ARE YOU ON THE LIST OF TERRORISTS?

NORMAN A. PATTISM HARTFORD COURANT - "License and registration, please?"
The officer stands beside your car. Behind you, his cruiser lights are
flashing. . . "What have I done?" you ask. The officer explains that you
ran a stop sign several blocks back. You never saw the sign, but no
matter. It will be a small fine and off you will go. Everyone makes
simple mistakes from time to time.
The officer takes your license and registration to his car. He enters
your name into a database linked to his car by computer. A message
flashes across his screen: WARNING - APPROACH WITH CAUTION. . . THIS
INDIVIDUAL IS ASSOCIATED WITH TERRORISM. . . USE CAUTION AND IMMEDIATELY
CONTACT THE TERRORIST SCREENING CENTER AT (866) 872-9001 FOR ADDITIONAL
DIRECTION.

Your plans for the evening have changed. You are now on a federal radar,
listed and tagged as a potential threat. Your name is part of the FBI's
Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File. Will you go home, or to a
jail cell?

How did your name get on the list? You don't know. You may never know.
Perhaps you were seen at an antiwar rally. Or perhaps you contributed
money to a candidate or cause that some anonymous soul views as suspect.
Like it or not, however, every law enforcement officer in the country
now need only log onto his computer to learn that you are a suspect. . .


The state police deny maintaining any such lists. I suspect the denials
are a mere linguistic trick. The state may not maintain a list. The
lists of who is naughty and who is nice are most likely in federal
hands. . . When state lawmakers try to subpoena federal officials, those
subpoenas will be quashed in the name of national security or some other
legal device that makes the federal government a distant, and
sacrosanct, overlord.

VGTOF, for example, was created in 1995 in response to the Oklahoma City
bombing. It is managed by the FBI. The list initially was focused on
individuals believed to be members of groups posing a threat to the
United States. But in recent years, the list has expanded. Not long ago,
mere protesters against the war in Iraq were placed on the list. A
federal audit of VGTOF in 2005 found an error rate of 40 percent based
on a small sample of records. Are you on the VGTOF list?

[Norman A. Pattis is a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer]

http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/commentary/
hc-commentarypattis0114.artjan14,0,4339460.story

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