Tulsi Gabbard on the Biden/Harris Quiet Skies shitlist

It's obviously because of the "truth" she exposes.

 

Tulsi Gabbard (Putin’s American cheerleader), Russian propaganda and article 88

 

Looks like the sort of thing that might happen to someone who is suspected by the “deep state” of being a Russian asset.

 

Bilello confirmed that passengers do not need to be on terror watch lists, or suspected of any crime, to be monitored.

"These are people who perhaps haven't done anything previously to put them on a terrorist watch list, but perhaps there are things ... that make us concerned about their future activities or actions," he said.

The first red flag is foreign travel — specifically, frequent visits to "countries that we know have a high incidence of adversarial actions," as Bilello put it.

After analyzing travel patterns, the TSA pulls intelligence from a number of sources — state and local law enforcement, federal agencies and international partners — before deciding to assign an air marshal. The program is designed to ignore people clearly traveling for business or to visit family, and focus on potential threats, Bilello said.

The TSA would not provide details on the precise criteria required to flag a passenger for the program. Documents provided to the Globesuggest that reservations using the phone numbers or email addresses of watch-listed individuals are a consideration. According to DHSdocuments, Customs and Border Protection uses biographical data and outstanding warrants to conduct traveler risk assessments, and also has access to FBI facial recognition software.
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I don't like the watchlist program. If rallying around Tulsi Gabbard results in killing the whole thing, that's fine by me. The more likely outcome probably is that the program continues but politically-sensitive targets like Gabbard are artificially excluded. I don't buy that Tulsi was targeted. She is kinda a nobody. There are probably a few dozen adversaries of the democrats that would get targeted before her, if that was the scheme. This looks more like an opportunity for Gabbard to re-inject herself into newspaper headlines.

 

I don't think there is any way for us to know what goes into the decision. Who knows? Maybe. I doubt she's a real concern for them to target. There are other higher profile critics of the administration that aren't on the watchlist, so it seems illogical that she's on it because of political retributions.

 

Nobody cares about Tulsi. Definitely not a political target. You can be critical of the program which may or may not be effective and may or may not be consistent with right to privacy in this country.

 

That fox news anchorwoman starts off shrill at dog whistle levels.

 

Not what the list actually designates, but if you say so.

 

Or based on her flight patterns, nations she's visited, frequency of travel, etc.

 

So some back story on quiet skies. This is actually a program that started during the Trump administration (so her anger at Biden/Harris doesn't make much sense) and this was intended to create a process to more effectively allocate air marshals. Air marshals themselves are a controversy because their role has expanded from simply providing security on flights to actually engaging in surveillance of targeted passengers (including US citizens). But the surveillance was mostly random since air marshals were just allocated to high risk routes.

This changed with Quiet Skies where the TSA created a system to identify "high risk" passengers using a set of rules (flight history, name matches against databases, etc..) and if a person on the Quiet Skies list was going to fly, they'd just automatically assign an air marshal to that flight. One thing to note is that TSA has never answered the question of whether factors like race, religion, nationality, etc.. are criteria for Quiet Skies.

The problems have all been well documented. The criteria for getting onto the list haven't been clear and the effectiveness of the whole program isn't clear at all. And there are huge constitutional issues with spying on US citizens (including on domestic flights which has got to be unconstitutional). Personally speaking I think the program should be ended and Congress should pass rules around what air marshals can and can't do because right now they can seemingly do whatever they want.

 

Wait....

If you aren't part of any official diplomat channels under the US government and an active duty service member you have an expectation to not be spied on if you travel to foreign countries interacting with foreign leaders?

Is that an expectation people actually have understanding the US government for the past half century?

Who has that expectation to not be spied on in this type of scenario?

@Os Trigonum , you sincerely believe before this, our intelligence agencies weren't spying on US citizens with no official channels to foreign governments interacting with said foreign government leaders? This is an actual expectation of yours?


If this was me I'd automatically assume I'm being spied on. I'm a non us diplomat hanging out with foreign leaders as a US citizen. Hell ya I'm going to be spied on especially if I was still active duty with any modicum of a security clearance.

 

Also another thing....

This is an assumption but a safe assumption that makes me lose more respect for posters like @Os Trigonum .

These posters are old. They've probably lived through the crack down of black activism through us intelligence agencies with programs like COINTELPRO with explicit practices of violating basic constitution rights of us citizens like illegal search and seizures, illegal tapping into comms etc.

And I can make a safe assumption that the OP has never b****ed about this which was a far more flagrant violation of basic human rights due to activism that criticises the government. Which makes these type of complaints of his more flagrant when you examine all the violations of civil rights he ignores

 

Is empower oversight non partisan?

I've seen the history of the cases they tackle. They really love crypto scams apparently and love placing teurh to power only when it comes to democrat politicians like Obama.