FAST Redress Act of 2009 – birth of the “Fly List”

Liquids on a Plane by Cory Doctorow This almost writes itself!

We all know of the utter stupidity of the TSA’s Terrorist ‘watchlist’ (and I won’t rehash the arguments here). People caught on it include:

… and many more…

Of course in “Stating The Bleedin’ Obvious 101″ any eedgit learns that a name based watchlist is about as useful as a mans tit… and as a real insult to our intellegence they add (in their hilariuosly titled blog page “Myth Buster“):

TSA doesn’t have a watch list

and

TSA is a customer of the Terrorist Screening Center, a component of the FBI (…) responsible for (the) list

But call a spade a spade – if you’re turfing me off a flight on the basis of a list I don’t give a bollix who’s list you’re using.

So what happens if you find out your on a list? Well up to now not very much. Apparently it takes about 1 to 11/2 months and that is only because the ACLU sued for citizens to have the right to do so. But enter The FAST Redress Act of 2009 which obliges the Homeland Security secretary to 

  1. establish a “timely and fair” process of appeal and redress,
  2. (create) an Office of Appeals and Redress, and
  3. maintain a “comprehensive cleared list” of people who have been inappropriately included on terror watch lists or databases

Ladies and gentlemen – THE FLY LIST!!!

Now I wonder who will be charged with maintaining yet another list for the Department of Homeland Security? Let’s hope the responsibility isn’t given to the fuckwits who create the necessity for the Fly List in the first place!

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One Comment

  1. Styrer:

    Great piece.

    And they’ve now hit the 1,000,000th member of the watchlist. The time approaches when a ‘fly list’ will no longer be a joke.

    The ACLU is a bit like a rabid pet; its bites can be useful, but only by accident. But on this one, they’ve nailed it. Good luck to them and thanks for trying.

    Styrer

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