5 Innocuous Activities That Can Get You Put in the Govt.'s Anti-Terrorism Database

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/5-innocuous-activities-can-get-you-put-govts-anti-terrorism-database



SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Five California men sued the Department of Justice, claiming they were entered into a counterterrorism database for innocent activities such as a professional photographer taking pictures, a computer consultant buying computers at Best Buy, and in one case, waiting for one's mother at a train station.

The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU and the Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Asian Law Caucus on behalf of lead plaintiff Wiley Gill et al., challenges the Suspicious Activity Reports (SAR) database, which flags people with potential connections to terrorism.

The men, all U.S. citizens, say they were put into the database for innocuous activities such as photographing landmarks, or viewing a website about videos in his own home.

One says his "suspicious activity" was "standing outside a restroom at a train station while waiting for his mother."

[Downwinder]

1. How do you find out if you are on a Government blacklist?

[toddwv]

2. Maybe you show up at the airport

and they tell you you're not allowed to fly...

[Downwinder]

3. That is a little too late.

[toddwv]

5. Yes.

Now imagine you are overseas and returning home to the US and can't board a plane.

[Frank Cannon]

7. Unfortunately, just asking if you're on a watchlist...

Is grounds for having you put on a watchlist.

[randome]

4. So a state agency reported these individuals as suspicious...

...and it's somehow the federal government's fault? Why not question the state agency that did the reporting?
[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[bluesbassman]

9. Because the Federal government encourages the reporting.

The reports are part of the National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, in which the federal government encourages state and local law enforcement agencies to collect and report information that may be connected to terrorism. The reports are maintained in various counterterrorism databases and disseminated to law enforcement agencies across the country, according to the complaint.

"An individual who is reported in a SAR is flagged as a person with a potential nexus to terrorism and automatically falls under law enforcement scrutiny which may include intrusive questioning by local or federal law enforcement agents. Even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation concludes that the person did not have any nexus to terrorism, a SAR can haunt that individual for decades, as SARs remain in federal databases for up to 30 years," the complaint states.

[randome]

11. There's nothing wrong with agencies sharing data.

Some may be more 'trigger-happy' than others, though.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]No squirrels were harmed in the making of this post. Yet.[/center][/font][hr]

[bluesbassman]

12. There would be nothing wrong if they shared the data, investigated, then discarded when cleared.

That's not what happens though with SAR reports as the men in the article have discovered. Once on the list it's almost impossible to get off of it.

[marmar]

6. Hopefully not by K&Ring this thread.

[City Lights]

10. Haha. So true!

[jwirr]

8. I was meeting my sister at a major airport to go visis our brother. I had bought a 40 gallon water

tank for his house so we put it in the trunk of the car to take along. When we got to the city near the airport my daughter said, "We need to meet her someplace else because if we try putting that tank into her trunk we will have the feds down our neck in seconds." We found a neutral place to meet and everything went just fine.

My sister said to me, "All because of you and DU we are all being watched. "

[Downwinder]

13. Must have caught your DU bumper sticker in the traffic cam.

[jwirr]

14. LOL it was my daughters car.

[DirkGently]

15. Good. This is the ACLU at its best.

Despite a 1978 Justice Department regulation prohibiting the collection and dissemination of criminal intelligence unless "there is a reasonable suspicion that the individual is involved in criminal activity," the Justice Department's standard for SARS requires only behavior that may be indicative of terrorism planning, according to the lawsuit.

James Prigoff, an 86-year-old internationally renowned photographer of public art, was in Boston in 2004 taking pictures of a famous piece of art called the "Rainbow Swash" when he was asked by private security guards to stop. Because of that incident, FBI agents showed up at his home several months later to question him about his activities in Boston. They also questioned one of his neighbors, according to the lawsuit.

"All I was doing was taking pictures in a public place, and now I'm apparently in a government terrorism database for decades," Prigoff said in a statement issued by the ACLU.

Absolutely insane.

[woo me with science]

16. K&R