Straight Outta Minneapolis

Are you on a terrorist watchlist? The Rake has an interesting and pretty funny investigation that will make you wonder. Along with a Gopher State focus, Joe Pastoor's article contains a nice survey of lists like the State Department's CLASS (13 million names and growing), along with a brief history of the FBI's top ten list.

In the watchlist game, it's hard to tell who's the more paranoid, the government or its citizens. For his part, [FBI Special Agent Paul] McCabe says the public is unaware of just how much the FBI has reformed over the past decade, and how much they play it by the book. Still, the feds certainly have history going against them. And it's hard to know whether to be comforted or disturbed when federal agencies open their files in the interest of the Freedom of Information Act.

Also has a notable sidebar, "10 Ways to Make Sure You'll Never Fly Again."

Comments

[Lefty]

Well, you have to admit (somehow I don't think you will) that travelling from one place to another without State permission is at least as important a right as owning an AK 47.

[Anonymous]

>>0) One sure way NOT to get on a terrorist watch list: Buy a Gun. Luckily, in all the media hoopla and Constitution-shredding that has been going on trying to track down terrorists, it?s good to know you can still load up on all the legally obtainable firearms you want without arousing suspicion.

[joe]

No, it's just a sense of wonder that our government considers the Naval officer with an ambiguous last name to be more of a danger than the guy with a crate of semi-auto rifles.

[Anonymous]

yes it is a wonder as flying is our most sacred human right while guns are just for national guardsmen

[Joe Pastoor]

Americans enter this new age of eroded liberty with a strangely exaggerated sense of their "rights." This leaves them rather unfocused when it comes to confronting the Ashcroft initiatives; they're not too sure what they had to begin with, so they assume that hopping on a plane is a constitutionally protected activity. Gun owners, however, know exactly what they want and have organized to protect it. In writing the watchlist story, I was stymied again and again by liberal groups like the ACLU, Amnesty International and the Green Party who could not get their %$# together enough to supply real evidence of the abuses they claim have taken place. The head of the Minnesota chapter of the ACLU could not even get his hands on their profiling complaint registry and chatted me up about systems for methane recovery from cow dung instead.