US Government Fights To Not Explain No-Fly List Selection Process

An anonymous reader writes: On August 6, U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga ordered the federal government to "explain why the government places U.S. citizens who haven't been convicted of any violent crimes on its no-fly database." Unsurprisingly, the federal government objected to the order, once more claiming that to divulge their no-fly list criteria would expose state secrets and thus pose a national security threat. When the judge said he would read the material privately, the government insisted that reading the material "would not assist the Court in deciding the pending Motion to Dismiss (PDF) because it is not an appropriate means to test the scope of the assertion of the State Secrets privilege." The federal government has until September 7 to comply with the judge's order unless the judge is swayed by the government's objection.

Re:Loose Lips Sinik Ships

[0123456]

Yeah, which is why the judge is asking to be allowed to review the material for constitutionality in private.

Is there any possible way that a 'No Fly List' could be constitutional?

Re:THIS

[Anonymous Coward]

The federal government has become an insatiable monstrosity of bureaucratic machinery that would have defied even the imagination of Kafka, demanding accountability and transparency from all (achieving such ends at gunpoint or through a wiretap), while offering none itself.

I propose the term "monstrosarchy"

Jail them for contempt

[msk]

It's long past time that federal judges start jailing these bureaucrats for contempt for not answering simple questions about the no-fly list.

Re:Loose Lips Sinik Ships

[i kan reed]

Sort of, yes.

No person shall [...] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

In this case, freedom to travel could be considered a relatively benign liberty (undeniably granted freely to the majority of the population, thus its denial requires due process).

This is one of those cases where the 5th plays nicely with the (non-bill of rights) protection against bills of attainder that prevent the government from targeting individuals for punishment.

Re:It'd be nice...

[Applehu Akbar]

At the very least, there needs to be a place on the TSA website where a person can check to see whether he is on the list. Now that every travel arrangement is non-refundable, we need to know this before we get to the departing airport.