[lbo-talk] U.S. secret police

Charles Brown cbrown at michiganlegal.org
Mon Aug 4 14:02:00 PDT 2003


US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

03 August 2003 - Independent

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

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 11September 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.



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