No-Fly List Defenders Have a New Excuse: ISIS

It used to be that if you were on the no-fly list,
you stayed on the no-fly list. But earlier this year,
a judge deemed the government’s secretive process for
placing individuals on the list unconstitutional and demanded
reform. Today, officials from the Transporation Security
Administration (TSA), the FBI, and the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) assured lawmakers of the House Subcommittee on
Transportation Security that areas for reform have been identified
and that everyone involved is sufficiently balancing civil
liberties with national security.

Sadly, the proceedings did not excite much confidence in these
assurances. Some legislators at the hearing stressed that
the danger posed by ISIS requires better intelligence and a
better no-fly list. It seems the ISIS situation will ensure that
the concerns of civil libertarians will once again be put on the
backburner here.

Regarding the TSA Secure Flight program, which matches
passengers to
the government’s Terrorist Watch List, Jennifer Grover of the
GAO put forward a rather lackluster proposal, recommending a faster
appeals process for people wrongly placed on the list.

Christopher Piehota, director of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening
Center, intoned that the screening process is rigorous. But
the current criteria for inclusion on the list still seem entirely
too vague: “if an individual is known, suspected to be, or has been
in preparation for, in aid of, or related to, terrorism or
terrorist activity.”

Only Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) forcefully addressed civil
liberties concerns—justified concerns, considering a remarkable 98
percent of people who seek redress for being put on the no-fly list
eventually get taken off the list because they’ve been placed there
erroneously.
Forty percent of people on the list have no affiliation with a
terrorist organization at all. 

Sanford wanted to know why it was taking these people up to a
year to disappear from the list. Stephen Sadler, the TSA’s
assistant administrator for intelligence &
analysis, claimed that the agency “can do it within about two
weeks,” but when external agencies get involved, it can take up to
60 days.

“That’s where the majority of those individuals of the 98
percent fall,” said Sadler. But the GAO found that the average time
is 276 days. And getting taken off the list doesn’t mean
getting out of the TSA watch system. In true Kafkaesque fashion,
you are instead transferred to a “cleared list.”

Sandler justified the procedure: “It’s our way of ensuring you
go through the checkpoint without any inconvenience.” Presumably
because you’ve been flagged before. Now you’re flagged again—but
differently.

When Sanford worriedly pointed out that it seems like all
Americans are on some sort of list according to their potential
terrorist threat, Sadler blithely agreed that this is indeed the
case.