A Terrorist Can Be Little More than a Noun

Unfortunate, yet utterly predictable: the tragedy in Paris has brought national security back to the forefront of American politics. According to our leaders, the country with the most expansive, well-funded army in the world is actually little better off than an octogenarian hoping to fend off burglars with a flashlight. A terrorist can be “anyone” (i.e. “someone with an abundance of melanin”), while an attack can come from “anywhere” (i.e. “somewhere foreign”) , and, well, one gets the idea.

The attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent federal response have incredible significance to modern US culture, and the “climate of fear” that has persisted in its wake, often hidden in the ebb and flow of public cynicism, has made most Americans intimately familiar with the modern “Big Brother” style of the Executive branch. So before that can of worms spills out again, maybe it’s time to look into some things that got missed the first time around. First and foremost of these: what is a terrorist according to the government?
According to the March 2013 Watchlisting Guidance, an unclassified bit of bureaucratic muck raked up by The Intercept, there are two general classifications for terrorists: Known and Suspected. Known Terrorists are the foremost obvious choice to be included in both TIDE and TSDB terrorist databases (The TSDB being the FBI administered database colloquially known as the “watchlist”). Hey, did you just see that guy blow up a building to make a political point? That’s a Known Terrorist.

However, the second category of Suspected Terrorist is much more troubling. It involves a bit of Minority Report style data aggregation, wherein individuals are linked to terrorists through extrapolated means. Hey, did you just see that guy blow up a building to make a political point? If you weren’t his intended target, you’re now quite possibly a Suspected Terrorist.

It’s not an understatement. The Watchlisting Guidance, which gives government agencies guidelines by which individuals are to be deemed terrorists, is incredibly vague. “Nominators” are allowed to add individuals to the screening process if they meet the strict criteria of “reasonable inference” by the “Nominator” that they are terrorists. The Guidance explicitly states “irrefutable facts and concrete evidence are not necessary,” and that nominations can be made “even if [the source]...is uncorroborated.”

This might be a good time to point out that the Texas Department of Public Safety has an option on their touchtone menu to report any “suspected terrorist activity.” Better make sure to keep the neighbors happy, particularly if you’re a Muslim.

The question is: does this have to happen all over again? A terrorist attack occurs and suddenly “The Land of The Free” starts hemorrhaging all its civil liberties? Reading further into the Guidance makes one wonder if they would qualify to be placed on the list. Indeed, right now Congress is still trying to make sense of which terrorists it’s ok to give guns to (which is, and it must be said, a truly appropriate American political issue). Perhaps, instead of another round of demagoguery and paranoia, it would be more efficient to reform how we track terrorists. Then we can all be a little less terrified.