On Wednesday, in a case brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations against the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and the FBI, a federal district judge in Alexandria, Va. ruled that the Terrorist Watch List is unconstitutional.

2019 “Izzy” Award-winning journalist Dave Lindorff, a contributor to The Nation, Salon.com, the London Review of Books and other publications, also has another distinction: He discovered during two flights to Europe this past Spring that he is on the FBI/Homeland Security Terrorism Watch List and wrote about it in a recent article in The Nation magazine.

DAVE LINDORFF, dlindorff at gmail.com

Lindorff recently wrote the piece “Are Terrorism Watch Lists Expanding Under Trump?” He explains the recent ruling: “The Terrorist Watch List, used to keep some people from flying (the No-Fly List) as well as to harass as many as a million people not deemed threats to air safety, but considered somehow ‘linked’ to terrorism, was ruled unconstitutional. The judge found that the lists maintained by the FBI — both the No Fly List and the so-called ‘Selectee list’ and ‘Expanded Selectee list,’ are unconstitutionally vague about how and why people get placed on them, and also unconstitutional because there is ‘no credible way’ provided for people to challenge their being placed on those lists, i.e. no way to get off once one is ‘nominated’ to be on a watch list.”

Lindorff, a journalist (who has no criminal record), is available to offer an account of what it actually means to be “nominated” by some unidentified federal agency for inclusion on the FBI/DHS “Selectee list.”