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Comment by adityab | Hacker News Reader

Two things are very noteworthy in this:

Page 9 (concerning the definition of "terrorism"): >1.14.1 involve Violent acts or acts dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure

Property? Tell me this is not a deliberately broad definition intended to be used against inconvenient persons.

Page 22: >1.51 In determining whether an individual is a KNOWN or SUSPECTED TERRORIST, NCTC will rely on the designation of "KNOWN TERRORIST" provided by the NOMINATOR as presumptively valid.

Presumptively valid. Let that sink in for a moment. It could not be put in clearer terms that a targeted person will be assumed guilty until proven innocent. This is a basic perversion, no, inversion, of due process and the justice system.

EDIT: The OCR'd version of the document and the original have significant textual differences. Updated.

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Pulling individual sentences out of their context tends to be misleading. Editing the cherry-picked parts is virtually guaranteed to be misleading.

Here, you omitted the phrase 'known terrorist' from the middle of the sentence you quote on page 22. This totally changes the meaning of the quoted sentence. Also, you chose not to include the following sentence which described how such a presumption could be overcome if the investigative body in question had credible information to the contrary. Finally, you overlooked the fact that 'nominators' in this context refers to other government agencies, relying on existing procedures for designation of someone as a 'known terrorist', and that said procedures form the due process in question. The point of this is to avoid bureaucratic duplication and waste. If the FBI sends the NCTC someone's bio and states them to be a known terrorist (based on facts in said bio), then it's entirely reasonable for the NCTC to take the FBI's information at face value unless it receives information to the contrary.

Such designation is presumptively valid in that situation because the FBI itself is subject to law. If different agencies of the executive branch are required to reject each others' conclusions by default and investigate every assertion de novo the outcome would be ontological paralysis. At such time as someone is detained and charged with terrorist the matter is handed over to the judicial branch, where a court serves the role of finder of fact. Essentially, you're demanding that trial precede investigation.

> Here, you omitted the phrase 'known terrorist' from the middle of the sentence you quote on page 22. This totally changes the meaning of the quoted sentence.

Ah, damn. The "text" version of the page which I tried to read does not contain that phrase at all. Bad OCR, I guess. :/ In any case, I do not see how it significantly alters my indignation at it; if some 3-letter agency decides to wink, wink nudge, nudge and label an inconvenient person as a known terrorist as per the aforementioned broad definitions of the word, that person is likely screwed.

> Also, you chose not to include the following sentence which described how such a presumption could be overcome if the investigative body in question had credible information to the contrary.

That subsequent sentence adds absolutely nothing that is contrary to what I pointed out. It only says that the investigative agency has the power to judge someone as guilty, but also to later change it's mind if it finds evidence of non-guilt. It can blacklist me. It can remove me from the blacklist if it so chooses, but I don't care about that, I do care that it can blacklist me though. Therefore I do not see how not including that sentence changes the meaning in any way, let alone 'totally'.

> Finally, you overlooked the fact that 'nominators' in this context refers to other government agencies, relying on existing procedures for designation of someone as a 'known terrorist', and that said procedures form the due process in question.

Procedures, procedures, procedures...

My purpose was to highlight that nowhere in this thing that you call "due process" is a judge or the target kept in the loop. Just the existence of a "process" does not mean that it is due process

> Such designation is presumptively valid in that situation because the FBI itself is subject to law.

You seem to be assuming that if there is a process, it is due process. If an agency is officially subject to law, it will never act contrary to law.

> Essentially, you're demanding that trial precede investigation.

Not exactly... I'm demanding that they get a warrant. Getting a warrant != having a trial.

Please consider reading my response again, as I think you're misunderstood several of statements at a grammatical level.

My purpose was to highlight that nowhere in this thing that you call "due process" is a judge or the target kept in the loop. Just the existence of a "process" does not mean that it is due process

But 'due process' does not just mean 'judicial process'. It includes administrative process, which is what the executive branch does. Indeed, it's not uncommon for courts to dismiss suits on the basis that a plaintiff has failed to exhaust his or her administrative remedies, ie has not run into a brick wall in dealing with the bureaucracy, resulting in a legal controversy.

Regarding the warrant vs. trial - reasonable enough, but the fact remains that warrants are only issued subject to probable cause,and probable cause can only be established by investigation. It seems to me that you're demanding that government agencies get a warrant in order to open an investigation at all.

> You seem to be assuming that if [...] an agency is officially subject to law, it will never act contrary to law.

Well, of course. If we instead assume that agencies will simply ignore the law, then of course any process is meaningless. But if that is your assumption, we might as well give up now. Of course bad things could happen if agencies start breaking the law, but if there is no evidence of systemic law-breaking, it's not really useful to bring up. It should be pretty evident that even the NSA attempts to ensure that everything it does is legal, and in fact goes out of its way to do things in a convoluted and obfuscated fashion to ensure the legality of some of its actions.

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