23 ms·

Judge Rules Terrorism Watchlist Violates Constitutional Rights

331 points by jbegley 7y ago

exabrial 7y ago
* watch lists * red flag laws * no fly lists All well intentioned. All ripe for abuse. All unconstitutional. All rights require due process before they can be be removed.
- olliej 7y ago
  Right? especially given their tendency to also be implemented in the most braindead ways imaginable :-/
- devoply 7y ago
  I see nothing wrong with denying anyone guns for a limited period of time because their state of mind is in question. I don't see who is losing out when this happens.
  - voldacar 7y ago
    Their state of mind as determined how and by whom though? This just makes it easier for whoever happens to be in power to deny rights to [disliked or marginalized group] Also the connection between gun violence and mental health is extremely tenuous, and I would add that firearm homicides in the states are at a multi-decade low right now, though the media would have people believe otherwise
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
      > I would add that firearm homicides in the states are at a multi-decade low right now Have you a good source for that? I seem to find lots of unclear sources. I found a source that they are down from their peak in 1993 (this source was 2013: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate...), but that the last 10 years has been a climb back up (https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/13/health/gun-deaths-highest-40-years-cdc/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/13/health/gun-deaths-highest... which I sourced from wikipedia, and granted is overall deaths rather than just homicides)
      - voldacar 7y ago
        Yeah my source was the same dataset from Pew.
    - pnw_hazor 7y ago
      A high percentage of ex parte temporary protection/restraining orders are later found to be unwarranted when the restrained party has their chance to argue against the order. Also, lazy family law attorneys often include requests for protection orders as a matter of course in divorce filings. These often have similar firearm restrictions as so-called red flag laws.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    My country has a history of institutionalizing dissidents with a reference to their mental health. I am not based in the US but I would be heavily against restricting any rights on that basis.
  - vorticalbox 7y ago
    Because you have the right to due process, wh9ch you dont get when being but on the list. And sure in some cases it works but if you have no way to fight the claims, there is nothing stopping it being abused.
    - Gibbon1 7y ago
      I always wonder what due process means in a country where most people can't afford a $400 emergency.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    All too often, officially labeling people one doesn't like as "crazy", "unbalanced", etc. has been used to marginalize/destroy them. I don't want crazy people to have guns, either, but I worry about the path we go down here because it's very, very difficult to objectively find the line between crazy and sane. (Historical examples of such abuse include people having the wrong religion, the wrong sexual orientation, and the wrong political beliefs.)
    - droithomme 7y ago
      > I don't want crazy people to have guns I realize that's a common position, but it strikes me as strange. It seems to assume that crazy people are the ones committing violent crimes. If that was actually the case though we would have huge numbers of mass murders and killings resolved with the defendant being declared not guilty by reason of insanity. That's not the case though, a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity is an extremely rare situation, almost unheard of in the court system. The reality is that overwhelmingly it is not the crazy but the sane who commit the violence and the mass murders. It makes more sense, based on not guilty by insanity statistics, to allow crazy people to have guns, and disallow the sane from having them.
      - krapp 7y ago
        It's a mistake to assume that the legal definition of insanity used to determine whether a defendant can stand trial is the only one relevant to conversation. Someone who commits mass murder can be legally sane if they are cognizant of the concept of right and wrong, are not severely mentally handicapped, are capable of understanding and responding to questions, etc. Yet I doubt anyone would consider a person capable of shooting up a synagogue to be sane. I don't think it would be "strange" to consider that someone with suicidal thoughts or someone in the heat of passion should be trusted with a firearm simply because they can also sign their own name.
        droithomme 7y ago
        Well the discussion was about "crazy" people, people who are not just colloquially crazy (ie Bob is crazy if he thinks we can get this fix done by the weekend) but clinically insane. > someone with suicidal thoughts I don't think someone with suicidal thoughts is crazy. In fact I've never heard of anyone that doesn't have suicidal thoughts at some point in their life. That's a normal part of human existence. Different from an attempted suicide though. And someone attempting suicide is also not insane simply because of that. > or someone in the heat of passion That doesn't sound like insanity to me either. I don't even know how something like that could be evaluated. How would a gun seller know someone is in the "heat of passion"? The phrasing suggests a temporary emotional state of some kind. Perhaps the idea is if they are ranting and screaming at the gun seller and claiming they are going to use the gun to commit a mass shooting. And in that case gun sellers don't sell guns. Someone who in this heat of passion who intends to commit violence presumably is going to act normal while buying the gun. Not insanity, not something that can be determined at point of sale. > I doubt anyone would consider a person capable of shooting up a synagogue to be sane Antisemitism is pretty common among those known to be sane. No physician would diagnose madness simply based on antisemitic beliefs. There have been groups in history that mass murdered Jews, and other groups, who were the predominant people and majority of their society. They were not insane in the general case so it's not correct that someone capable of committing atrocities, including genocide, is not sane. Is a previous diagnoses of madness by a qualified medical professional using accepted standards of practice a common or even not-infrequent attribute of mass shooters and murders? Not that I can see. So we're back to someone not known to be insane - a sane person - doing this crime and the label only being applied after the fact. Again, I propose that the insane are more responsible gun owners than the sane because so few murder convictions involve those actually determined at any point to be insane by anyone qualified to make such a determination. It's easy to say killers are crazy. How does that help prevent crime? It is counterproductive in fact because it suggests that restricting civil and constitutional rights of people with diagnosed mental illnesses (about 1/5 the US population is on psychiatric drugs which require a diagnosis to be prescribed) is a solution when this group is not in fact the group that is committing these crimes and therefore there is no reasonable premise for restricting said rights.
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    Personally I don't see anything wrong with denying people guns. <- that's a full stop ;-) However in the US it is your constitutional right to bear arms. This has been widely (virtually universally in the US) regarded to mean that it is your right to not be denied a gun (without due process). Questioning someone's state of mind is not due process. It really doesn't matter if we are talking about guns or we are talking about hamsters: if you have a right enshrined by your constitution it's pretty darn important that you don't have that right stripped away simply because someone levels an accusation at you. It would be pretty weird to have a right to bear hamsters...
    - DoctorOetker 7y ago
      fair enough, I still think it is good to deny a person a gun, especially when theres red flags going off, but I agree that there should be an appeals process. I guess the reason there isn't (if there isn't, what do I know) is because authorities do not want suspicious people to find out why they are suspicious... but that should mean either nobody gets the right to own a gun, or everyone, ... unless authorities do disclose why some person should be denied a gun...
      - maxwell 7y ago
