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Introduction Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. —Justice Louis D. Brandeis (1928)1 It was a righteous mission back then, and it is a righteous mission today. —Timothy J. Healy, Director, Terrorist Screening Center (2009)2 Imagine waiting in Hong Kong International Airport for the final leg of a long journey home to the United States. You are traveling with your family. Everyone is tired. When you reach the front of a long line at the ticket counter , the agent looks nervous: “I’m sorry, but I cannot print your boarding pass. Your name appears on a United States terrorism watchlist.” You are stunned. Obviously someone, somewhere, has made a mistake. A simple misspelling, perhaps. You ask to speak to a supervisor, but she shrugs helplessly as you show her your U.S. passport, the ticket stubs from your previous flight, even your driver’s license. “There is nothing I can do. It’s not our list. But we cannot board anyone who is on it. You will have to contact the Department of Homeland Security.” She hands you a slip of paper with a telephone number and a website address on it. As you leave your place in line, you are stung by the nervous glances of travelers who overheard your exchange. Waiting on hold, a slow sense of dread begins to overwhelm you. This is not going to be resolved with a simple phone call. What is this “watchlist”? 2 ◆ Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost Who put your name on it? How can your name be removed from it? How can an American citizen be kept from returning home? Your thoughts turn to more immediate, practical concerns. You are thousands of miles from home. Your family received their boarding passes; should they travel without you? Can you stay here? Fly to Canada? Take a boat? Still waiting, you open the website that the gate agent gave you: https:// trip.dhs.gov/. “Thank you for contacting the DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program. Please check ALL the scenarios that describe your travel experience .” You start to scroll down, clicking all the categories that apply: “I am unable to print a boarding pass at the airport kiosk or at home”; “I was denied boarding”; “The airline ticket agent stated that I am on a Federal Government Watch List.” Some of the categories seem broad, others quite specific: “I feel I have been discriminated against by a government agent based on race, disability, religion, gender, or ethnicity”; “I believe my privacy has been violated because a government agent has exposed or inappropriately shared my personal information.” Then there is the ubiquitous “other” category. Should you click that one, too? The next screen asks for personal information. The heading states: “The following information is voluntary; however, it may be needed to complete your request.” But when you omit your date of birth, a message pops up to say that this information is required to proceed. This is confusing. What if you make a mistake? Who is going to read this? Will you ever learn what started all this trouble? Do you need a lawyer? This hypothetical is drawn from the experience of an American family split in half by the United States Government’s “No Fly List.” Half the family was allowed to return to their home in California, but father and son were stranded for five months, thousands of miles away, as their attorney fought against a remote and classified government program. Their story is told in chapter 2 as an example of how the No Fly List has expanded from a sharply honed tool for protecting the security of commercial aircraft to a broad and blunt instrument to pursue all kinds of government interests. For example, chapters 1 and 2 describe how it has been used to apply pressure to citizens to agree to FBI interrogations and polygraph tests as a condition of returning home to America. In fact, Richard Falkenrath, who as a senior White House official led the drive to consolidate the nation’s watchlists immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, urged the expansive deployment of watchlists in testimony before the U.S. Senate only two weeks before...

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