Terrorist Watchlists Research Articles

Big Data Biopolitics

Abstract This article considers the medial logics of American terrorist watchlist screening in order to study the ways in which digital inequities result from specific computational parameters. Central in its analysis is Secure Flight, an automated prescreening program run by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that identifies lowand high-risk airline passengers through name-matching algorithms. Considering Secure Flight through the framework of biopolitics, this article examines how passenger information is aggregated, assessed and scored in order to construct racialised assemblages of passengers that reify discourses of American exceptionalism. Racialisation here is neither a consequence of big data nor a motivating force behind the production of risk-assessment programs. Both positions would maintain that discrimination is simply an effect of an information management system that considers privacy as its ultimate goal, which is easily mitigated with more accurate algorithms. Not simply emerging as an effect of discriminatory practices at airport security, racialisation formats the specific techniques embedded in terrorist watchlist matching, in particular the strategies used to transliterate names across different script systems. I argue thus that the biopolitical production of racialised assemblages forms the ground zero of Secure Flight’s computational parameters, as well as its claims to accuracy. This article concludes by proposing a move away from the call to solve digital inequities with more precise algorithms in order to carefully interrogate the forms of power complicit in the production and use of big data analytics.

The Extraordinary Mrs. Shipley: How the United States Controlled International Travel Before the Age of Terrorism

Terrorist watchlists used to restrict travel into and out of the United States owe their conceptual origins to Mrs. Ruth B. Shipley, the Chief of the State Department’s Passport Division from 1928 to 1955. Mrs. Shipley was one of the most powerful people in the federal government for almost thirty years, but she is virtually unknown today. She had the unreviewable discretion to determine who could leave the United States, for how long, and under what conditions. This article examines how Mrs. Shipley exercised her power through a detailed study of original documents obtained from the National Archives. It then compares her work to the current watchlisting procedures employed by the Terrorist Screening Center and Department of Homeland Security. The article concludes that today’s so-called “No Fly List” used to deny boarding passes to suspect travelers resonates with Mrs. Shipley’s passport power, which was rightly scaled back by the courts and Congress as incompatible with our constitutional values.

Book Review: Mrs. Shipley's Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists

Book Review: Mrs. Shipley's Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists

Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists (by Jeffrey Kahn, University of Michigan Press, 2013)

Since 9/11, migration-related security measures, including a growing reliance on watch-lists, have limited the right to travel. Jeffrey Kahn’s book, Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists , examines the legal and policy questions raised by prohibitions on travel by US citizens.

Mrs. Shipley's ghost: the right to travel and terrorist watchlists

Today, when a single person can turn an airplane into a guided missile, no one objects to rigorous security before flying. But can the state simply declare some people too dangerous to travel, ever and anywhere? Does the Constitution protect a fundamental right to travel? Should the mode of travel (car, plane, or boat) or itinerary (domestic or international) make a constitutional difference? This book explores the legal and policy questions raised by government travel restrictions, from passports and rubber stamps to computerised terrorist watchlists. In tracing the history and scope of U.S. travel regulations, Jeffrey Kahn begins with the fascinating story of Mrs. Ruth Shipley, a federal employee who almost single-handedly controlled access to passports during the Cold War. Kahn questions how far national security policies should go and whether the government should be able to declare some individuals simply too dangerous to travel. An expert on constitutional law, Kahn argues that U.S. citizens' freedom to leave the country and return is a fundamental right, protected by the Constitution.

Right of having removed one’s name from the government’s “No-Fly List” and other terrorist watchlists

Right of having removed one’s name from the government’s “No-Fly List” and other terrorist watchlists

Environmental Justice and the Criminalizing of Dissent

Will Potter, Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2011), 302 pages, $16.95, paperback. It starts with a knock on the door. FBI agents threaten to put journalist Will Potter's name on a terrorist watch-list for leafleting. They want him to inform on his friends in the environmental justice community. They threaten to show up at his work, to ruin his career, his education, and make other threats. Potter refuses to collaborate, and never hears from the agents again, but the incident leaves him changed. "I do not know it right now, but this experience will mark the beginning of both a personal and a political journey. After the initial fear subsides, I will become obsessed with finding out why I would be targeted as a terrorist for doing nothing more than leafleting"…. Potter chronicles his journey, attempting to unravel why the non-violent animal rights and environmental movement is the federal government's number one domestic terrorism priority. From the front lines of an activist campaign in New Jersey to the halls of Congress and beyond, Potter documents how this movement is persecuted by law enforcement and legislative action for its political and moral beliefs in defense of animals and the environment.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Weapon choice and American political violence