        Who decides who should take away the guns, and how do you prevent them abusing that power?
        wool_gather 7y ago
        We already have a fairly robust* process for deciding that someone's fundamental day-to-day freedom should be taken away -- i.e., for deciding to put them in prison. Is there any inherent reason we couldn't have a similar process for gun ownership? *Not flawless, of course, but what is?
        maxwell 7y ago
        If you're talking about the U.S. prison-industrial system, you answered your own question. More people are imprisoned in the United States than were in the Soviet gulags or Nazi Germany. More black people are in the prison/parole system than were enslaved before the passage of the 13th Amendment.
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    Any sufficient reason to render them helpless is an equally good reason to lock them up. Both are dehumanizing.
  - stevenicr 7y ago
    I occasionally consider how this could be used with the other things in the bill of rights. A couple people swear that person C has questionable state of mind and their free speech is taken - social accounts frozen, ability to address city council, publish things, use the mail.. do this 6 weeks before an election or council votes for example. Before an IPO? I believe that almost half of those on fbk would get almost half of people kicked, and vice versa.. If search and seizure rights could be suspended groups could go door to door finding something to remove entire populations from the voting block. just a couple of people saying they are concerned, what things could happen with the other rights? How groups in power could use these things is an interesting consideration.
  - Lazare 7y ago
    Do you see a problem with denying someone the ability to vote in an election, or to petition the government, or to have an abortion, or to be free of unreasonable searches, for a limited period of time because their state of mind is in question? All of those examples are clearly terrible, right? If merely "questioning" someone's state of mind is enough to strip a fundamental right, then a bad actor could trivially strip that right from people when they need it most. I suspect what you're getting at is that you disagree with gun ownership being treated as an important right like "not being thrown in prison for no reason" or "being able to criticise the government" or "voting", but given that it is a protected right in the US, it's nonsense to suggest that a right should not be protected, or that merely having a right temporarily removed is not a significant infringement.
    - cr0sh 7y ago
      We are having mass shootings at a minimum of one a month. Ordinary person-on-person gun violence happens daily. Ideally, neither of these would be regular occurrences, but they are. Are we to just throw our hands up in the air and say "oh well"? Would you still think that if you were among those shot, as you lay there bleeding to death? Let me tell you this - I'm politically liberal, and I support 2nd Amendment rights. Reading the various arguments presented in this article's thread, I agree with many of the 2nd Amendment viewpoints addressed about the nuances and such of the right. Even so, I feel that something needs to be done to get our current out-of-control situation under control. The problem is, I'm not sure that circle can be squared, so to speak. The consensus seems to be that if you want an intact 2nd Amendment, then you have to be willing to be among the dead victims in a shooting. I'm not sure that is what the Framers intended the 2nd Amendment to be about. In fact - just thinking about the wording of the 2nd Amendment right now - isn't it more focused on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, for the protection of country (or State?), being part of the militia - against internal or external threats to it? That is, again thinking about it, it doesn't seem to indicate that such people are free to carry or use their weapons at just any time they wanted to, but for when there was a perceived threat against the collective, not the individual? Of course, they would need to always have access to their weapon, so they should be able to carry it, in case that threat arrives when they are away from home or something... This is more a exercise in reading the wording of that particular amendment - the nuances of the words, comma placement, etc. Maybe my above "re-interpretation" is not compatible; I know it certainly isn't the interpretation of the courts today. It feels like I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I don't want to be the victim, or my loved ones to be victims, of potential future random gun violence. At the same time, I want to keep the 2nd Amendment intact. For me that would mean the ability to hunt, the ability to shoot predators or varmints on my land, the ability to protect myself and my fellow citizens if needed, the ability to practice (ideally in a controlled range), and the ability to own the guns I want and keep them in a safe manner, with proper training. Is it possible for both to be accomodated? I certainly hope it can - but maybe I'm just nursing along a fantasy...
- pmiller2 7y ago
  One of these things is very much not like the others. Red flag laws have been associated with huge reductions in gun-related suicides. The confiscation orders are also only temporary. You are being disingenuous lumping them in with terror watch lists and no fly lists that provide no due process or way to get off them, all in exchange for little to no benefit.
  - deogeo 7y ago
    > Red flag laws have been associated with huge reductions in gun-related suicides. I upvoted your comment, because you implicitly raise a very popular, and I believe very dangerous point: That results justify taking away rights. Dangerous, because the 2nd amendment is not the only one that can be sacrificed for safety.
    - mantap 7y ago
      The 2nd amendment has become an absurd right because due to technological advancement it must necessarily be severely limited for the good of society - you can't carry an RPG or a machine gun or most kinds of arms that have been invented subsequently to it's introduction. Retaining a right but in a defunct state is itself dangerous as it makes it possible to contemplate broad limitations to other rights.
      - tkifnn 7y ago
        The significant limitations on the second amendment are not the ones banning new technology. Laws preventing open carry or conceal carry, requiring permits, red flag laws... They all erode the ability of citizens to defend themselves.
      - deogeo 7y ago
        Perhaps. But restricting it must be done carefully, or you will end up with a disarmed populace, against well armed corporate security.
        wlll 7y ago
- paggle 7y ago
  In the US, due process is only required for deprivation of life, liberty, or property.
  - solotronics 7y ago
    Why would a gun not count as property and/or liberty?
  - JumpCrisscross 7y ago
    > due process is only required for deprivation of life, liberty, or property This is incorrect. The Fifth Amendment expands that coverage[1] to which the Fourteenth adds the equal protection clause [2]. As a result, the “Supreme Court of the United States interprets the clauses as providing four protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings), substantive due process, a prohibition against vague laws, and as the vehicle for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights“ [3]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_Unite... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process
- solotronics 7y ago
  Everything seems reasonable to some people when it is applied to someone they don't agree with. Instead think about how a government can and will abuse a law. Taxes in the US were supposed to be temporary to pay for a war. Imagine using red flag laws and no fly lists to totally decimate the opposing political party, doesn't sound so good to give the government these powers. More people are killed with hammers and clubs each year in the US than with guns it just doesn't make the news like high profile gun violence.
  - Griffinsauce 7y ago
    I like how you moved the goalposts. Shifting to the gun debate like that will surely induce a healthy discussion...
  - jhayward 7y ago
    > More people are killed with hammers and clubs each year in the US than with guns This is blatantly false. You appear to be repeating a sound bite from far-right web sites that claims that "more people are killed each year by hammers and fists than by AR-15s". The above statement excludes about 97% of the people killed by guns. Guns kill vastly more people than fists or clubs in the US - the numbers are on the order of > 10,000 killed by guns, < 800 killed by fists and clubs.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      Rather interesting that so much focus is placed upon the AR-15 which kills less than bare hands, year on year. Even better is that some two-thirds of deaths are suicide, yet we consider this categorically the same as homicide for some reason.
