Are You On The Government Watch List?

I couldn't watch Condi-lies on MTP yesterday. But as I was flipping around I came across this on PBS Now. Try to find the show times in your area and watch this.


http://www.pbs.org/now/

Are you on the Government watch list?
Are you being watched by the government? If you are, it'd be hard to know for sure. The government maintains various watch lists to catch suspected terrorists and others deemed potentially harmful, but most of these lists are not public, though one exception is the Treasury's Specially Designated Nationals list.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) compiles watch lists based on information they receive from federal intelligence, law enforcement, and other agencies.

A representative from the TSA told NOW Online that the only way to find out if you're on one is by purchasing a boarding ticket. If your name matches one on a watch list, you'll be subject to increased security attention at the airport. (Read about the experience of the ACLU's Anthony Romero.)

If it's just your name that matches, they'll send you off to your flight. The TSA has even developed a clearance protocol to help speed up the process. But if you are the person on the list, you won't be going anywhere.

Of course, that's just one agency's watch list. The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), created in 2004 as the main U.S. terrorism intelligence agency, keeps the largest watch list — reported by the THE WASHINGTON POST to include 325,000 names. The list includes information from other agency reports, such as the CIA, the FBI, and the National Security Agency. Many have criticized the government for not having a single, authoritative, and accurate terrorist watch list; there are reportedly more than 26 terrorism-related databases in use by various agencies. The NCTC is trying to streamline the process.

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Domestic Spying Update

Civil rights groups and some lawmakers were outraged when President Bush admitted authorizing eavesdropping without court approval on American citizens suspected of having links to terrorist organizations. Was the move necessary to protect Americans, or did his actions undermine civil liberties or even circumvent the law? Those are the questions being asked by U.S. citizens, Congress and the intelligence services themselves.

In fact, recently, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced a measure to censure the President for his actions. Read the Senator's press release and the censure resolution. So what is censure exactly? According to the U.S. Senate's Virtual Reference Desk, it is a "formal statement of disapproval." Only once in the nation's history has a President been censured - it was in 1834, when President Andrew Jackson was denounced for refusing to hand over a document requested by the Senate. Other than that, the Senate has censured nine of its own members since 1789.

Feingold is facing harsh criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for his resolution. Some object on the grounds that the President has every right to take action as necessary to protect the country from terrorism. Others merely feel that Feingold is wasting his breath on a hopeless cause when there are larger political battles to be fought.

While censure is an unlikely outcome in this case, the story leading up to it still has many concerned. Learn about the controversy below.

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A History of Dissent
The First Amendment reads "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances."

Of course, our right to protest is not unrestricted. The Supreme Court has handed down decisions that limit certain expressions, creating a very complicated area of constitutional law. Conduct (picketing, demonstrating, etc.) can be restricted to a greater degree than plain speech. Some reasons that government might restrict protest include: public safety, maintaining the public peace, prevention of violence, prevention of a threat of violence, and protection of property.

In a public forum, governments may restrict expression with "time, place, and manner regulations." However, restrictions cannot be based on the content of the speech, and must show that the regulation serves a significant government interest and leaves ample alternatives for expression. The regulation cannot be "substantially broader than necessary to achieve the government's interest."

Activists have developed many different means of expressing dissent over the years. Read below about some of the most powerful examples of protest in America.

				Civil Rights Battle One of the most unique tools of the civil rights movement was the silent protest. In 1917 in New York City, a silent parade was staged in protest of the East St. Louis, Illinois massacre and recent lychings in the south. Protesters dressed in their finest clothes, and to the sound of nothing but muffled drums, carried picket signs as they proceeded along the parade route. As reported in the NEW YORK AGE in 1917: "They marched without uttering one word or making a single gesticulation and protested in respectful silence against the reign of mob law, segregation, "Jim Crowism" and many other indignities to which the race is unnecessarily subjected in the United States." Read more about the NAACP-organized silent parade from The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture In 1960, "Jim Crow" laws throughout the South continued to segregate people by race in public places, including a lunch counter at a F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina. On a February afternoon, four African American students sat down there to order lunch. When asked to leave, they stayed where they were, beginning one of the first sustained sit-ins, which then "ignited a youth-led movement to challenge injustice and racial inequality throughout the South." Their passive protest brought increased awareness to the injustice of Jim Crow laws, and the eventual desegregation of the Woolworth lunch counter. For more on "Sitting for Justice," visit the Web site of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

