ACLU seeks government data regarding no-fly list SAN FRANCISCO (AP) =97 The American Civil Liberties Union sued the FBI and= =20 other government agencies Tuesday on behalf of two peace activists who say= =20 they were wrongly detained at San Francisco International Airport because=20 their names popped up on a secret no-fly database. The ACLU also said that,= =20 during the past two years, 339 SFO travelers' names popped up in a database= =20 as they were checking into their flights, according to documents the group= =20 obtained from the airport via the Freedom of Information Act. Those=20 travelers, like the ones who sued Tuesday, were allowed to continue with=20 their flights after briefly being detained and questioned by authorities.=20 The ACLU is asking a federal judge to demand that the FBI, the Justice=20 Department or the Transportation Security Administration disclose who is on= =20 the list, how one gets on it and how somebody can get off it. "If this is happening just at SFO, then thousands of passengers are likely= =20 being subjected to the same sort of treatment at airports across the=20 country," said Jayashri Srikantiah, an ACLU attorney. "And the public knows= =20 very little about the list." The so-called no-fly list was introduced after the Sept. 11 terrorist=20 attacks and is meant to prevent potential terrorists from boarding planes.= =20 The TSA gets names from law enforcement officials and hands the list over=20 to airlines to screen passengers. But the ACLU wants to know the protocol by which somebody gets on the list= =20 and how he can get off the list. The group also wants the government to=20 disclose to passengers who is on the list. The lawsuit was brought by Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams, two peace=20 activists who co-publish San Francisco-based War Times, a nationally=20 distributed newsletter critical of the Bush administration. They were=20 stopped last August while checking in for a San Francisco flight to=20 Boston, and detained by authorities until cleared for travel. "It was very= =20 distressing," Gordon said. With the help of the ACLU, the two invoked the Freedom of Information Act=20 to demand the FBI, TSA or Justice Department explain what happened and to=20 disclose why they were stopped. The TSA, formerly the Federal Aviation=20 Administration, did not respond to their request and the FBI said no files= =20 on the two existed, the ACLU said. "No records pertinent to your ...=20 request were located by a search of manual indices," wrote David M. Hardy,= =20 chief of the FBI's records division, in a Jan. 6 letter to the ACLU. FBI=20 spokesman Bill Carter referred inquiries to TSA. He said the FBI and a host= =20 of government and intelligence agencies forward names to TSA for inclusion= =20 in the TSA-maintained no-fly database. The FBI, he said, provides names of= =20 people "if they were involved in terrorist activity based on current=20 investigations." TSA spokesman Niko Melendez said those on the no-fly list= =20 pose, or are suspected of posing, a threat to civil aviation and national=20 security. "We do not confirm the presence of a particular name of an=20 individual on a list," he said. "It's security information that we just=20 won't do." Meanwhile, the government is planning to assign a threat level=20 to all airline passengers. The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System was ordered by Congress= =20 after the Sept. 11 attacks. The plan is to develop a nationwide computer=20 system that will check such things as credit reports and consumer=20 transactions and compare passenger names with those on government watch=20 lists. Airlines already do rudimentary checks of passenger information,=20 such as method of payment, address and date the ticket was reserved. Under= =20 the developing system, which TSA officials hope to have operating=20 nationwide by the end of the year, the government will rate each=20 passenger's risk potential according to a three-color system: green,=20 yellow, red. When travelers check in, their names will be punched into the= =20 system and the boarding passes encrypted with the ranking. TSA screeners=20 will check the passes at checkpoints. The vast majority of passengers will= =20 be rated green and won't be subjected to anything more than normal checks,= =20 while yellow will get extra screening and red won't fly. Tuesday's lawsuit= =20 is Gordon v. FBI, 03-1779. *************************************************** The owner of Roger's Trinbago Site/TnTisland.com Roj (Roger James) escape email mailto:ejames@xxxxxxxxx Trinbago site: www.tntisland.com Carib Brass Ctn site www.tntisland.com/caribbeanbrassconnection/ Steel Expressions www.mts.net/~ejames/se/ Site of the Week: http://www.pscutt.com TnT Webdirectory: http://search.co.tt *********************************************************