      - CPLX 7y ago
        > the AR-15 which kills less than bare hands Right but the AR-15 kills more people each year than the bare hands of people named Robert.
        7y ago
- nulbyte 7y ago
  > All unconstitutional You seem to base this on lack of due process, however I've only heard of red flag laws that specifically require due process before a judge. Are there others? If so, it would be useful to distinguish them. Otherwise, the statement is generalization.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    It’s not clear to me that you can take away someone’s second amendment rights even with due process, just as you couldn’t take away someone's first amendment rights with due process. (You couldn’t, for example, create a “red flag” law that imposed prior restraints on the political speech of specific people, even if it required a signed order from a judge.) Due process is the baseline required to deprive someone of “life, liberty, or property.” If you could take guns away with merely due process, then you wouldn’t need the second amendment, because guns are also property. That right merited it’s own amendment, with additional protections.
    - Invictus0 7y ago
      Felons are not allowed to own guns.
      - sverige 7y ago
        They aren't felons until they've been found guilty of specific laws in a court of law, which is where the due process occurs.
        Invictus0 7y ago
        That's exactly my point: the parent was saying that, even with due process, their guns could not be taken away.
        alistairSH 7y ago
        Sure, but the response above was arguing that due process could NOT be used to limit access to guns. That the 2nd was absolute, or nearly so. Which is poppycock. We already limit access to machine guns. We already have age limits on access (typically 18 for long guns and 21 for handguns). And, as you mentioned, felons are prohibited.
- tyingq 7y ago
  And all subject to high rates of false positives. Also see OFAC, where a simple first/last name match makes it impossible to bank in the US: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/Pages/fuzzy_logic.aspx https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/...
  - wil421 7y ago
    I’ve seen checkboxes on air travel and bank documents specifically for this reason. Check here if you have a name similar to someone well known/infamous. If your name’s Osmama Bin Laden or Charles Manson check here to avoid extra screening.
    - cf141q5325 7y ago
      One would think that an infamous person would check that box too. The idea seems kind of absurd, either your system knows the difference between Bin Laden and for example a 5 year old kid with the same name or it doesnt.
      - noknownsender 7y ago
        I had that thought as well, but I would think that it would just prompt a quick second look by the TSA (or whoever). They Check the box, then the screen agent takes a closer look, "Hmm, this nine year old indian girl named Charles Manson is probably not the 70+ year old dead man that we were worried about"
        wil421 7y ago
        I’d imagine the system would even show the wanted person next to the person in front of you. But then again the TSA is probably using an abstraction over an Access DB built by the lowest bidder in the early 2000s.
        tinus_hn 7y ago
        Perhaps if you check the box the system doesn’t allocate the biggest clown in the circus to your check and you get someone who can reason like, it says Osama but the terrorist Osama is dead. So it must be someone else.
- gumby 7y ago
  > All well intentioned. You are more sympathetic than I. I considered at the time that the watch list and no fly list(s!) Were conceived in anger. Thanks for giving me a chance to reconsider my assumptions.
  - mindslight 7y ago
    Regardless of the attached feelings, the motivation is the standard authoritarian delusion - a belief that more control will straightforwardly translate to better outcomes, or more commonly prevent bad outcomes. We see it across our society - it's not just the politicians, but the whole mass media cum social media narratives of the government needing to "do something" in response to something bad having happened. In reality society is not a monolithic top-down entity, but rather full of individual actors that each have their own motivations and respond to incentives in their own way. The idea that lawmakers can simply declare something to be a certain way and it will effectively happen that way is a naive fallacy. And unfortunately bad ideas do not fail fast in the modern age due to a surplus of resources that allow them to keep going indefinitely.
    - gumby 7y ago
      Standard delusion or standard excuse? Often with authoritarians cruelty is the whole point. I agree with you that on the broader society side, "something must be done; this is something; thus we must do it" is pretty pervasive.
      - mindslight 7y ago
        Nobody views themselves as a bad person. If you want to understand actual motives, it is important to remember this. Your assertion is surely applicable to some sadist cops, but not to the average voter that gets riled up by the political/media establishment.
- jeffdavis 7y ago
  Same with Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a.k.a. red flag laws. EDIT: looks like red flag laws were already listed by the parent comment. Somehow I must have read right past it.
- jrnichols 7y ago
  and the same list the Obama administration wanted to use to prevent gun purchases too. It looked like that was a possibility too. glad to see cooler heads prevailed. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-profiling/until-no-fly-list-fixed-it-shouldnt-be-used-restrict https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-p...
- cardiffspaceman 7y ago
  Due process seems to only affect a specific circumstance. For example if you want to drive around but you are stopped at a checkpoint that is supposed to find inebriated drivers, a court will rule on whether that was an undue restraint of your constitutional rights and if the court goes against you it will not waive the rights of free movement or association entirely.
pessimizer 7y ago
The cynical view of this would be that a large number of online domestic white people have reached the threshold that had been used to add people to the terrorist watchlist, or that there's an anticipation of pressure in this direction. If incel reddit has to be added to the terrorist watchlist, a lot of people from what are considered very nice families would be getting turned down at the gate. Nothing has changed in the arguments against the watchlist during the period it has been in existence.
- d883kd8 7y ago
  This is what I thought too
- body12 7y ago
  Perhaps, the NRA has been already declared a domestic terrorist organization by San Francisco. I think everyone wants to avoid TSA agents questioning passengers when the last time they had sexual intercourse was and pulling out a taser and handcuffs if it's too long.
pimmen 7y ago
"Files released by the F.B.I. in 2011 under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the F.B.I. was permitted to include people on the watchlist even if they had been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped." This sounds like an open shut case of abuse by the executive branch. It's the judicial branch's job to determine guilt, to still effectively sentence someone who's been cleared in court must be a huge overreach of the executive branch.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
Took them long enough.
mnm1 7y ago
Good. There is no excuse for treating citizens this way. None. Not 9/11. Not the Boston bombings. Not anything else. They are citizens. If the government thinks they were criminals it should indict and put them on trial. Otherwise leave them alone. And if another attack ten times worse than 9/11 happens? So be it. The government should figure out another way that's not unconstitutional and doesn't treat people like animals to conduct their operations. Better thousands die under freedom than thousands live under tyranny. After all, as others have said and we have seen especially since 9/11, those who are willing to give up freedom for security will have neither.
- moate 7y ago
