HEIKALINE

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<span style="background-color: white; color: #121212; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; font-size: 20px;">Long-withheld document provides insight into secretive system in which people can be placed on terrorism databases with astounding ease, and without any way to get off</span><br />
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<span class="inline-expand-image inline-icon centered-icon rounded-icon article__fullscreen modern-visible" style="background-color: rgba(51, 51, 51, 0.6); border-radius: 62.5rem; display: inline-block; fill: rgb(255, 255, 255); height: 2.75rem; margin: 0.625rem; opacity: 0; position: absolute; right: 0px; top: 0px; transition: opacity 0.15s ease-out 0s; vertical-align: middle; width: 2.75rem;"><svg class="centered-icon__svg rounded-icon__svg article__fullscreen__svg modern-visible__svg inline-expand-image__svg inline-icon__svg" height="22" viewbox="0 0 22 22" width="22"><path d="M3.4 20.2L9 14.5 7.5 13l-5.7 5.6L1 14H0v7.5l.5.5H8v-1l-4.6-.8M18.7 1.9L13 7.6 14.4 9l5.7-5.7.5 4.7h1.2V.6l-.5-.5H14v1.2l4.7.6"></path></svg></span></a><figcaption class="caption caption--main caption--img" itemprop="description" style="color: #767676; font-family: "Guardian Text Sans Web", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 1rem; max-width: none; min-height: 0px; padding: 0.5rem 0px 0.375rem;"><span class="inline-triangle inline-icon hide-until-tablet" style="fill: rgb(199, 0, 0); font-size: 0.75rem;"> </span><span style="font-size: 0.75rem;">The US government made more than 450,000 nominations for inclusion on its watchlist in 2013. Photograph: Bogdan Cristel/Reuters</span></figcaption></figure></header><br />
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<span class="drop-cap" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #ab0613; display: inline-block; float: left; font-family: "guardian egyptian web" , "georgia" , serif; height: 5rem; margin-right: 0.3125rem; padding-top: 0.0625rem; text-transform: uppercase;"><span class="drop-cap__inner" style="display: inline-block; font-size: 6.8125rem; font-weight: 700; line-height: 4.6875rem; vertical-align: text-top;">P</span></span>lacement on a terrorism watchlist is a life-changing event. Your travel is monitored and in many cases restricted. If overseas, you could be stranded, costing your employment or reunion with your family. You could be detained and, certain lawsuits allege, tortured by foreign governments.</div>
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Yet the ease with which someone can be placed on US watchlists and terrorism databases contrasts markedly with the impact placement has. A long-withheld document <a class="u-underline" data-link-name="in body link" href="https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/07/23/blacklisted/" style="background: transparent; border-bottom: 0.0625rem solid rgb(220, 220, 220); color: #ab0613; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none !important; touch-action: manipulation; transition: border-color 0.15s ease-out 0s;">published on Wednesday by the Intercept</a> detailing the guidelines for placement shows that the standards for inclusion are far lower than probable cause, and the ability for someone caught in the datasets to challenge their placement do not exist. In 2013, the government made 468,749 nominations for inclusion to the Terrorist Screening Database, up from 227,932 nominations in 2009; few are rejected.<br />
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<strong>There's room for the family (and perhaps your friends)</strong></h2>
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A precursor data set that feeds the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB or, "the watchlist") is the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, maintained by the National Counterterrorism Center. TIDE contains records of known or suspected international terrorists. It also contains information on their families and perhaps their friends.</div>
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"Alien spouses and children" of people NCTC labels terrorists get put into TIDE. They "may be inadmissible to the United States", presumed to be dangerous. TIDE also contains "non-terrorist" records of people who have a "close relationship with KNOWN or SUSPECTED terrorists", the guidance reads. Examples listed are fathers or brothers, although the guidance does not specify a blood or marital relationship as necessary for inclusion. Those people can be American citizens or noncitizens inside the United States. While those "close relation[s]" are not supposed to be passed on for watchlisting absent other "derogatory information", their data may be retained within TIDE for unspecified "analytic purposes".</div>
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<strong>Just because a jury finds you innocent doesn't mean watchlists agree</strong></h2>
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The guidelines explicitly state that someone "acquitted or against whom charges are dismissed for a crime related to terrorism" can still be watchlisted. A federal official nominating such a person for inclusion on the list just needs "reasonable suspicion" of a danger – something defined as more than "mere guesses or hunches", based on articulable information or "rational inferences" from it, but far less than probable cause. A judge or jury's decision is not controlling.</div>
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<strong>Watch how you walk</strong></h2>
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In keeping with a general enthusiasm exhibited by law enforcement and the military for identifying someone based on their seemingly unique physical attributes, biometric information is eligible as a criteria to watchlist someone. Several of those biometric identifiers are traditional law enforcement ones, like fingerprints; others are exceptionally targeted, like DNA. Then there are others that reflect emerging or immature analytic subjects: "digital images", iris scans, and "gait" – that is, the way you walk.</div>
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Gait and other biometric identifiers do not appear sufficient to watchlist someone. But they are sufficient to nominate someone to the watchlist or TIDE, provided they rise to the "minimum substantive derogatory standards" – articulable reasons for suspecting someone of involvement of terrorism, a far lower standard than probable cause – unless they come accompanied with evidence that the manner of walk in question includes "an individual with a defined relationship with the KNOWN or SUSPECTED terrorist". It does not appear that a particular swagger by itself can be watchlisted.</div>
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<strong>Lisa says …</strong></h2>
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<figcaption class="caption caption--img caption caption--img" itemprop="description" style="color: #767676; font-family: "Guardian Text Sans Web", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, "Lucida Grande", sans-serif; font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 1rem; max-width: 32.5rem; min-height: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0.5rem;"><span class="inline-triangle inline-icon " style="fill: rgb(199, 0, 0);"><svg class="inline-triangle__svg inline-icon__svg" height="10" viewbox="0 0 11 10" width="11"><path d="M5.5 0L11 10H0z" fill-rule="evenodd"></path></svg> </span>Barack Obama consults his homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, in the Oval Office.<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/8663681063/" style="background: transparent; color: #c70000; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none; touch-action: manipulation;">Photograph: White House</a></figcaption></figure><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 1rem; padding: 0px;">
Lisa Monaco is a former US attorney who holds one of the most powerful and least accountable positions in the US security apparatus: assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism. She has enormous influence over the watchlisting system.</div>
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The guidelines empower Monaco, her successor or a designee to make a "temporary, threat-based upgrade" to "categories of individuals" already watchlisted. The intent appears to be the creation of a single government official able to rapidly keep people off airlines once threat information, often fragmentary and rarely specific, emerges to indicate an imminent terrorist attack. It is unclear what characterizes a "category". The White House says she has never exercised the power.</div>
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Monaco, like others holding her position, does not answer to Congress. No Senate confirms her. Anyone who tries to obtain her official communications will face a legal defense of executive privilege. It appears commensurate with the extraordinary if inconsistent secrecy surrounding watchlisting – attorney general Eric Holder said the procedures were a state secret even as the guidelines outlining them are not classified – that she and not a Senate-confirmable appointee makes the upgrading decision.</div>
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An administration official declined to confirm authenticity of the document, but said Monaco has never exercised any such temporary authority. The administration did not say why she and not a cabinet official or subordinate has those powers in the first place.<br />
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ARTICLES How the US's terrorism watchlists work – and how you could end up on one

Long-withheld document provides insight into secretive system in which people can be placed on terrorism databases with astounding ease, an...

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How the US's terrorism watchlists work – and how you could end up on one

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