Terrorist Watchlists

Abstract

This chapter assesses the legal history and policy development of the U.S. government's system of terrorist watchlists and the institutions established to create and use them. Watchlisting is in fact an old practice given new meaning by technological change and the societal impact of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Statutes and judicial precedents from an earlier era on which the first post-9/11 watchlists were built were not made to regulate the expanded uses of the new watchlists and presented few if any constraints on their development. Civil litigation has both revealed the inner workings of terrorist watchlists and spurred some reforms to them. While these reforms have succeeded in adding some due process protections to watchlisting remedies, the underlying premise of the new watchlists, and the hierarchies of citizenship that they produce, have not been subject to much challenge in either the courts or the Congress.

Keywords: terrorist watchlists, civil litigation, September 11, Terrorist Screening Database, TSDB, TSA, No-Fly-List