  I don't understand. What's "Freedom" and how do I, as a US citizen, actually have it? "Freedom" and "Liberty" are all great, noble words that make for great talking points and sound bites. They're also just sort of vague concepts and opinions more than absolute, specific things. You say this isn't what freedom looks like. If 51% of the population disagrees with you, who's right? Fact of the matter is, you can't have both "freedom" and "democracy" (or really any government) in any real way. It's all trade offs. Best bet isn't "freedom" or "liberty" since those are extremes that presumably exist solely in a binary (it's either free, or it's not, no shades of gray) and instead aim for "fair" and "consensus". At least those are possible.
  - didibus 7y ago
    These are the more abstract philosophical meanings of freedom and liberty: > the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views > the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved > to be free is to be self-determining, autonomous And the more concrete applicability is that of: > "giving oneself their own laws", and with having rights and the civil liberties with which to exercise them without undue interference by the state Fundamentally, it is the idea of rights. Things that you are allowed, and that no one can take away from you, even if democratically ruled against by the majority. Such as: the freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, and the right to life. Democracy in that system isn't supposed to supersede liberty and freedom. What happens is that free people can come together, and if they agree, they can be governed by the rule of law, laws which must be clearly laid out, which can not take away fundamental rights, and which are enacted fairly and with due process. If the individual does not agree to this, they should be free to branch out and have different laws to be governed under. That last part is the idea of the states retaining power over themselves, with the possibility to even decide to remove themselves from the US if they so wish. All this is very much possible. Though some people argue it necessitates a virtuous culture as a prerequisite. In the sense that it requires people to be reasonable, rationale and of the same belief that freedom and liberty matters most.
SamuelAdams 7y ago
Here's a direct link to the ruling. This is a PDF. https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1689-terror-watchlist-ruling/75cd50557652ad0bfa2a/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1689-terror-watchlis...
JTbane 7y ago
2nd amendment being an absolute guarantee of freedom is up for interpretation. What well regulated militia are you a part of?
- rayiner 7y ago
  It’s a “debate” created for political reasons. If the right to bear arms was a right people like Larry Tribe believed in, they’d never engage in the contortions they do with the text. If I say “for X purposes, do Y” I’m telling you to do Y. You can’t do Z just because you think that serves X purposes better. And even if you believe the right must be connected to militias, those aren’t necessarily formal organizations. The Minutemen, for example, where self-organizing independent militias that were composed of just whoever brought a gun with them. They comprised 1/4 of the militias that fought in the Revolution. Many of the state militias, too, were BYOG. You think the framers just forgot how they won the war they had just fought? The point obviously is to protect the possibility of such militias being formed by preventing the government from disarming ordinary citizens. Now, if you’re a “living Constitution” guy and think that the constitution means whatever you want it to mean in the present time, that’s fine. But then you don’t need to rely on the tortured reading of the “militia” phrasing. Just say it’s an outmoded right that we are not going to enforce.
  - fnord123 7y ago
    >Just say it’s an outmoded right that we are not going to enforce. Just remove it.
    - moate 7y ago
      If only it were that easy.
    - some_random 7y ago
      Ok, then do that instead of trying to subvert it.
  - krapp 7y ago
    >Now, if you’re a “living Constitution” guy and think that the constitution means whatever you want it to mean in the present time. You know perfectly well that's not what the doctrine of a "living Constitution" is about. Constitutional scholarship is not made up of people who agree with you and people just making shit up.
yardie 7y ago
Good riddance. It only took 16 years longer than it should have. A secret government list that the public can't audit, has no means of due process, and prevents you from going about your life has no business in a free society.
- cies 7y ago
  Has violating the constitution stopped them, ever? I think they'll just hide it a bit deeper/ deny its existence a bit longer.
  - yardie 7y ago
    That may be the case. But they can no longer use it to deny you from traveling. It would become fairly obvious there is a list when you go to board and find out you can't by all the airlines.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      No, but the airlines can just not sell you the ticket. This just pushes the watchlist into the private sector. Airlines who fly persons A, or B, or C will be subject to additional insurance premium X. So guess what will happen? Just as bars, and restaurants have a list of people they don't let in anymore, the same will manifest itself with airlines. As soon as you present your ID, you'll be turned away by the airline's computer. This is kind of the issue, the Constitution only really protects you from the government.
      - yardie 7y ago
        > the Constitution only really protects you from the government. And that is why it's important to have those checks and balances, make sure they are followed, and enforced by the law. If the government wants to place you on a no-fly list then they should have a good reason why with evidence to back that reasoning.
- auiya 7y ago
  It doesn't mean the list is going away, it just means people proven to be US citizens will be expunged (rightfully so). Anyone NOT proven to be US citizens (and located outside the US), and thus not protected by US Constitutional rights will likely remain on the list.
SEJeff 7y ago
Yes, because non-citizen residents still pay sales taxes. Many of them have jobs and pay income taxes. One of the core tenants of the US experiment in democracy is no taxation without representation. This holds pretty true unless you happen to live in Washington D.C. or in Puerto Rico where they have no voting powers in congress.
- lazerpants 7y ago
  Residents of Puerto Rico don't pay federal income tax, hence, no representation is appropriate in that case.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    They pay FICA taxes though which go to Social Security and Medicare both federal programs.
- ClumsyPilot 7y ago
  This taxation thing keep getting banged around a lot, but I don't think it's quite right. Many of the rights, like due process, is something fundamental we'd expect of any civilised nations. I wouldn't want to exclude tourists from that, and they probably aren't paying tax.
- stjohnswarts 7y ago
  That's nonsense, no where in the bill of rights does it stipulate "if you pay taxes..."
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    The bill of rights doesn't mention anything about citizenship either. Lots of people at the time it was written wouldn't even have recognized that as a valid concept.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  > Yes, because non-citizen residents still pay sales taxes. There's no federal sales tax, and 1/10 of the states don't have state sales tax.
davidmoffatt 7y ago
Hopefully we are now following the UK's lead and starting to face our demons. Finally, a judge with an iota of common sense! Why did it take so long to call the government out on something which is, so clearly, a violation of due process? Let's get this judge on the supreme court, he or she clearly knows how to do the job!
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago
  > Hopefully we are now following the UK's lead and starting to face our demons. The UK passed a law to make bulk surveillance legal. It took a European court to object to it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-surveillance-becomes-uk-law-with-barely-a-whimper https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-survei... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-collection-violated-human-rights-strasbourg-court-rules https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-co...
stjohnswarts 7y ago
Hope it sticks. The patriot act that inspired this list is also anathema, I can't wait until it stricken from the law books as well.
Simulacra 7y ago
Likely to be reversed on appeal. Good or bad, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.

