In an opinion issued late today in Alexandria, VA, US District Court Judge Anthony Trenga has upheld the complaint by 23 victims of US government blacklisting that the system pursuant to which the government has designated them as “suspected terrorists” on the basis of secret algorithms applied to secret datasets, without notice or an opportunity to contest any allegedly “derogatory”  information, does not provide those who are stigmatized, and whose stigmatized status is broadcast to tens of thousands of law enforcement and other government agencies and private entities around the world, with the procedural due process required by the US Constitution.

This decision is one of the most fundamental victories for the rule of law since 9/11.

According to today’s opinion, it is undisputed that the DHS and FBI define anyone who has been arrested or charged with an offense related to terrorism as a “known” terrorist, even if they have been acquitted of that charge.  In other words, the DHS and FBI think that what is “known” is what they believe, not what judges or juries have found the facts to be. That presumption that by definition their secret judgments are more reliable than judicial fact-finding pretty much sums up why this decision is correct, why it is so important, and why it should be upheld if, as seems a near certainty, the government appeals.

None of the plaintiffs have even been arrested, much less convicted, for any criminal offense, terrorist or otherwise. The plaintiffs include, among others, several infants whom the government has apparently blacklisted as “suspected terrorists”. But even though the government will neither confirm nor deny that anyone is or is not, or has or has not been, included in the “Terrorist Screening Database” (TSDB), the court found that the plaintiffs have demonstrated sufficient basis for their belief that they have been blacklisted.

The government calls this database and decsion-making system a “watchlist”, but it is really a blacklist intended and used to determine adverse consequences for individuals.

The “No-Fly List” is only a subset of the TSDB, and not being allowed to fly is only a subset of the consequences of blacklisting detailed in the plaintiffs’ submissions to the court and the government’s admissions during discovery and depositions. The TSDB is used as the basis for a plethora of decisions, as the plaintiffs have experienced, from whether to have them arrested at gunpoint when they try to cross land borders  to whether to interrogate them for hours about their religious beliefs, seize their electronic devices for copying and forensic analysis of the data stored on them, deny them public or private-sector jobs, or close their bank accounts and deny them other fincial services.

The government’s use of secret criteria, secret datasets, and guilt by association as the basis for secret decisions — communicated to tens of thousands of other decision-makers, but not to those who have been blacklisted —  resembles the worst of McCarthyism, just with “terrorist sympathizer” or (literal) “fellow traveler” substituted for “Communist  sympathizer” or (ideological) “fellow traveler”.

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