CBSNewYork.com
2-7-4

Are You On Uncle Sam's No Fly List?

NEW YORK (CBS) -- The war on terror casts a wide net and has so far
prevented a second September 11th. But is that net too wide? CBS 2 has
learned of a top secret government list of Americans who are not
allowed on any commercial airlines.

Are they terrorists or violent criminals or something else? CBS 2's
Cheryl Fiandaca investigates.

The airport counter: This is as far as Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams
say they are allowed to go at San Francisco International Airport. The
last time they checked in for a flight to Boston to visit Gordon's
80-year-old father, an airline employee called the police.

"She came back and said you turned up on the FBI no-fly list. We have
called the San Francisco police. We were shocked, really shocked,"
recalled Adams.

"We were detained. We were definitely detained. I couldn't even get a
drink of water," Gordon remembered.

So why would two women in their 50's, U.S. citizens, San Francisco
homeowners and long-time peace activists with no criminal records be
on a federal watch list with suspected terrorists?

That's just one of the questions the couple wanted answers to.

An ACLU attorney tells CBS 2 the government won't even tell them if
Gordon and Adams are on the list.

Last April, the ACLU of Northern California filed suit against the
Transportation Security Administration and the FBI on behalf of the
pair and demanded answers to basic questions, including how many
people are on the secret list, who is on the it, how do you get on it
and how can you get off it.

This what they got back: hundreds of pages of blacked out text that
give them no answers to any of their questions.

"The government has blacked out the information about what criteria
they use to place people on these lists. So we don't know how someone
gets on the list. How they can get off the list if they're on it
incorrectly, we don't know. If the government monitors the list, we
don't know if any of this makes us any safer. What we do know is
hundreds, maybe thousands, of passengers are being routinely hassled,
innocent passengers, because of these lists," ACLU attorney Jayashri
Srikantiah told CBS 2.

Civil rights activists don't dispute the governments right to keep a
watchlist, but they do have a problem with who's on it and why.

"It's very scary that our government is keeping a list. That's scary,"
Adams said.

Scary and all too real. The government has admitted it has a secret
no-fly list of people who are not allowed to fly. And also has a
secret selected list of people who are to be singled out, detained,
and questioned.

Both are stored in airline databases and are accessed at check in. The
lists allegedly contain thousands of names of passengers who are to be
stopped before boarding commercial flights.

The list isn't new. It has been in existence since about 1990 but was
expanded after the September 11th attacks.

"It's a no-fly list, it's a list of names gathered through
intelligence and law enforcement of individuals who are either known
terrorists or have links to known terrorists," TSA spokesperson Mark
Hatfied told Fiandaca.

The list is now alleged to include not only suspected terrorists and
those believed to be a threat to aviation security but civil rights
activists say it also targets people based on their political views. A
list that is thought to include members of the Green Party, a Jesuit
priest who is a peace activist and two civil rights attorneys.

In Gordon and Adams' case, the ACLU believes the couple may have been
targeted for their work on War Times, a free bilingual newspaper that
has been critical of the war and the Bush administration's policies on
terrorism.

It's very scary that two people who pose no danger, who are publishing
something, which last time I looked we were allowed to do, are being
detained at the airport and having the police called and they won't
tell us why," Adams said.

And as of today, Gordon and Adams still don't have any answers from
the government but have a court hearing set for April 9th. This
controversy isn't likely to go away anytime soon, since the government
is planning on implementing a color code system this summer to track
passengers and that list too is expected to be secret.

..........

http://cbsnewyork.com/topstories/loc...036144559.html