47,000 people are on it. Most of them have not committed any crime... Probably. We don't actually know, because if you're on it, the government won't tell you why - or even that you're on it.
Would buying a plane ticket online let you know that you are on it? If so then the airline companies should be able to at least provide a service for informing you that you are on the list, if you ask about it.
usually, in the states, your ticket will have special letters on it, signifying your relative flight risk. There's countless stories of Laura Poitras and others discussing this. the reader is invited to !yt TSA Poitras.
The whole war on terror and this bulk collection is predicated on stopping crimes before they happen. It's a giant catch 22.
Would stopping mass shootings and not-called-terorrism-but-domestic-terror be part of the use cases here? Like if you were to ignore some other laws and track gun ownership and purchases, maybe cross reference it with the use/prescription of certain medications and then cross reference that with anti-social posts on the internet or associations with certain call-themselve-patriots-but-really-hate-the-government type groups you might stop some mass shootings. Maybe save some actual lives.
It's a terrible rabbit hole to go down, we need to stop it all ASAP.
The best thing about this whole setup is that it's unfalsifiable. Something bad happen? We need to work harder (read: accept more invasion of our privacy) to prevent such atrocities in future. Nothing bad happens? It's working, let's do it even more!
I don't think it's about thinking, it's about the supposed probability that you will commit a crime in the future. And as for that I can imagine very well that laws can change, provided the technology is sold to politicians and to the public in the right way.
E.g. "we now have technology that can prevent rapes of children before they even happen. So many children today live in the direct neighborhood of a potential rapist - and no-one could do anything because nobody knew. But now we can spot and remove the potential rapists and give the children back the pieceful and carefree life that they deserve.
Unfortunately, as of now, making use of the technology would be in violation of certain laws - laws that made a lot of sense in the last century. But given the changes in society and the urgency of the matter, we feel a reformulation would be more than justified..."
not so. intent is part of culpability in most violent crimes. hate crimes legislation takes it a step further. (It's beyond me how the 'thought' element of a hate crime isn't protected political speech).
In Reed v Town of Gilbert we ruled that statutory limitations on free speech must pass scrict scrutiny.
You can argue for a compelling state interest in increasing the term of punishment for a violent offender based on his opinions about race. But (1) it's hard to argue the state interest in longer prison terms and (2) it's really hard to prove hate, so there's an easy due process appeal here.
Just going to point out... Many dead presidents are still spinning in their graves from the day that became a crimp. That's not how the freedoms they strived to uphold are supposed to work.