331 points by jbegley 7y ago

* watch lists * red flag laws * no fly lists All well intentioned. All ripe for abuse. All unconstitutional. All rights require due process before they can be be removed.

olliej 7y ago
Right? especially given their tendency to also be implemented in the most braindead ways imaginable :-/
devoply 7y ago
I see nothing wrong with denying anyone guns for a limited period of time because their state of mind is in question. I don't see who is losing out when this happens.
- voldacar 7y ago
  Their state of mind as determined how and by whom though? This just makes it easier for whoever happens to be in power to deny rights to [disliked or marginalized group] Also the connection between gun violence and mental health is extremely tenuous, and I would add that firearm homicides in the states are at a multi-decade low right now, though the media would have people believe otherwise
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - h0h0h0h0111 7y ago
    > I would add that firearm homicides in the states are at a multi-decade low right now Have you a good source for that? I seem to find lots of unclear sources. I found a source that they are down from their peak in 1993 (this source was 2013: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate...), but that the last 10 years has been a climb back up (https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/13/health/gun-deaths-highest-40-years-cdc/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/13/health/gun-deaths-highest... which I sourced from wikipedia, and granted is overall deaths rather than just homicides)
    - voldacar 7y ago
      Yeah my source was the same dataset from Pew.
  - pnw_hazor 7y ago
    A high percentage of ex parte temporary protection/restraining orders are later found to be unwarranted when the restrained party has their chance to argue against the order. Also, lazy family law attorneys often include requests for protection orders as a matter of course in divorce filings. These often have similar firearm restrictions as so-called red flag laws.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  My country has a history of institutionalizing dissidents with a reference to their mental health. I am not based in the US but I would be heavily against restricting any rights on that basis.
- vorticalbox 7y ago
  Because you have the right to due process, wh9ch you dont get when being but on the list. And sure in some cases it works but if you have no way to fight the claims, there is nothing stopping it being abused.
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    I always wonder what due process means in a country where most people can't afford a $400 emergency.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  All too often, officially labeling people one doesn't like as "crazy", "unbalanced", etc. has been used to marginalize/destroy them. I don't want crazy people to have guns, either, but I worry about the path we go down here because it's very, very difficult to objectively find the line between crazy and sane. (Historical examples of such abuse include people having the wrong religion, the wrong sexual orientation, and the wrong political beliefs.)
  - droithomme 7y ago
    > I don't want crazy people to have guns I realize that's a common position, but it strikes me as strange. It seems to assume that crazy people are the ones committing violent crimes. If that was actually the case though we would have huge numbers of mass murders and killings resolved with the defendant being declared not guilty by reason of insanity. That's not the case though, a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity is an extremely rare situation, almost unheard of in the court system. The reality is that overwhelmingly it is not the crazy but the sane who commit the violence and the mass murders. It makes more sense, based on not guilty by insanity statistics, to allow crazy people to have guns, and disallow the sane from having them.
    - krapp 7y ago
      It's a mistake to assume that the legal definition of insanity used to determine whether a defendant can stand trial is the only one relevant to conversation. Someone who commits mass murder can be legally sane if they are cognizant of the concept of right and wrong, are not severely mentally handicapped, are capable of understanding and responding to questions, etc. Yet I doubt anyone would consider a person capable of shooting up a synagogue to be sane. I don't think it would be "strange" to consider that someone with suicidal thoughts or someone in the heat of passion should be trusted with a firearm simply because they can also sign their own name.
      - droithomme 7y ago
        Well the discussion was about "crazy" people, people who are not just colloquially crazy (ie Bob is crazy if he thinks we can get this fix done by the weekend) but clinically insane. > someone with suicidal thoughts I don't think someone with suicidal thoughts is crazy. In fact I've never heard of anyone that doesn't have suicidal thoughts at some point in their life. That's a normal part of human existence. Different from an attempted suicide though. And someone attempting suicide is also not insane simply because of that. > or someone in the heat of passion That doesn't sound like insanity to me either. I don't even know how something like that could be evaluated. How would a gun seller know someone is in the "heat of passion"? The phrasing suggests a temporary emotional state of some kind. Perhaps the idea is if they are ranting and screaming at the gun seller and claiming they are going to use the gun to commit a mass shooting. And in that case gun sellers don't sell guns. Someone who in this heat of passion who intends to commit violence presumably is going to act normal while buying the gun. Not insanity, not something that can be determined at point of sale. > I doubt anyone would consider a person capable of shooting up a synagogue to be sane Antisemitism is pretty common among those known to be sane. No physician would diagnose madness simply based on antisemitic beliefs. There have been groups in history that mass murdered Jews, and other groups, who were the predominant people and majority of their society. They were not insane in the general case so it's not correct that someone capable of committing atrocities, including genocide, is not sane. Is a previous diagnoses of madness by a qualified medical professional using accepted standards of practice a common or even not-infrequent attribute of mass shooters and murders? Not that I can see. So we're back to someone not known to be insane - a sane person - doing this crime and the label only being applied after the fact. Again, I propose that the insane are more responsible gun owners than the sane because so few murder convictions involve those actually determined at any point to be insane by anyone qualified to make such a determination. It's easy to say killers are crazy. How does that help prevent crime? It is counterproductive in fact because it suggests that restricting civil and constitutional rights of people with diagnosed mental illnesses (about 1/5 the US population is on psychiatric drugs which require a diagnosis to be prescribed) is a solution when this group is not in fact the group that is committing these crimes and therefore there is no reasonable premise for restricting said rights.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  Personally I don't see anything wrong with denying people guns. <- that's a full stop ;-) However in the US it is your constitutional right to bear arms. This has been widely (virtually universally in the US) regarded to mean that it is your right to not be denied a gun (without due process). Questioning someone's state of mind is not due process. It really doesn't matter if we are talking about guns or we are talking about hamsters: if you have a right enshrined by your constitution it's pretty darn important that you don't have that right stripped away simply because someone levels an accusation at you. It would be pretty weird to have a right to bear hamsters...
  - DoctorOetker 7y ago
    fair enough, I still think it is good to deny a person a gun, especially when theres red flags going off, but I agree that there should be an appeals process. I guess the reason there isn't (if there isn't, what do I know) is because authorities do not want suspicious people to find out why they are suspicious... but that should mean either nobody gets the right to own a gun, or everyone, ... unless authorities do disclose why some person should be denied a gun...
    - maxwell 7y ago
      Who decides who should take away the guns, and how do you prevent them abusing that power?
      - wool_gather 7y ago
        We already have a fairly robust* process for deciding that someone's fundamental day-to-day freedom should be taken away -- i.e., for deciding to put them in prison. Is there any inherent reason we couldn't have a similar process for gun ownership? *Not flawless, of course, but what is?
        maxwell 7y ago
        If you're talking about the U.S. prison-industrial system, you answered your own question. More people are imprisoned in the United States than were in the Soviet gulags or Nazi Germany. More black people are in the prison/parole system than were enslaved before the passage of the 13th Amendment.
- erik_seaberg 7y ago
  Any sufficient reason to render them helpless is an equally good reason to lock them up. Both are dehumanizing.
- stevenicr 7y ago
  I occasionally consider how this could be used with the other things in the bill of rights. A couple people swear that person C has questionable state of mind and their free speech is taken - social accounts frozen, ability to address city council, publish things, use the mail.. do this 6 weeks before an election or council votes for example. Before an IPO? I believe that almost half of those on fbk would get almost half of people kicked, and vice versa.. If search and seizure rights could be suspended groups could go door to door finding something to remove entire populations from the voting block. just a couple of people saying they are concerned, what things could happen with the other rights? How groups in power could use these things is an interesting consideration.
- Lazare 7y ago
  Do you see a problem with denying someone the ability to vote in an election, or to petition the government, or to have an abortion, or to be free of unreasonable searches, for a limited period of time because their state of mind is in question? All of those examples are clearly terrible, right? If merely "questioning" someone's state of mind is enough to strip a fundamental right, then a bad actor could trivially strip that right from people when they need it most. I suspect what you're getting at is that you disagree with gun ownership being treated as an important right like "not being thrown in prison for no reason" or "being able to criticise the government" or "voting", but given that it is a protected right in the US, it's nonsense to suggest that a right should not be protected, or that merely having a right temporarily removed is not a significant infringement.
  - cr0sh 7y ago
