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View Full Version : Everyone's a terrorist now -- New revelations from Greenwald's The Intercept




Warlord
08-05-2014, 11:12 AM
Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

By Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux
5 Aug 2014, 12:45 PM EDT 56

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.

The documents, obtained from a source in the intelligence community, also reveal that the Obama Administration has presided over an unprecedented expansion of the terrorist screening system. Since taking office, Obama has boosted the number of people on the no fly list more than ten-fold, to an all-time high of 47,000—surpassing the number of people barred from flying under George W. Bush.

“If everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism,” says David Gomez, a former senior FBI special agent. The watchlisting system, he adds, is “revving out of control.”

...

read more:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/

AuH20
08-05-2014, 11:19 AM
When you're doing illegal and immoral things everyday, you tend to get paranoid and start adding more & more targets to your lists.

Brian4Liberty
08-05-2014, 11:39 AM
more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.”

So what is the criteria if a person has no terrorist affiliation?


Barack Obama’s Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers
By Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux 5 Aug 2014, 12:45 PM EDT 3

Nearly half of the people on the U.S. government’s widely shared database of terrorist suspects are not connected to any known terrorist group, according to classified government documents obtained by The Intercept.

Of the 680,000 people caught up in the government’s Terrorist Screening Database—a watchlist of “known or suspected terrorists” that is shared with local law enforcement agencies, private contractors, and foreign governments—more than 40 percent are described by the government as having “no recognized terrorist group affiliation.” That category—280,000 people—dwarfs the number of watchlisted people suspected of ties to al Qaeda, Hamas, and Hezbollah combined.
...
More:
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/08/05/watch-commander/

jct74
08-05-2014, 01:49 PM
bump

phill4paul
08-05-2014, 02:00 PM
So what is the criteria if a person has no terrorist affiliation?

Lone Wolf.

Warrior_of_Freedom
08-05-2014, 02:04 PM
according to the definition of terrorist, the president should be on the terrorist watch list

KingNothing
08-05-2014, 02:06 PM
Lone Wolf.


Ehh, it could be that people are three or four hops away from one or several people who have ties to terrorist groups. I'm guessing that some algorithm added these people to the list.

jllundqu
08-05-2014, 02:10 PM
I'd like to start an online petition on Whitehouse.gov that would classify everyone on RPF as a homegrown terrorist... I'd wear it as a badge of honor and put it on job applications... bet I'd get hired faster if I had that bullet point on my resume!

KingNothing
08-05-2014, 02:16 PM
I wonder what percentage of people on the list are Islamic, from the Middle East or central Asia, or brown. I bet that covers nearly everyone on the list.

That hot-bed of terrorism, Dearborn Michigan, surely deserves to be under such strict surveillance. ....what a joke.

presence
08-05-2014, 02:18 PM
So what is the criteria if a person has no terrorist affiliation?

I thought you had to have a full rep bar at RPF

:toady:

HOLLYWOOD
08-05-2014, 02:20 PM
No different than the policies of: Nazi Germany, Stalin-Leninist Soviet Union, Mao, Pol Pot, Roman Imperial Empire, House of Saud, Pinochet's Chile, Shaw's Iran, Khmer Rouge, Spanish Inquisition, "The Sun doesn't set on the British Empire", Apartheid South Africa & Zionist Israel... et al which; labeled, tracked, and killed 'terrorists'.

CPUd
08-05-2014, 02:33 PM
So what is the criteria if a person has no terrorist affiliation?

From the leaked document, it looks like it has something to do with the State Dept. They are being added during the process of filing travel documents, maybe depending on which countries they are coming/going to.

Brian4Liberty
08-05-2014, 03:11 PM
And the bottom line is this. There is no way for them to investigate all of the people on the list. They are looking for a needle in a haystack, and everyday, all they do is add hay to the pile. This hurts the investigation of actual, valid, probable cause cases. No resources for that, too busy adding hay to the stack. But since you ask about resources, there's that bottom line. It increases their budgets.


“You might as well have a blue wand and just pretend there’s magic in it, because that’s what we’re doing with this—pretending that it works,” says former FBI agent Michael German, now a fellow at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice. “These agencies see terrorism as a winning card for them. They get more resources. They know that they can wave that card around and the American public will be very afraid and Congress and the courts will allow them to get away with whatever they’re doing under the national security umbrella.”