ACLU: Trapped in a Black Box: Growing Terrorism Watchlisting in Everyday Policing
Prepared by: Civil Liberties and National Security Clinic, Yale Law School April 2016
Webmaster Comment: Ex-FBI whistleblower, Kyle Seraphin, describes the FBI as a “self-licking ice cream cone.” The FBI has created and carries out the “targeted individual program” as essentially a “make work program” for themselves. It is emblematic of their despicable cowardice that the vast majority of individuals they have secretly designated as “terrorist threats,” i.e., targeted individuals or TIs, are defenseless, law-abiding, elderly and retired citizens, the majority of whom appear to be women.
The FBI/DHS are the backbone of the American STASI Secret POLITICAL Police. It must be exposed as a criminal organization guilty of treason, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and it must be abolished. To restore Constitutional governance in America, all personnel involved in the slow-kill-torturing-terrorization of innocent American citizens must be tried, convicted, and executed for torture, terrorism, attempted murder, murder, and highest treason. These are felony to capital crimes.
The number one responsibility of government is to protect it’s citizens. The US government human traffics, tortures, terrorizes and murders its citizens. The FBI-DHS-CIA-NSA-DoD complex and their private-sector partners (Palantir, Infragard, Lockheed, etc.) comprise the greatest organized crime syndicate and criminal gangs in the world. Based on their actions and policies, they are deeply Satanic. These despicable traitors are carrying out the American Bolshevik Revolution, now with the full technocratic means of controlling of everyone and everything. The ultimate slavery. God help us all.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Executive Summary ……………………………………………………………. 1
Key Findings …………………………………………………………………..1
I. Background ………………………………………………………………………………. 3
II. New Data …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5
III. Nominations …………………………………………………………………………….. 12
A. Historical Developments …………………………………………………………………… 13
B. Current Nomination Procedures and Criteria ……………………………………………………….. 16
IV. Encounters with Local Law Enforcement ……………………………………………………………. 21
A. The Encounter Process …………………………………………………………………. 22
B. Description of Handling Codes ………………………………………………………………………….. 24
V. Silent Hits ………………………………………………………………………………. 28
A. Criteria for Silent Hit Nominations …………………………………………………………………….. 28
B. Expanding Use ………………………………………………………………………. 29
C. Fewer Procedural Protections ………………………………………………………………….. 31
VI. Redress ………………………………………………………………………… 32
Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………….. 33
Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 34
Excerpt (page 2-3):
The documents raise serious questions about the accuracy of many of the records in the
VGTOF/KST File. The FOIA documents indicate that the FBI long lacked sufficient safeguards
for new entries to the File, increasing the risk that innocent individuals would be placed in it and retained there indefinitely. Although the process has become more centralized over time, the
current system lacks adequate substantive oversight for existing entries and utilizes a low
“reasonable suspicion” evidentiary standard that is subject to numerous exceptions.
The primary purpose of the VGTOF/KST File is not law enforcement, but the surveillance
and tracking of individuals for indefinite periods. It would be legitimate for law enforcement to create a list of individuals for whom arrest warrants have been issued, but such individuals constitute a minuscule percentage of the overall number of records in the File. Police encounters with others in the File almost never result in arrest and are not intended to do so. Rather, the encountering officer is instructed to relay information about the watchlisted individual to the FBI without revealing to the individual that she has been watchlisted or that such information is being gathered or communicated. That information can include anything that the officer might glean during the encounter, such as vehicle information, travel plans and history, and the identities and other details of family members and companions.
The FBI and other government agencies use “silent hits” to track encounters with a watchlisted person without alerting frontline law enforcement officers. During such encounters, the FBI receives an automatic notification of the encounter, while the frontline officer’s search of the individual’s name and biometric information yields no indication of the individual’s watchlisted status. FBI documents from 2009 showed that use of the “silent hit” system became increasingly widespread, and such routine use underscores that the KST File is principally a domestic intelligence-gathering tool, not a means of locating and apprehending criminals.
Redress for individuals who are erroneously placed in the KST File is essentially
nonexistent. The FBI’s longstanding policy is neither to confirm nor deny that an individual is on a terrorism watchlist. Unlike those on the No Fly List or the Selectee List, whose status on a watchlist becomes clear when they are prevented from boarding a flight or are continually
subjected to additional screening, those in the KST File are unlikely to receive such de facto
notice. Law enforcement officers who have access to the watchlist may learn that the
government considers a person a terrorism suspect during traffic stops or in other contexts, but in order not to alert individuals to the possibility of a pending investigation, the officers are instructed not to reveal to the individuals that they are on a terrorist watchlist. Even if, as often happens, individuals come to suspect that they have been placed in the KST File, the FBI has not instituted a process through which they can contest that placement and clear their names. The KST File is essentially a black box—an opaque and expanding accumulation of names.