Posted on 06/05/2011 9:32:08 AM PDT by EBH
The stop at the Peace Bridge vaulted Shearson on a legal odyssey that delved into a secret world of watch lists and something called the Automated Targeting System, a massive computer program that border officials use to track and rank suspected terrorists. As the computer files grow in size and scope, the inaccuracies grow as well, according to Shearson, security experts and U.S. Justice Department reports.
For Shearson, the errors surfaced on Jan. 8, 2006, as she was returning from one of her favorite escapes.
"That's my de-stresser -- to go on a road trip," she said. "Everyone goes to Canada."
About 8:30 p.m. she pulled up in her car at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo. She handed her and her daughter's passports to a customs agent. The agent's screen began flashing in large, red letters.
"I mean, I saw it," Shearson said. "I was shocked. She [the agent] was shocked."
In a matter of minutes, Shearson was out of the car. Agents tried to separate her from her crying 4-year-old daughter but Shearson insisted Dalal stay by her side. She asked to call her family and an attorney; agents refused, she said. An interview began.
Shearson said one officer took pity on her, appearing to suspect there had been some kind of mistake. The former teacher is hardly an intimidating presence. She stands 5 feet 2 inches tall and wears plain, silver-rimmed glasses.
...said there can be combinations of possible reasons for a person landing on a watch list, whether travel, financial or Internet use.
...In each, information gathered by government agents, from a person's interest groups to business associates, can be entered into the databases, law enforcement officials said.
Shearson was surprised that her Freedom of Information Act records request generated personal travel records from the 1990s.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.cleveland.com ...
I certainly can't defend this woman, too much is kept secret for us to know the truth other than it is her word verses the government's secrets about her.
And the same people want to create a gun registration database. Imagine the "fun" with the errors in that:
"Here are you personal belongings from when you were booked for murder last year Mr. Jones, including your business cards from your former job, the keys to your car that was repossessed six months ago, and the garage door opener to your home that was sold at a foreclosure auction last month. The good news is it was all just a silly mistake in the gun registration database. Here's five bucks so you can take a bus to the homeless shelter to reunite with your wife and kids."
Guilty.
Sign at DisneyWorld Middle East:
To be a terrorist, you must be this ------- tall...
Saudi ‘Baby Daddy’? I love how it’s dismissed so quickly in the article, with zero followup on that point. A real reporter might even take the effort to contact the Saudi embassy, and see if they might share some information on him.
They let me go after a brief period because I had, in some
combination, renewed and transferred the plate to another vehicle
since it first got into the system.
Hey stupid RATS, it IS illegal to enter another country illegaly, here they wanna give them in-state tuition and a haz- mat rivers license.
Unless you have vanity plates, why bother transferring the plates from one car to another?
Ohio?
Depending on what state you live in, possible monetary savings.
Her daughter's father, Ahmed Muhammad Alaai, lives in Saudi Arabia. Shearson said she doubts that he could be the reason she is on the list.
Hmmm. 500 mile round-trip to get a Canadian ice cream cone. Crossing the border with the kid at 8:30PM with 200+ miles to go back to Cleveland. Could she have engineered this trip with the intention of generating this story?
I think it was cheaper and/or easier, at least at the time. Why give a
state $10 or $20 more than you have to?
I did "splurge" for new plates for the next car, just to avoid popping
up in any dbs.
In Texas I don't think there's any money to be saved by transferring plates. Once a set of plates is 5 years old it is eligible to be replaced with a new set free of charge regardless of whether ownership of the car has changed. If you want to replace a set of plates before 5 years, Texas charges a $5 mutilation fee.
Is she a muslim?
muslims follow islam and islam has declared war on America and western civilization.
What we don’t know about this situational “baby daddy.” Were they married? The article says the father is in SA, OK...they didn’t say her husband or ex-husband is in SA. He returned to SA without her, so she was at least smart enough to realize she would be stoned to death or beaten if she went with him.
“Sign at DisneyWorld Middle East”
Disney Emirate. :)
The headline gives no hint that she was wearing a hijab at the time. Just the fact that the schoolmarm was wearing "silver-rimmed glasses.
You can't make up stuff like this.
LOL!
Look up the definition of "mules," in the subversive, criminal or activist context.
And I guess you've already forgotten this...
And things are not any better now...
Ridiculous DHS list: You might be a domestic terrorist if..
I don't think keeping track of a trend is a bad or ludicrous idea. I do find it rather disturbing they had travel records on this woman from the 1990's! Wow...really? Passport records? Sure, that I can understand, but that is not what it says...it says travel records.
Given the ever growing scope of social surveillance going on it would not be surprising to find a few FReepers on the DHS watch list either.
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