Comment by spott | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spott | Hacker News Reader

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>There's an exhaustively detailed exploration of the standards for inclusion from page 33-49 which seems to me to be a set of lists (of activities, memberships in proscribed organizations, relationships with publicly sanctioned individuals etc. etc.) that trigger inclusion of the sort you are asking for.

Not really. pp. 47-49 contain examples, and prior to that, there is no specific behavior for "Reasonable Suspicion", which is probably the catchall for putting regular people on the watch list. The "Known Terrorist" and "Suspected Terrorist" sections contains specifics, but you don't have to be either of those to be put on the TSDB. You do have to have "Particularized Derogatory Information" which is specific information relating you to known terrorists or suspected terrorists. However this requirement is not expanded upon (that I can see).

The section that talks about how people should be removed from the list is short (less than a page), and basically says "we should look into it if someone complains". There is no mention of court procedures, there is a single point of contact (the DHS TRIP), and there are procedures that seem to basically amount to "look again". There is no requirement for disclosure of what put you on the list, and thus no means to effectively fight it.

I realize why you are complaining about people not doing a "cursory reading", but the fact is, a cursory reading can support as many false statements as just reading the article. It also gives a false sense of security in your beliefs. I can't be 100% sure of my statements above because I haven't read it fully, but I'm more sure of them than of your statements.

I realize why you are complaining about people not doing a "cursory reading", but the fact is, a cursory reading can support as many false statements as just reading the article.

Kind of makes you wonder what value the The Intercept is adding, doesn't it?

Maybe you should try looking at pages 37-42 which defines 13 different categories of suspected terrorists. I fail to see why you don't think this is relevant.

The section that talks about how people should be removed from the list is short (less than a page), and basically says "we should look into it if someone complains". There is no mention of court procedures [...]

That's because this is administrative guidance. The executive branch isn't part of the judicial branch. Agencies don't make rules about court procedure, the judiciary does. You're conflating two completely separate branches of government.

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Let me give you a super-quick civics lesson on US government, just so we're on the same page.

The Legislative branch consists of the House & Senate, aka Congress. The main thing it does is produce Statutory Law.

The Executive branch is headed by the President and includes all the various agencies of government. Agencies which are tasked by Congress with carrying out various tasks are required to promulgate rules and establish internal procedures (such as guidance in the implementation of the rules) for their own governance. These rules and procedures make up Administrative Law.

The Judicial branch resolves controversies between other branches of government, between the states and the federal government, and so on. Court decisions can cite statutory law, administrative law (if the case involves the operations of a government agency), common law (loosely, a set of legal traditions), and precedent established by higher courts. New precedents are sometimes referred to as judicial law.

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Now, statutory law might define which matters fall within the purview of the courts, and there's a great deal of judicial law addressing how legal disputes should proceed through the courts, but I wouldn't expect to find such things discussed in an agency guidance document. Obviously I'm only describing the very tip of the legal iceberg here, but there seem to be some very basic misconceptions in this thread about how the government functions.

>Maybe you should try looking at pages 37-42 which defines 13 different categories of suspected terrorists. I fail to see why you don't think this is relevant.

Because you don't have to be a Suspected Terrorist to be put in the TSDB. Which means that there are a whole host of things that aren't on those lists that can land you in the TSDB.

>You're conflating two completely separate branches of government.

No, I'm really not. "court" is not unique to the judicial branch, for example, courts-marshal are conducted within the military and not under the judicial branch.

>That's because this is administrative guidance.

Yes, which means that there should be better policies in place to keep this out of the judicial courts.

There are things that are not on those lists. They're eithe ron other lists, or must meet defined criteria which are subject to administrative review.

>You're conflating two completely separate branches of government. No, I'm really not. "court" is not unique to the judicial branch, for example, courts-marshal are conducted within the military and not under the judicial branch.

Well, that's bullshit. Sometimes you just have to own your mistakes, my friend.

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