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  How would that even work?

This works through a mechanism called a "terror watch list"

For example, imagine you're a Youtuber and you make a serious, fair film about the Israel-Palestine conflict. You successfully get access to senior people on both sides.

Except Hamas is a terrorist organisation, and to get that access you've visited online forums about the organisation, contacted people in the US associated with it, and flown to a terrorism hotspot to meet with terrorist leaders. That pattern is pretty similar to someone who had been radicalised and wanted to fight abroad!

So you're put on a terror watch list, and at the border you're subject to extra searches, with the random delays that entails.

I feel that a citizen should be able to appeal being on the terror watch list (or any watch list for that matter).

> "Since when? How would that even work? The president orders the NSA to generate a list of disagreeable film makers and journalists and passes it to the TSA and customs? Do you have any evidence for that claim at all?"

"We’ve learned about this fishing expedition through documents we obtained in a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit filed on Poitras’s behalf to find out why she was constantly being stopped by federal agents during her travels. Border agents detained Poitras at airports over 50 times from 2006 to 2012. The detentions began after she directed and released documentary films about post-9/11 life in Iraq and Yemen that challenged the U.S. government’s narrative about the war on terror."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/11/government-documents-s...

I just read that article in full, and it doesn't claim the same things you claim it does.

Whatever your opinion of the government abusing surveillance power, Poitras wasn't detained because the government didn't like what she was saying, she was detained because the government suspected that she had foreknowledge of an attack that took place in Iraq where a U.S. soldier was killed and kept silent about the attack so that she could film it.

Now that belief was unjustified, ended up being wrong and in my opinion an absolute abuse of power by the government, but it is not a matter related to freedom of speech or censorship.

You are taking that situation and exploiting it to push an unrelated narrative, and I think that's disingenuous.

> It is not illegal to [...] threaten the president

It's generally illegal to threaten anyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault#United_States

> Just because you shouldn't does mean you're not free - freedom from consequences isn't the same as freedom of action.

That exactly defines why you are not free to do it. - let's reword that sentence and test again -

"Just because you shouldn't murder someone doesnt mean you are not free, freedom from consequences isn't the same as freedom of action."

No-one said anything about the president or the NSA being involved. There are tons of ways this can work. And it actually happens.

Just once you're flagged and are inside The Machine you get detained upon entry whilst they confiscate your devices, try to see where you've been etc. Lookup the wikipedia page of Laura Poitras who for years lived in Berlin due to USA government surveillance. And this started way before her involvement with Snowden as a filmmaker.

> Since when? How would that even work? The president orders the NSA to generate a list of disagreeable film makers and journalists and passes it to the TSA and customs? Do you have any evidence for that claim at all?

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/14/citizenfour-dir...

"Citizenfour director Laura Poitras sues US over 'Kafkaesque harassment'

Film-maker whose documentary about Edward Snowden won an Oscar says she has been held for hours at a time by airport officials, told she was on a no-fly list and threatened with handcuffs for taking notes"

> Since when? How would that even work? The president orders the NSA to generate a list of disagreeable film makers and journalists and passes it to the TSA and customs? Do you have any evidence for that claim at all?

Actually yes. Just look at the McCarthy era witch hunts against 'communists' in Hollywood. The FBI and CIA were involved in drawing up the watch lists.

This should not be downvoted, this is a part of shared American history, and there are terror watch lists and no fly lists to this day.

>It is not illegal...to threaten the president

That may not be entirely true [1], although the same video makes the point that US courts have apparently ruled you _can_ incite another to harm them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5bEwcJ8eCI