What Professor Murphy's story tells us about the no-fly list

JB

I wanted to make some points about Professor Murphy's experiences with the no-fly list that are probably obvious to many readers of this blog but may nevertheless be useful to state explicitly.



First, I have no reason to believe that Professor Murphy has not accurately reported what airport personnel told him about the reasons why he was placed on what is colloquially called the "no-fly" list (or, more correctly, the set of terrorist watch lists the government maintains. In some cases persons on these lists may still fly if they submit to further procedures. Professor Murphy was apparently on a "selectee list" that allowed him to fly rather than a "no-fly" list that banned him from air travel entirely.)



Second, assuming that this is so, it is possible that airport personnel were mistaken about the government's no-fly list policies or were reporting second or third hand accounts of the government's policies that may not be correct.



Third, a likely cause of someone's being put on the no-fly list is bureaucratic incompetence, or a flawed policy of rejecting names that are similar to ones found on the no-fly list, as opposed to a deliberate policy of punishing or silencing critics of the Administration. It is also possible that particular individuals in the bureaucracy have overzealous views about threats to national security that are not generally shared within the Administration; their reports and decisions might be transmitted through the compilation process without sufficient checks and balances, leading to many mistaken additions to the no-fly list.



Fourth, even if Professor Murphy's experience was not due to a deliberate policy of punishing persons who spoke out against the Administration, the secrecy of the no-fly list creates abundant potential for bureaucratic incompetence and abuse, for some of the reasons I have suggested. For this reason, Professor Murphy's experience is worth paying attention to as evidence that there is something seriously wrong with the way that the government and the airlines are compiling and using the no-fly list.



Professor Murphy's story suggests that both the press and Congress should look more closely into the way that the Administration and the nation's airlines work together to construct and implement the no-fly list. There are many ways that the list could be mismanaged, and many ways that bad information could travel through the system without being corrected. When this happens, the consequences are visited on innocent persons without any corresponding advantage to the security of our country. The presence of mistakes and snafus in the no-fly list undermine the program's ability to do what it was designed to do, which is to keep Americans safe.