    We are having mass shootings at a minimum of one a month. Ordinary person-on-person gun violence happens daily. Ideally, neither of these would be regular occurrences, but they are. Are we to just throw our hands up in the air and say "oh well"? Would you still think that if you were among those shot, as you lay there bleeding to death? Let me tell you this - I'm politically liberal, and I support 2nd Amendment rights. Reading the various arguments presented in this article's thread, I agree with many of the 2nd Amendment viewpoints addressed about the nuances and such of the right. Even so, I feel that something needs to be done to get our current out-of-control situation under control. The problem is, I'm not sure that circle can be squared, so to speak. The consensus seems to be that if you want an intact 2nd Amendment, then you have to be willing to be among the dead victims in a shooting. I'm not sure that is what the Framers intended the 2nd Amendment to be about. In fact - just thinking about the wording of the 2nd Amendment right now - isn't it more focused on the right of the people to keep and bear arms, for the protection of country (or State?), being part of the militia - against internal or external threats to it? That is, again thinking about it, it doesn't seem to indicate that such people are free to carry or use their weapons at just any time they wanted to, but for when there was a perceived threat against the collective, not the individual? Of course, they would need to always have access to their weapon, so they should be able to carry it, in case that threat arrives when they are away from home or something... This is more a exercise in reading the wording of that particular amendment - the nuances of the words, comma placement, etc. Maybe my above "re-interpretation" is not compatible; I know it certainly isn't the interpretation of the courts today. It feels like I want to have my cake and eat it, too. I don't want to be the victim, or my loved ones to be victims, of potential future random gun violence. At the same time, I want to keep the 2nd Amendment intact. For me that would mean the ability to hunt, the ability to shoot predators or varmints on my land, the ability to protect myself and my fellow citizens if needed, the ability to practice (ideally in a controlled range), and the ability to own the guns I want and keep them in a safe manner, with proper training. Is it possible for both to be accomodated? I certainly hope it can - but maybe I'm just nursing along a fantasy...
pmiller2 7y ago
One of these things is very much not like the others. Red flag laws have been associated with huge reductions in gun-related suicides. The confiscation orders are also only temporary. You are being disingenuous lumping them in with terror watch lists and no fly lists that provide no due process or way to get off them, all in exchange for little to no benefit.
- deogeo 7y ago
  > Red flag laws have been associated with huge reductions in gun-related suicides. I upvoted your comment, because you implicitly raise a very popular, and I believe very dangerous point: That results justify taking away rights. Dangerous, because the 2nd amendment is not the only one that can be sacrificed for safety.
  - mantap 7y ago
    The 2nd amendment has become an absurd right because due to technological advancement it must necessarily be severely limited for the good of society - you can't carry an RPG or a machine gun or most kinds of arms that have been invented subsequently to it's introduction. Retaining a right but in a defunct state is itself dangerous as it makes it possible to contemplate broad limitations to other rights.
    - tkifnn 7y ago
      The significant limitations on the second amendment are not the ones banning new technology. Laws preventing open carry or conceal carry, requiring permits, red flag laws... They all erode the ability of citizens to defend themselves.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      Perhaps. But restricting it must be done carefully, or you will end up with a disarmed populace, against well armed corporate security.
      - wlll 7y ago
paggle 7y ago
In the US, due process is only required for deprivation of life, liberty, or property.
- solotronics 7y ago
  Why would a gun not count as property and/or liberty?
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > due process is only required for deprivation of life, liberty, or property This is incorrect. The Fifth Amendment expands that coverage[1] to which the Fourteenth adds the equal protection clause [2]. As a result, the “Supreme Court of the United States interprets the clauses as providing four protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings), substantive due process, a prohibition against vague laws, and as the vehicle for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights“ [3]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_Unite... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_... [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process
solotronics 7y ago
Everything seems reasonable to some people when it is applied to someone they don't agree with. Instead think about how a government can and will abuse a law. Taxes in the US were supposed to be temporary to pay for a war. Imagine using red flag laws and no fly lists to totally decimate the opposing political party, doesn't sound so good to give the government these powers. More people are killed with hammers and clubs each year in the US than with guns it just doesn't make the news like high profile gun violence.
- Griffinsauce 7y ago
  I like how you moved the goalposts. Shifting to the gun debate like that will surely induce a healthy discussion...
- jhayward 7y ago
  > More people are killed with hammers and clubs each year in the US than with guns This is blatantly false. You appear to be repeating a sound bite from far-right web sites that claims that "more people are killed each year by hammers and fists than by AR-15s". The above statement excludes about 97% of the people killed by guns. Guns kill vastly more people than fists or clubs in the US - the numbers are on the order of > 10,000 killed by guns, < 800 killed by fists and clubs.
  - mieseratte 7y ago
    Rather interesting that so much focus is placed upon the AR-15 which kills less than bare hands, year on year. Even better is that some two-thirds of deaths are suicide, yet we consider this categorically the same as homicide for some reason.
    - CPLX 7y ago
      > the AR-15 which kills less than bare hands Right but the AR-15 kills more people each year than the bare hands of people named Robert.
      - 7y ago
nulbyte 7y ago
> All unconstitutional You seem to base this on lack of due process, however I've only heard of red flag laws that specifically require due process before a judge. Are there others? If so, it would be useful to distinguish them. Otherwise, the statement is generalization.
- rayiner 7y ago
  It’s not clear to me that you can take away someone’s second amendment rights even with due process, just as you couldn’t take away someone's first amendment rights with due process. (You couldn’t, for example, create a “red flag” law that imposed prior restraints on the political speech of specific people, even if it required a signed order from a judge.) Due process is the baseline required to deprive someone of “life, liberty, or property.” If you could take guns away with merely due process, then you wouldn’t need the second amendment, because guns are also property. That right merited it’s own amendment, with additional protections.
  - Invictus0 7y ago
    Felons are not allowed to own guns.
    - sverige 7y ago
      They aren't felons until they've been found guilty of specific laws in a court of law, which is where the due process occurs.
      - Invictus0 7y ago
        That's exactly my point: the parent was saying that, even with due process, their guns could not be taken away.
      - alistairSH 7y ago
        Sure, but the response above was arguing that due process could NOT be used to limit access to guns. That the 2nd was absolute, or nearly so. Which is poppycock. We already limit access to machine guns. We already have age limits on access (typically 18 for long guns and 21 for handguns). And, as you mentioned, felons are prohibited.
tyingq 7y ago
And all subject to high rates of false positives. Also see OFAC, where a simple first/last name match makes it impossible to bank in the US: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/Pages/fuzzy_logic.aspx https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/...
- wil421 7y ago
  I’ve seen checkboxes on air travel and bank documents specifically for this reason. Check here if you have a name similar to someone well known/infamous. If your name’s Osmama Bin Laden or Charles Manson check here to avoid extra screening.
  - cf141q5325 7y ago
    One would think that an infamous person would check that box too. The idea seems kind of absurd, either your system knows the difference between Bin Laden and for example a 5 year old kid with the same name or it doesnt.
    - noknownsender 7y ago
      I had that thought as well, but I would think that it would just prompt a quick second look by the TSA (or whoever). They Check the box, then the screen agent takes a closer look, "Hmm, this nine year old indian girl named Charles Manson is probably not the 70+ year old dead man that we were worried about"
      - wil421 7y ago
        I’d imagine the system would even show the wanted person next to the person in front of you. But then again the TSA is probably using an abstraction over an Access DB built by the lowest bidder in the early 2000s.
      - tinus_hn 7y ago
        Perhaps if you check the box the system doesn’t allocate the biggest clown in the circus to your check and you get someone who can reason like, it says Osama but the terrorist Osama is dead. So it must be someone else.
gumby 7y ago
> All well intentioned. You are more sympathetic than I. I considered at the time that the watch list and no fly list(s!) Were conceived in anger. Thanks for giving me a chance to reconsider my assumptions.
- mindslight 7y ago
  Regardless of the attached feelings, the motivation is the standard authoritarian delusion - a belief that more control will straightforwardly translate to better outcomes, or more commonly prevent bad outcomes. We see it across our society - it's not just the politicians, but the whole mass media cum social media narratives of the government needing to "do something" in response to something bad having happened. In reality society is not a monolithic top-down entity, but rather full of individual actors that each have their own motivations and respond to incentives in their own way. The idea that lawmakers can simply declare something to be a certain way and it will effectively happen that way is a naive fallacy. And unfortunately bad ideas do not fail fast in the modern age due to a surplus of resources that allow them to keep going indefinitely.
  - gumby 7y ago
    Standard delusion or standard excuse? Often with authoritarians cruelty is the whole point. I agree with you that on the broader society side, "something must be done; this is something; thus we must do it" is pretty pervasive.
    - mindslight 7y ago
      Nobody views themselves as a bad person. If you want to understand actual motives, it is important to remember this. Your assertion is surely applicable to some sadist cops, but not to the average voter that gets riled up by the political/media establishment.
jeffdavis 7y ago
Same with Extreme Risk Protection Orders, a.k.a. red flag laws. EDIT: looks like red flag laws were already listed by the parent comment. Somehow I must have read right past it.
jrnichols 7y ago
and the same list the Obama administration wanted to use to prevent gun purchases too. It looked like that was a possibility too. glad to see cooler heads prevailed. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-profiling/until-no-fly-list-fixed-it-shouldnt-be-used-restrict https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-p...
cardiffspaceman 7y ago
Due process seems to only affect a specific circumstance. For example if you want to drive around but you are stopped at a checkpoint that is supposed to find inebriated drivers, a court will rule on whether that was an undue restraint of your constitutional rights and if the court goes against you it will not waive the rights of free movement or association entirely.

