Posted on 06/02/2018 1:25:11 PM PDT by Liberty7732
According to a memo received by the New York Times, in February of this year the TSA developed a brand new “secret watch list.” This list is for special people who don’t necessarily qualify for the big “No Fly” list, but for people individual agents of the TSA feel have been “offensive” or have created “challenges to the safe and effective completion of screening.”
So if you don’t like where the agent’s hands are roaming, or you question a TSA agent’s authority, motives, or honesty, you get to be on this new list.
According to the memo and anonymous TSA agents interviewed by the New York Times, being on this list allows other TSA agents to identify you as a “problem.” The TSA claims the list cannot impel “extra screening” at checkpoints, but those of us who fly often know how ridiculous it can become when you are “randomly chosen” to for extra screening.
The feds already have multiple “watch lists” and being on this new list won’t put you on the “no fly” list, so why does the TSA need a new, super-secret one?
Kelly Wheaton, TSA deputy chief counsel, says the TSA needs a list for passengers who have been demonstrably unruly at, or near, checkpoints. Matthew F. Leas, a TSA spokesman, said in an email to the Times, that the agency “wants to ensure there are safeguards in place to protect Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) and others from any individual who has exhibited disruptive or assaultive behavior at a screening checkpoint and is scheduled to fly.”
According to the Times, Federal security directors, top TSA security officials at airports and top Air Marshals’ supervisors can nominate individuals to be put on the watch list. Only the TSA administrator, his deputy and the top two officials at the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis may add or remove people from the database.
This is clearly unconstitutional. There is no notice given that you are being put on a list, and no apparent way for you request to be removed from this list. If the government can secretly put an American on a list that could lead agents to identify that American and impose regulations or even lead to some kind of discriminatory activity, this is a violation of every American’s Right to Due Process; Rights that are expressly enumerated in the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments.
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Democrat of New Jersey, said during a House homeland security subcommittee hearing: “What I don’t want — what I think no American would want — is an excuse for unfair, secret profiling that doesn’t even offer a chance for people to contest their name appearing on such a list…I am concerned about the civil-liberty implications of such a list.” Hugh Handeyside, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Washington Post, the policy gives the agency wide latitude to “blacklist people arbitrarily and essentially punish them for asserting their rights.”
Those who fought for the foundations of America lived through a nearly identical exercise of federal power. For those living under British Rule in 1761, they called these laws, “the worst instrument of arbitrary power, the most destructive of English liberty and the fundamental principles of law, that ever was found in an English law-book.” (For a history refresher to see the alarming parallels with today’s TSA, read this article on the history of our 4th Amendment.)
We all should be concerned about the implications of a single agent, within a federal agency, possessing unlimited and unchecked power over Americans!
Big problem - most of the idiots who work for TSA cannot read.
Unlimited power is evil. I travel a lot and have complained in writing more than once, not on list yet, but now I wonder when I go to the airport on Sunday.
Gee look "Secret TSA.." squirrel....
85% of the damn federal government violates the Constitution.
I don’t know what to refer to TSA employees as, but it sure ain’t officers or agents. Maybe TSA clerks, or camp guards.
The raw abuse of putative power is all I see every time I go through, especially in the larger East Coast airports.
If this were true, every "Do you know who I am?" dem politician would be on the list. It's just a BS cover story. This is just a list of Freepers and NRA members.
The tsa itself is an affront to the Constitution. Thanks bush.
What’s the big deal????
The TSA violates thousands of people’s rights daily in a very direct way. Few people seem to care about that. So why would a secret list be upsetting people now?
TSA, has got to go away.
Bush 43 brain fart mixed with O’s 44 PC equals a steaming pile of crap.
People still fly?
There you have it, all about the TSA goon's safety, not the airline passengers.
Nice. So they’ve got the official list and the Double-Secret Probation list.
“Big problem - most of the idiots who work for TSA cannot read.”
Too Stupid for Arby’s.
“randomly chosen”
term chosen so as to hide the source of the choice. It obviously was never random. Random means completely unaided by any human action or decision, but rather chosen by a completely non-computed process.
What some uninformed individuals call “random” is actually the choice of every 10th person, or some other number. That is absolutely not random.
Since TSA manages the list of individuals, and is given the job of counting them, they can easily count the targeted individual as the next “number 10.” Anybody seriously doubt that they gave themselves the ability to select an individual for screening and calling it “random”?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The TSA has absolute power over when or if you fly. Their corruption is becoming total.
How do you know when you are not on a “secret” list. It’s secret. You are never going to know.
Fixed.ThisThe Patriot Act is clearly unconstitutional.
Same.
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