Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota

[longship]

I would have posted this under LBN, but the story is from last Friday. I scanned LBN and didn't see it, so here it is.

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal.

These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. Air marshals told 7NEWS that managers in Las Vegas created and continue to maintain this potentially dangerous quota system.

...more at link, below.

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota

This is just one more outrage from ChimpCo.

[longship]

1. Damn! As soon as I posted this, DU goes down.

Hope people will get to see it now.

:kick:ed

[TahitiNut]

2. I didn't notice. Maybe a router problem near you?

I've been reading and posting during the interval. :shrug:

[longship]

4. Thank you for the heads up on that.

But, I'm doing other Net things and my router is working just fine.
I have dedicated IP and host my own DNS, so there should be few routing problems. Also, I was able to get to other sites. Just DU was hosed, but only for about a minute. I posted a kick because that's enough time for a GD to fall off the end of the universe.

I didn't see this story in LBN for Friday or Saturday, so I thought people should know about it.

[readmoreoften]

3. WOW. This is terribly important. Thank you. /nt

[progdonkey]

5. naming names, right out of Stalin's playbook...

I coincidentally saw on the History Channel just a few days ago a biography of Stalin, and it included an interview with someone who explained how the NKVD informant program worked: the NKVD came to you and told you to name five people on your block who had spoken out against Stalin; if you could only come up with four, you became the fifth.

"They're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments."

[niyad]

6. every single air marshal who goes along with this is a collaborator

does "I'm just following orders" ring a bell here?

[longship]

7. Rekick for morning--This needs wider distribution

:kick:

[Vidar]

8. Par for the course.