pessimizer 7y ago

The cynical view of this would be that a large number of online domestic white people have reached the threshold that had been used to add people to the terrorist watchlist, or that there's an anticipation of pressure in this direction. If incel reddit has to be added to the terrorist watchlist, a lot of people from what are considered very nice families would be getting turned down at the gate. Nothing has changed in the arguments against the watchlist during the period it has been in existence.

d883kd8 7y ago
This is what I thought too
body12 7y ago
Perhaps, the NRA has been already declared a domestic terrorist organization by San Francisco. I think everyone wants to avoid TSA agents questioning passengers when the last time they had sexual intercourse was and pulling out a taser and handcuffs if it's too long.

pimmen 7y ago

"Files released by the F.B.I. in 2011 under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the F.B.I. was permitted to include people on the watchlist even if they had been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped." This sounds like an open shut case of abuse by the executive branch. It's the judicial branch's job to determine guilt, to still effectively sentence someone who's been cleared in court must be a huge overreach of the executive branch.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

Took them long enough.

mnm1 7y ago

Good. There is no excuse for treating citizens this way. None. Not 9/11. Not the Boston bombings. Not anything else. They are citizens. If the government thinks they were criminals it should indict and put them on trial. Otherwise leave them alone. And if another attack ten times worse than 9/11 happens? So be it. The government should figure out another way that's not unconstitutional and doesn't treat people like animals to conduct their operations. Better thousands die under freedom than thousands live under tyranny. After all, as others have said and we have seen especially since 9/11, those who are willing to give up freedom for security will have neither.

