" by Mike McIntire. (here)  It is well worth reading in its entirety. The basic facts of the story are:

Rahinah Ibrahim, a Stanford University doctoral student, arrived at San Francisco International Airport with her 14-year-old daughter for a 9 a.m. flight home to Malaysia. She asked for a wheelchair, having recently had a hysterectomy.
Instead, when a ticket agent found her name on the no-fly list, Ms. Ibrahim was handcuffed, searched and jailed amid a flurry of phone calls involving the local police, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security. Two hours after her flight left, Ms. Ibrahim was released without explanation. She flew to Malaysia the next day. 
But when she tried to return to the United States, she discovered that her visa had been revoked. And when she complained that she did not belong on a terrorist watch list, the government’s response came a year later in a form letter saying only that her case had been reviewed and that any changes warranted had been made.

The article goes on to report:

“The entire federal government is leaning very far forward on putting people on lists,” Russell E. Travers, a deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said at a recent Senate hearing. Before the attempted attack on Christmas, Mr. Travers said, “I never had anybody tell me that the list was too small.”
Now, he added, “It’s getting bigger, and it will get even bigger.”

The list is secret, who is on the list is secret, how you get on the list is secret, how you get off the list is secret.  The Obama Administration continues to claim that everything is secret for national security reasons and continues to oppose law suits to obtain justice for innocent people who are being hurt by this abridgment of their freedoms.  So much for openness in government. Fortunately, some of the lawsuits like the one brought by Rahinah Ibrahim are actually progressing through the courts and shedding light on some of the mystery.  The article reports about the reinstatement of her case against the F.B.I.'s Terrorist Screening Center by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals:

“If your name or my name or anybody’s name in this courtroom were put on that list, we would suffer grievously,” the chief judge, Alex Kozinski, said at a hearing in April 2008. “And we want to have some way of going to our government and possibly to our courts and saying, ‘Look, I shouldn’t be on that list.’ ”
Another issue raised by Ms. Ibrahim’s case is whether inclusion on the no-fly list is sufficient grounds for arrest. At a hearing last December, government lawyers agreed that it was not, although the courts generally allow brief detentions for investigative purposes.
The police, as part of their defense, offered to explain why they detained Ms. Ibrahim, but the F.B.I. and Department of Homeland Security refuse to allow it.

The details of this story are so amazing that they are hard to believe.  If being on the no-fly list is insufficient legal grounds for arrest why did this happen and why are we using contractors:

When the airport ticket agent discovered her name on the no-fly list, he called the San Francisco police, who contacted the Transportation Security Administration in Washington. There, they reached a watch officer working for U.S. Investigations Services, one of several private contractors the agency has hired for its 24-hour operations center.
The contractors’ duties “include receiving telephone inquiries and providing direction as to how to handle passengers,” said Kristin Lee, an agency spokeswoman.
The police incident report says the watch officer told the police to “deny the flight to Ibrahim, contact the F.B.I. and detain her for further questioning.” She was driven to a police substation, where she was searched and placed in a holding cell. Eventually, an F.B.I. agent told the police to let her go, adding that she was being moved to the selectee list and could fly home.

There is no happy ending to this story.  Here is the end of the article:

Meanwhile, Ms. Ibrahim earned her doctorate from Stanford but has been unable to return to the United States to participate in the lawsuit. Her lawyers said in a court filing that when she applied for a new visa last September, American Embassy officials in Kuala Lumpur questioned her about the suit, asking what it would take to settle it.
Last month, Ms. Ibrahim accepted a $225,000 settlement from the San Francisco police and U.S. Investigations Services. But she is pursuing her claims against the federal government. None of the defendants’ lawyers would comment for this article.
At the December hearing, Judge Alsup showed his displeasure at the government, telling Justice Department lawyers that they were abusing the secrecy privilege.
“You’re holding onto this five-year-old information like, you know, like another 9/11 is going to happen if you somehow release it,” the judge said, according to a transcript. “That’s just baloney.”

In case you want another story with no happy ending related to the no-fly lists watch this video:




If you want to see the ALCU's answers to frequently asked questions about no-fly lists, go here.

The Obama Administration talks about open government and bringing needed change to many of the Bush Administration policy, but it seems to act just like the Bush Administration when it comes to secrecy and a willingness to deprive people of their freedoms without due process or a chance for redress.



Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal