No fly lists were illegal to begin with - it was the blind marriage of party line obedience and propaganda that suckered many of us into thinking it was a necessary sacrifice. While I’m proud to say I never subscribed to the idea, it was the norm at the time in my social and political circles.
I get why it happened - I just wish we’d had more foresight.
A secretary at an University was put on the No-Fly list and only found out when she needed to travel to a family funeral. She figured it was because she worked at the Nuclear Engineering Dept., full of foreign and middle-eastern students. I was a counter part at the same university at Chemical Engineering. I was not on the list. The meanest thing that girl would have ever done was bless your new house and maybe read a Bible verse to you. I retired and don’t know if she ever got off the list. At the time the list seemed pretty random.