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Originally Posted by August
It's called Due Process.
Basically it means that you can't just take rights away from people, especially ones enumerated in the Constitution, without allowing them some form or means of redress in the courts if it was applied in error (or spite). The Democrats refuse to allow that corrective ability in this situation and the Republicans can't add it in without their support.
Remember the Terrorist Watch List is a secret list of names maintained by anonymous bureaucrats who can't be held accountable for their actions. Once a person is added to the list, even by mistake, whether its a clerical error or any other reason (including spite), there is currently no way for the victim to even find out they have been added, why they were added or who put them on it. They can't even petition the courts to their names removed from it.
What's just as bad at that is none of the proposed legislation would have stopped the Orlando terrorist as he had already been removed from the Watch list. In other words they're trying to do something they already know wouldn't work. Makes you wonder the true reasons for proposing it.
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Then wouldn't the way be to open up for openness around those lists? I totally see that total secrecy isn't going to increase people's trust in those bureaucrats. They are hit by a no trust sentiment and they aren't doing much to improve that right now and the congress is working overtime to increase that mistrust.
One problem with openness though is, if there is an unrestricted openness then anyone who is on the list can check and go sleeping until they're off the list, which pretty much defeats the purpose of the list in the first place. Even worse, it will give away to individuals and organizations that the law and intelligence agencies are onto them. Revealing that can be literally deadly. Unrestricted openness won't work but some kind of openness is needed.
I don't believe for a second that humans can not figure out how to have a working system here. One step that would be absolutely necessary would be to open up for some kind of openness. The Congress blocking that openness is insane in that regard.
As for lists and faceless bureaucrats: Anyone with a phone, anyone with a credit card, anyone with a job, anyone who is paying taxes, anyone with a car, or a home, is on a number of lists they don't have access to. Anyone using the internet is on a number of lists. The President of the USA. There, those words are all it takes for this post to be logged for further examination and there is a chance it will be logged on a list and looked at automatically by computers. Lists are everywhere for almost anything. If one don't want any list of any kind that is secret, the only way is to move to another planet.
The Constitution is the main arguement and the 2nd amendment in particular. One thing is, an unrestricted and fundamentalistic view on these will have the consequence of terrorists and nutcases getting the weapons they need while making it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to act before tragedy strikes. There is no way around that. The vote, as it is now, opens the doors wide for lone wolves and organizations to hit with minimum or no warning. That is an unavoidable consequence of the vote. In fact it has been the unavoidable consequence since day 1. Question is, can the US afford this fundamentalistic view on a right that certainly is given to terrorists and sound minded folks alike?
I live in Norway and we had in our Constitution the law that said Jews, monks and Jesuits were forbidden to enter the country (really, we did, §2). We got rid of it in 1851, because it's madness to have such a paragraph. We got rid of a paragraph that only did harm to people and nothing good to anyone. Now, this was here in Norway, not the US but even Constitutions are not eternally set in stone. If there is a paragraph or amendment that doesn't work, then all it takes to get rid of that is will to get rid of it. I don't think that is going to happen anytime soon in the US but who knows what will happen in the future. What's written by humans can be changed by humans.