All of us know someone who has been charged with or convicted of a crime. Most of us don’t think this connection could cost us our employment. This is exactly what happened to Ayaan Farah a couple of years ago. She lost her security clearance at Pearson airport, and the job that went with it, after police claimed she had connections to a local gang, and was a potential threat to airline safety.

The RCMP says Farah, now 31, is connected to members of the Dixon Crew street gang in Etobicoke, but won’t name her alleged associates. When Farah couldn’t explain her relationship with people the government would not identify, she lost her livelihood. Her experience shows how racial profiling, carding, and excessive surveillance threaten people who shouldn’t even be on the police’s radar.

Farah has no criminal record, and in her eight years on the job at United Airways (now American Airlines) she’d never been formally disciplined. She was using her wages, in part, to help pay for her sister’s post-secondary education. When Transport Canada downgraded Farah’s security clearance in February 2014, it didn’t say she had done anything wrong. Officials said they were investigating Farah’s alleged connection to the Dixon Crew, which police describe as a street gang “primarily comprised of Somali males.” Police have not clearly demonstrated any link between Farah, who is of Somali heritage, and the unnamed convicted criminals it called “Subjects A, B, and C.”

The RCMP says two of the three men connected to Farah were passengers in a car leaving the funeral of an alleged gang member in 2014. The car is registered to Farah, but her father is its primary driver. Farah was not in the car when these passengers were spotted. When officials questioned her about the incident, she stumbled to describe an interaction she was not part of. Her hesitation was deemed suspicious and used as evidence against her.

Farah’s father, Mohamed Ali, is a well-respected figure in the Somali-Canadian community. He attends many funerals, and recalls one afternoon in 2014 when he was leaving a funeral, driving the same car identified as carrying “Subject B” and “Subject C,” and was stopped by Toronto police — they never told him why. “They asked me for my license and ownership of the car,” Ali told me in a phone interview — documentation that was later used to ruin his daughter’s career.

The other alleged connection involves another man with a serious criminal history, whom the ministry calls “Subject A.” Police claim they once contacted Farah and the man together in 2011 — no date of the interaction is given, nor any details of the nature, location, or context. Police say “Subject A” told them he knows Farah. However, they won’t identify him, and thus gave Farah no fair opportunity to verify or explain any connection to him.

In October, Farah’s clearance was suddenly restored without any communication from the ministry. “At that time I felt so good, and thought everything was resolved,” she told me this week. But a month later, Transport Canada revoked Farah’s clearance for good. The ministry concluded she “may be prone or induced to commit an act, or assist or abet an individual to commit an act that may unlawfully interfere with civil aviation.”

In the terrifying surveillance state we live in, you don’t have to commit a crime to be criminalized. You don’t even have to interact directly with people for their criminal records to be used to tarnish you. The government can accuse you of associating with a criminal, but not name him. Perhaps most shockingly, the government can suggest you are hanging out with a disreputable person, even as it uses the testimony of that apparently shady person against you.

Although the RCMP made the security case against Farah, its information seems to have come from Toronto police. Ali’s interaction after the funeral is consistent with the practice of carding, which has targeted black civilians and branded them as either criminals or their associates. “The only thing I have in common with these people is that I’m Somalian, and I used to live in Dixon,” Farah said of her alleged criminal associations.

If the police follow any one of us long enough, they can connect us to crime. The folks they most often choose to follow, document, and share information about — because of race, religion, or social location — are at greatest risk for bad outcomes, even if they are innocent. This is the consequence of racial profiling, carding, and draconian new laws like Bill C-51.

Farah is suing the government over her situation, but it seems unlikely she’ll get her job back. She has gone back to school for health sciences, but worries the criminal associations will follow her forever. “I’ve always wanted to stay on the right path to help my family’s situation,” Farah told me with a shaky voice. “Even when we try to do right, we still get the short end.”

Desmond Cole is a Toronto-based journalist. His column appears every Thursday.