Research Summary The criminal use of firearms presents a unique challenge to policymakers and is the subject of scientific study in fields such as criminology, public health, sociology, and law. Previous research has described firearm use by terrorists in the United States as uniformly common; however, little systematic attention has been focused on this phenomenon. Although valuable, progress in this area has been hampered by the absence of reliable quantitative information. Using data from the American Terrorism Study and the U.S. Sentencing Commission, we examine the firearm‐offending characteristics of 923 federal felons and 336 terrorists. Policy Implications Findings indicate that many systematic differences exist between terrorists and other types of federal felons and that terrorists are more likely than other felons to be convicted of firearm‐related crimes. We recommend that official efforts to monitor weapons sales—such as the Brady Act—continue to include those named on the terrorist watch list and that those named on the list be subject to additional law‐enforcement scrutiny when attempting to purchase firearms. These efforts should be coordinated by federal law‐enforcement agencies to facilitate the effective use of existing antiterrorism mechanisms in both blocking purchases and garnering intelligence on terrorists attempting to obtain firearms.

Insecure Flight: Broken Boarding Passes and Ineffective Terrorist Watch Lists

This paper discusses a number of existing problems with the airport transportation security system in the United States. The paper discusses two separate, yet equally important issues: the ease with which a passenger can fly without any identification documents at all and the ease with which print-at-home boarding passes can be modified, tampered with, and faked. The significance of these vulnerabilities becomes clear when viewed in light of the United States (US) government's insistence on maintaining passenger watch lists, whose contents are secret and effectiveness depend upon the government being able to verify the identity of each flying passenger. The paper then introduces a method of determining if any particular name is on the no fly list, without ever having to step foot into an airport. The paper introduces a physical denial of service attack against the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at airports, distributed via an Internet virus. Finally, the paper proposes technical solutions to the user modifiable boarding pass problem, which also neutralize the physical denial of service attack. The solutions have the added benefit of meshing with TSA's publicly stated wish to assume responsibility for verifying passengers names against the watch lists, as well as enabling them to collect and store real time data on passengers as they pass through checkpoints, something they are not able to do under the existing system.

Report on Guantanamo Detainees: A Profile of 517 Detainees through Analysis of Department of Defense Data

The media and public fascination who is detained at Guantanamo and why has been fueled in large measure by refusal of Government, on grounds of national security, to provide much information about individuals and charges against them. The information available to date has been anecdotal and erratic, drawn largely from interviews few detainees who have been released or from statements or court filings by their attorneys in pending habeas corpus proceedings that Government has not declared classified. This Report is first effort to provide a more detailed picture of who Guantanamo detainees are, how they ended up there, and purported bases for their enemy combatant designation. The data in this Report is based almost entirely upon United States Government's own documents. This Report provides a window into Government's success detaining only those that President has called the worst of worst. Among findings of Report: 1. Fifty-five percent (55%) of detainees are not determined to have committed any hostile acts against United States or its coalition allies. 2. Only 8% of detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters. Of remaining detainees, 40% have no definitive connection al Qaeda at all and 18% are have no definitive affiliation either al Qaeda or Taliban. 3. The Government has detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations a large number of groups that, in fact, are not on Department of Homeland Security terrorist watchlist. Moreover, nexus between such a detainee and such organizations varies considerably. Eight percent are detained because they are deemed fighters for; 30% considered members of; a large majority - 60% - are detained merely because they are associated with a group or groups Government asserts are terrorist organizations. For 2% of prisoners, a nexus to any terrorist group is not identified by Government. 4. Only 5% of detainees were captured by United States forces. 86% of detainees were arrested by either Pakistan or Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody. This 86% of detainees captured by Pakistan or Northern Alliance were handed over to United States at a time in which United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies. 5. Finally, population of persons deemed not to be enemy combatants - mostly Uighers - are in fact accused of more serious allegations than a great many persons still deemed to be enemy combatants.