				Suffrage and Women's Liberation In the winter of 1917, Alice Paul led the National Women's Party to picket the White House in hopes that President Woodrow Wilson would support a Constitutional amendment giving all women the suffrage, the right to vote. During the months they spent picketing, the protesters were subjected first to verbal and physical assault from spectators, and later police arrest on charges such as obstruction of traffic. Eventually, Alice Paul herself was arrested, tried, and sentenced to 7 months in prison, during which she embarked on a hunger strike. She was released after being jailed for 5 weeks, and finally in 1920, women's right to vote became the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution. The battle for equal rights for women has continued over the years. In 1968, the feminist group New York Radical Women targeted the Miss America Pageant for protest. This was one of the first events to bring attention to the emerging Women's Liberation Movement, as four hundred protesters gathered on the Atlantic City boardwalk outside the convention center where the pageant was being held. Protesters threw items such as dish detergent, false eyelashes, wigs, high heels, bras and girdles into the "Freedom Trash Can" but although rumors of the items being burned circulated, the so-called "bra burners" set nothing on fire. As reported on the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE Web site, "the law-abiding protesters had not been able to get a fire permit."

				Peace Protests Around the time the Vietnam war draft was announced, people around the country from college campuses, middle-class suburbs, labor unions, and government institutions began to organize protests against the war, the first prominent rally happening in 1965. Over the next few years, anti-war rallies, speeches, demonstrations, and concerts continued all over the country, remaining powerful for the duration of the conflict. As described in THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN MILITARY HISTORY, diverse tactics were used: "...legal demonstrations, grassroots organizing, congressional lobbying, electoral challenges, civil disobedience, draft resistance, self-immolations, political violence." In 2003, anti-war activists across the country marched against the U.S.-led war on Iraq. As was reported at the time by the CHARLESTON POST AND COURIER: "Since the outbreak of war, peace demonstrations have spread to dozens of American cities large and small in one of the widest outpourings of anti-government protesting in many years. Antiwar activists have blocked traffic, sat in at federal buildings, prayed at somber candlelight vigils, and laid down on sidewalks to symbolize the war deal.... Nearly all protests have been peaceful, though scuffling with police broke out on a few occasions." In February of 2003 in New York City, antiwar demonstrators were prohibited to march past the United Nations complex or anywhere else in Manhattan by a federal judge ruling. The judge said the organizers would have to settle for a stationary rally five blocks north of the complex, saying that free-speech rights were adequately addressed in this counteroffer.

				The Globalization Debate In recent years, protests against globalization have attracted a lot of media attention. Events in Seattle, Quebec City, and Miami, for example, have brought worldwide attention to the fight against globalization and free trade agreements. At World Trade Organization talks in Seattle in December 1999, more than 100,000 protesters marched on the conference. Most demonstrations were peaceful, but there was a core group of anarchists seeking confrontation with police. At the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in April of 2001, riot police braced for violence, and reportedly fired rubber bullets and tear gas, and turned water cannons on demonstrators who took over streets, started fires, broke shop windows and tore down a concrete barrier. Most recently, last November in Miami at the FTAA summit, unarmed demonstrators, local residents, and journalists were said to be assualted with tear gas, pepper spray, beanbag projectiles, electric-shock tasers, and other police weapons. NOW's "Criminalizing Dissent?" examines what happened in Miami from the perspective of protesters and police.