same game, new rules

For most of the past eight years, all manner of individuals have been decrying the USA PATRIOT Act (I will have to admit to never knowing that its name was an acronym.) whenever and wherever possible. A lot of those dissenters came from the left side of the political fence, but there were also a fair number of conservatives, and a whole lot of libertarians, who ranged from “not too sure” to “adamantly opposed”. Personally, I confess that I am none too happy at sacrificing freedoms in the specious pursuit of “safety” (I believe Ben Franklin had something to say about that), and I was just as “not happy” about the situation when the bill was passed as I am now.
However, this post is not about me. A lot of the complaints about the Patriot Act revolved around its exploitable nature, and that it could be misused, abused, targetted against American citizens, and generally taken advantage of to expand our government’s control over its subjects… er… citizens. Thinks like wiretaps and secret lists of “dangerous” individuals were decried until people’s faces turned blue, and the incessant background hum of, “ZOMG, the Patriot Act is going to let the government take over the WORLD!!11!!” was… well… pretty much incessant.
Then we elected a new President.
And now certain individuals are advocating that those secret lists be used to strip rights from people without due process or the right of a trial. Coincidentally, some of the same people supporting this current misuse of secret lists were also some of the people screaming about how those secret lists could be abused not a few years ago… I guess it must be nice to fulfill your own prophecy.
We discussed this movement before, and how the “No-Fly List”/”Terrorist Watch List” has effectively no oversight, how the you can be added to the list and never know, how being removed from the list is effectively impossible, and how the list is fraught with all manner of errors and records that should not be there. No trial is necessary to be added to this list. No real cause is necessary to be added to this list. No due process is exercised when being added to this list. Five-year-old children, multiple “Robert Johnson”s, Senator Kennedy, and countless other people have been erroneously added to the list without any notification or justification.
And some of the same people who were saying that this list could be used to abridge Americans’ rights are now trying to use this list to abridge Americans’ rights. That much irony could sink the QE2.
So are you on the list? Do you know? How would you know? How would you challenge it? Apparently, in the past five years, 800 gun-purchase-related background checks were executed on individuals on the list – as Sebastian points out, how do they know? What does it take to get on the list?
And who wants to start making bets as to the number of “rightwing extremists” (i.e. military veterans, individuals concerned about illegal immigration, those who dare speak up for their rights, Tea Party attendees, firearm owners, etc.) added to the list in the coming months…?