Are you on this list?

We seem to be more like a totalitarian police state every day:
-T

<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=430073>

US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
03 August 2003

After more than a year of complaints by some US anti-war activists 
that they were being unfairly targeted by airport security, 
Washington has admitted the existence of a list, possibly hundreds or 
even thousands of names long, of people it deems worthy of special 
scrutiny at airports.

The list had been kept secret until its disclosure last week by the 
new US agency in charge of aviation safety, the Transportation 
Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely separate from the 
relatively well-publicised "no-fly" list, which covers about 1,000 
people believed to have criminal or terrorist ties that could 
endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.

The strong suspicion of such groups as the American Civil Liberties 
Union (ACLU), which is suing the government to try to learn more, is 
that the second list has been used to target political activists who 
challenge the government in entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged 
the existence of the list in response to a Freedom of Information Act 
request concerning two anti-war activists from San Francisco who were 
stopped and briefly detained at the airport last autumn and told they 
were on an FBI no-fly list.

The activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, work for a small 
pacifist magazine called War Times and say they have never been 
arrested, let alone have criminal records. Others who have filed 
complaints with the ACLU include a left-wing constitutional lawyer 
who has been strip-searched repeatedly when travelling through US 
airports, and a 71-year-old nun from Milwaukee who was prevented from 
flying to Washington to join an anti-government protest.

It is impossible to know for sure who might be on the list, or why. 
The ACLU says a list kept by security personnel at Oakland airport 
ran to 88 pages. More than 300 people have been subject to special 
questioning at San Francisco airport, and another 24 at Oakland, 
according to police records. In no case does it appear that a wanted 
criminal was apprehended.

The ACLU's senior lawyer on the case, Jayashri Srikantiah, said she 
is troubled by several answers that the TSA gave to her questions. 
The agency, she said, had no way of making sure that people did not 
end up on the list simply because of things they had said or 
organisations they belonged to. Once people were on the list, there 
was no procedure for trying to get off it. The TSA did not even think 
it was important to keep track of people singled out in error for a 
security grilling. According to documents the agency released, it saw 
"no pressing need to do so".

It is not just left-wingers who feel unfairly targeted. Right-wing 
civil libertarians have spoken out against the secret list, and at 
least one conservative organisation, the Eagle Forum, says its 
members have been interrogated by security staff.

The complaints by the ACLU form part of a pattern of protest since 
the 11 September attacks, with the Bush administration repeatedly 
under fire for detaining people on the flimsiest of grounds in the 
name of the "war on terror". Many Muslims have had a hard time, 
especially if they have a surname such as Hussein.

--
<http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>