The ACLU says that the country's secret terror watchlist has 875,000 names. The problem is that the evidence is collected in secret and there is no recourse for people on the watchlist to challenge it. And the people that collect the information operate with little oversight whatsoever. From the first link:
The consolidated Terrorist Watchlist was created in 2003, in part a response to the 9/11 attacks. It provides for a single database of identifying information on individuals suspected by the US to be potentially involved in terrorist activity.
The U.S. government has said the database is “one of the most effective counterterrorism tools for the U.S. government." But the report highlights the negative consequences for anyone finding themselves on the list. It states that traveling by air or sea can become more difficult – and individuals on the list are often subjected to invasive screening, denial of visas, detention and questioning.
But the problem is that the government cannot name one terrorist who was caught by the terror watch list. This suggests that the real reason is to create a political enemies list larger than Richard Nixon had ever dreamed of creating.
A new report by the ACLU (PDF) says:
Given the gravity of these consequences, it is vital that if the government blacklists people, the standards it uses are appropriately narrow, the information it relies on is accurate and credible, and the manner in which watchlists are used is consistent with the presumption of innocence and the right to a hearing before punishment—legal principles older than our nation itself. Yet the government fails these basic tests of fairness. It has placed individuals on watchlists, and left them there for years, as a result of blatant errors. It has expanded its master terrorist watchlist to include as many as a million names, based on information that is often stale, poorly reviewed, or of questionable reliability. It has adopted a standard for inclusion on the master watchlist that gives agencies and analysts near-unfettered discretion. And it has refused to disclose the standards by which it places individuals on other watchlists, such as the No Fly List.
It lists several specific people who have been put on the list due to purely political reasons or no reason at all:
Marine veteran Abe Mashal’s inclusion on the No Fly List made it impossible for him to work for clients of his specialized dog training business who lived beyond driving distance, resulting in the loss of significant business income. FBI agents told Mashal that he would be removed from the No Fly List if he agreed to become an informant.
Steven Washburn, an Air Force veteran and New Mexico resident, was prevented for years from being with his wife—a Spanish citizen who was unable to secure a visa to travel to the United States—because of his status on the No Fly List.
Kevin Iraniha, an Iranian-American peace activist, was barred from flying home to San Diego from Costa Rica, where he was studying at the UN-accredited University for Peace. Iraniha and his father, both of whom were told they had been placed on the No Fly list, endured hours of interrogation on their religion, Iraniha’s travel to Muslim countries, and his views on Palestine and U.S. foreign policy.
In April 2012, inclusion on the No Fly List prevented Air Force veteran Saadiq Long from flying from Qatar to his childhood home in Oklahoma to visit his mother, whose health had been deteriorating due to congestive heart failure.
It is obvious from these cases that there is insidious racial profiling going on, where people are being placed on the list solely due to being Arabic or Muslim or having an immigrant family member.
And the late Senator Ted Kennedy was one person placed on the No Fly List.
More cases, including one where someone was tattled on by a disgruntled co-worker:
In August 2009, Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan underwent lengthy, intrusive questioning by U.S. border officials, apparently because his name appeared on a watchlist. Khan was visiting the United States to promote a film concerning racial profiling of Muslims in the United States.
Journalists have undergone intrusive questioning and searches at the border for no apparent reason other than their religion or ethnic background. On the Media producer Sarah Abdurrahman was detained, along with family members and friends, for over five hours without explanation, while officers searched their cars and cell phones. HuffPost Live producer Ahmed Shihab-Eldin says he is held and questioned for hours every time he returns to the United States from abroad.
Erich Scherfen, a commercial pilot and veteran of the Gulf War, was placed on the Selectee List after a co-worker told the state police that Scherfen had retrofitted the family car to carry bombs. In reality, Scherfen had simply removed a broken back seat from the car. Scherfen was suspended from his job, and he and his wife were repeatedly subjected to humiliating questioning, searches, and detention for hours when they attempted to fly or cross the border.
The ACLU concludes:
A bloated and unfair watchlist system does not make us secure, and the ACLU has long called for fundamental reform. If the government is to use watchlists, it must institute narrow, specific criteria for placing individuals on them; apply rigorous procedures for reviewing, updating, and removing erroneous entries; and limit the use of such lists such that they do not amount to punishment without charge. Individuals must be provided with a meaningful, participatory process by which they can challenge their inclusion on a watchlist before a neutral decision-maker. Ultimately, Congress and the Obama administration must rein in what the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has called “a vast, multi-agency, counterterrorism bureaucracy that tracks hundreds of thousands of individuals”—a bureaucracy that remains secret and unaccountable to the public or the individuals that it targets for blacklisting.
In January, a woman successfully sued to get her name off the list.
At one questioning at Stanford by an FBI agent, she was asked about Jemaah Islamiyah, a group that the U.S. classifies as a terrorist organization. Ibrahim's defense attorneys believe that the reason for her erroneous placement on the no-fly list was due to her involvement in a progressive organization for Malaysian professional women called Jamaah Islah Malaysia - which may have been mistaken as the group with a terrorist designation by the U.S. government.
However, the fact that the judge kept much of the ruling secret shows that we have too many judges in our system who do not have sufficient independence from the other two branches of government. If the government does not follow the Constitution, then judges don't owe the government anything as far as national security is concerned. However, another lawsuit from 10 Oregon residents is making its way through the court system challenging the no-fly lists on Constitutional grounds.