moate 7y ago
I don't understand. What's "Freedom" and how do I, as a US citizen, actually have it? "Freedom" and "Liberty" are all great, noble words that make for great talking points and sound bites. They're also just sort of vague concepts and opinions more than absolute, specific things. You say this isn't what freedom looks like. If 51% of the population disagrees with you, who's right? Fact of the matter is, you can't have both "freedom" and "democracy" (or really any government) in any real way. It's all trade offs. Best bet isn't "freedom" or "liberty" since those are extremes that presumably exist solely in a binary (it's either free, or it's not, no shades of gray) and instead aim for "fair" and "consensus". At least those are possible.
- didibus 7y ago
  These are the more abstract philosophical meanings of freedom and liberty: > the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views > the absence of arbitrary restraints, taking into account the rights of all involved > to be free is to be self-determining, autonomous And the more concrete applicability is that of: > "giving oneself their own laws", and with having rights and the civil liberties with which to exercise them without undue interference by the state Fundamentally, it is the idea of rights. Things that you are allowed, and that no one can take away from you, even if democratically ruled against by the majority. Such as: the freedom of conscience, freedom of press, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, the right to security and liberty, freedom of speech, the right to privacy, the right to equal treatment under the law and due process, the right to a fair trial, and the right to life. Democracy in that system isn't supposed to supersede liberty and freedom. What happens is that free people can come together, and if they agree, they can be governed by the rule of law, laws which must be clearly laid out, which can not take away fundamental rights, and which are enacted fairly and with due process. If the individual does not agree to this, they should be free to branch out and have different laws to be governed under. That last part is the idea of the states retaining power over themselves, with the possibility to even decide to remove themselves from the US if they so wish. All this is very much possible. Though some people argue it necessitates a virtuous culture as a prerequisite. In the sense that it requires people to be reasonable, rationale and of the same belief that freedom and liberty matters most.

SamuelAdams 7y ago

Here's a direct link to the ruling. This is a PDF. https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1689-terror-watchlist-ruling/75cd50557652ad0bfa2a/optimized/full.pdf#page=1 https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthelper/1689-terror-watchlis...

JTbane 7y ago

2nd amendment being an absolute guarantee of freedom is up for interpretation. What well regulated militia are you a part of?

rayiner 7y ago
It’s a “debate” created for political reasons. If the right to bear arms was a right people like Larry Tribe believed in, they’d never engage in the contortions they do with the text. If I say “for X purposes, do Y” I’m telling you to do Y. You can’t do Z just because you think that serves X purposes better. And even if you believe the right must be connected to militias, those aren’t necessarily formal organizations. The Minutemen, for example, where self-organizing independent militias that were composed of just whoever brought a gun with them. They comprised 1/4 of the militias that fought in the Revolution. Many of the state militias, too, were BYOG. You think the framers just forgot how they won the war they had just fought? The point obviously is to protect the possibility of such militias being formed by preventing the government from disarming ordinary citizens. Now, if you’re a “living Constitution” guy and think that the constitution means whatever you want it to mean in the present time, that’s fine. But then you don’t need to rely on the tortured reading of the “militia” phrasing. Just say it’s an outmoded right that we are not going to enforce.
- fnord123 7y ago
  >Just say it’s an outmoded right that we are not going to enforce. Just remove it.
  - moate 7y ago
    If only it were that easy.
  - some_random 7y ago
    Ok, then do that instead of trying to subvert it.
- krapp 7y ago
  >Now, if you’re a “living Constitution” guy and think that the constitution means whatever you want it to mean in the present time. You know perfectly well that's not what the doctrine of a "living Constitution" is about. Constitutional scholarship is not made up of people who agree with you and people just making shit up.

yardie 7y ago

Good riddance. It only took 16 years longer than it should have. A secret government list that the public can't audit, has no means of due process, and prevents you from going about your life has no business in a free society.

cies 7y ago
Has violating the constitution stopped them, ever? I think they'll just hide it a bit deeper/ deny its existence a bit longer.
- yardie 7y ago
  That may be the case. But they can no longer use it to deny you from traveling. It would become fairly obvious there is a list when you go to board and find out you can't by all the airlines.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    No, but the airlines can just not sell you the ticket. This just pushes the watchlist into the private sector. Airlines who fly persons A, or B, or C will be subject to additional insurance premium X. So guess what will happen? Just as bars, and restaurants have a list of people they don't let in anymore, the same will manifest itself with airlines. As soon as you present your ID, you'll be turned away by the airline's computer. This is kind of the issue, the Constitution only really protects you from the government.
    - yardie 7y ago
      > the Constitution only really protects you from the government. And that is why it's important to have those checks and balances, make sure they are followed, and enforced by the law. If the government wants to place you on a no-fly list then they should have a good reason why with evidence to back that reasoning.
auiya 7y ago
It doesn't mean the list is going away, it just means people proven to be US citizens will be expunged (rightfully so). Anyone NOT proven to be US citizens (and located outside the US), and thus not protected by US Constitutional rights will likely remain on the list.

SEJeff 7y ago

Yes, because non-citizen residents still pay sales taxes. Many of them have jobs and pay income taxes. One of the core tenants of the US experiment in democracy is no taxation without representation. This holds pretty true unless you happen to live in Washington D.C. or in Puerto Rico where they have no voting powers in congress.

lazerpants 7y ago
Residents of Puerto Rico don't pay federal income tax, hence, no representation is appropriate in that case.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  They pay FICA taxes though which go to Social Security and Medicare both federal programs.
ClumsyPilot 7y ago
This taxation thing keep getting banged around a lot, but I don't think it's quite right. Many of the rights, like due process, is something fundamental we'd expect of any civilised nations. I wouldn't want to exclude tourists from that, and they probably aren't paying tax.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
That's nonsense, no where in the bill of rights does it stipulate "if you pay taxes..."
- jessaustin 7y ago
  The bill of rights doesn't mention anything about citizenship either. Lots of people at the time it was written wouldn't even have recognized that as a valid concept.
wool_gather 7y ago
> Yes, because non-citizen residents still pay sales taxes. There's no federal sales tax, and 1/10 of the states don't have state sales tax.

davidmoffatt 7y ago

Hopefully we are now following the UK's lead and starting to face our demons. Finally, a judge with an iota of common sense! Why did it take so long to call the government out on something which is, so clearly, a violation of due process? Let's get this judge on the supreme court, he or she clearly knows how to do the job!

MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> Hopefully we are now following the UK's lead and starting to face our demons. The UK passed a law to make bulk surveillance legal. It took a European court to object to it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-surveillance-becomes-uk-law-with-barely-a-whimper https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-survei... https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-collection-violated-human-rights-strasbourg-court-rules https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/gchq-data-co...

stjohnswarts 7y ago

Hope it sticks. The patriot act that inspired this list is also anathema, I can't wait until it stricken from the law books as well.

Simulacra 7y ago

Likely to be reversed on appeal. Good or bad, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.