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Comment by bediger4000 | Hacker News Reader

The thing that irritates me is that this "examination" can only determine guilt by association. That's specifically an un-American determination. Guilt, in the USA, is supposed to be determined by a public trial, where everyone knows the evidence. Concealed evidence is explicitly illegal. There's even a clause in the constitution to allow the accused to confront their accusers: no secret witnesses. Various laws exist to make prosecutors turn over exculpatory evidence.

This whole thing is just totally un-American, at least from first principles. It looks like the "intelligence community" has forgotten those same first principles.

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I presume this "evidence" is used for a parallel construction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

Or to put people on "watch lists" or whatever. There's never been any public information on how names make it on to the "No Fly" list, or the "Special Search List" for air travel.

And there we plunge off the cliff into another un-American idea: the government can allow petitions for redress of being put on a "No Fly" or "Search Real Good" list, but it can't act on them: both method of determining reason, and the evidence of reason for being on the list don't hold up to reason. The government might allow petition for redress, but it can't effectively redress that greivance. Completely un-American.

Maybe we should stop pronouncing things like this as un-American as it is seems to be very American in any sort of recent history and I don't mean only in the past 10 years.

Calling them unamerican professes a standard American ideal which these events don't meet. If we all just sort of shrug our shoulders and say that's just what America does then what's the point of getting upset about it? The point is that, yes, blacklists and secret courts and all-pervasive surveillance is not what America is supposed to be about.

Actually, I'm OK with that, as long as I don't have to "support the troops", stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner" or say the Pledge of Allegiance, and all copies of Lee Greenwood's "Proud to be an American" are relegated to the trash. Oh, and the Republican's "American Exceptionalism" is laughed out of existance. There's probably some other things that would seem ridiculous, maybe all the pious preaching on July 4th, I dunno.

May I suggest replacing "un-American" with "doubleplusungood"?

I don't see that they are determining "guilt" at all. What leads you to believe that? Are people being convicted here without a trial? Metadata collection is only a tool; it is not a standard of proof.

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