[Mb-civic] You, Too, Could Be A Suspected Terrorist

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

You, Too, Could Be A Suspected 
Terrorist
By Anthony D. Romero Tuesday, August 17, 2004; Page A15 

>From the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6680-2004Aug16.html

By Anthony D. Romero

Antonio Romero is what my mother calls me. Antonio Romero is also how I 
am known to many of my friends and family members. Unfortunately, the 
name Antonio Romero also appears on a U.S. Treasury Department list titled 
"Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons." The government 
provides only this name, some known aliases and a date of birth for Antonio 
Romero. No further attempt is made at delineating one Antonio Romero from 
the next. A quick Internet search found no fewer than 10 of them in New 
York, not to mention four Anthony Romeros. 

The proliferation of government watch lists is a troubling development in the 
war on terrorism. I recently learned more about this list because my 
organization, the ACLU, had signed a funding agreement with the Combined 
Federal Campaign in order to receive $500,000 it gathers from federal 
employees. The agreement required the ACLU to affirm that it would not 
knowingly hire individuals named on various watch lists. We believed that we 
were not required to affirmatively check employees against any list. But when 
we later were told that indeed we would have to check all current and 
potential employees, we withdrew from the CFC. 

All Americans have an important obligation and role in this country's efforts to 
protect us from those who would harm us. But these lists, which are 
notoriously vague and riddled with errors, are not the best way to fight 
terrorism. Just take me as an example. 

The CFC would require the ACLU -- and the more than 2,000 nonprofits that 
receive its funding -- to affirmatively check the names of our employees 
against the lists. But what do we do if there is a match? What if the ACLU 
had checked my name against the watch lists and found the name of Antonio 
Romero? If it hired the Antonio Romero targeted by the government, 
knowingly or not, the ACLU would open itself up to civil or criminal sanctions. 
So the stakes are high. To make matters more complicated, CFC recipients 
are not alone in this new wonderland. 

Under a little-known law from 1977, the International Emergency Economic 
Powers Act, serious potential sanctions apply to all employers and people in 
the United States, not just to CFC recipients. With the expansion of terrorist 
watch lists since Sept. 11, the implications of this policy have grown 
exponentially, but the its existence and broad reach remain largely unknown. 
U.S. law forbids employers from hiring any individual designated on various 
government lists. If they hire someone from these lists unknowingly, the 
person or organization may be liable for civil sanctions, and if intentionally, 
criminal sanctions can be imposed. 

The easiest method to distinguish me from the Antonio Romero on the watch 
list would be to compare birth dates. The Romero in question was born eight 
years before me. Great, problem solved -- except that under age 
discrimination law, employers cannot ask about my age or date of birth prior 
to hiring. Furthermore, not all the entries on the lists provide a date of birth or 
any other distinguishing information. Faced with these challenges, many 
employers might simply choose not to hire me. 

While the ACLU has never checked any of its employees against any 
government watch list, nor asked job applicants for their dates of birth or 
national origin before hiring them -- we may not under federal law -- we find 
ourselves in a true Catch-22: Disregard the watch lists and thereby risk 
breaking the law, or comply and possibly violate employees' civil liberties. 

The ACLU has challenged similar watch lists in the context of airport travel. 
We have litigated against "no-fly" lists on behalf of ACLU clients who do not 
belong on these lists but have no way to get their names off. When our 
clients travel, the "false positives" make their experiences at airports difficult. 
Imagine if these same problems extended to all people whose names appear 
on government watch lists and to all aspects of our lives. 

As we debate the need to reorganize our intelligence system, we must have 
an open dialogue about what measures truly make us safer. Blacklisting 
innocent people from employment does not make us safer. Making lengthy 
and ambiguous watch lists that employers do not know about but are 
nevertheless liable to observe only serves to undercut public confidence in 
the government's efforts in the war on terrorism. The proliferation of these 
lists could threaten many basic rights while leaving little recourse for those 
affected. 

We all have to shoulder our responsibility if we want to keep America safe 
from terrorists. But we don't want to live in a country where every company, 
large and small, for-profit and nonprofit, must ask every Antonio Romero, 
including me, to prove every day that he is not a terrorist because his name 
happens to appear on a list. 
-- 
You are currently on Mha Atma's Earth Action Network email list, option D 
(up to 3 emails/day).  To be removed, or to switch options (option A - 
1x/week, option B - 3/wk, option C - up to 1x/day, option D - up to 3x/day) 
please reply and let us know!  If someone forwarded you this email and you 
want to be on our list, send an email to ean at sbcglobal.net and tell us which 
option you'd like.



Action is the antidote to despair.  ----Joan Baez
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20040817/1c21816f/attachment.html