I haven't been following the news on this particular story (shame on me). Is there something that can put this story into context for me? It was fascinating to read but hard to understand without knowing the story.
A foreign Stanford student was denied boarding, presumably due to the no fly list. Conjecture is that the root cause is confusion between a terrorist organization "Jemaah Islamiyah Malaysia" and a professional organization "Jamaah Islah Malaysia".
Inability to fly to return to Stanford/Silicon Valley has obviously caused a lot of complications and trouble for her, which can be interpreted as monetary damages, and she has filed suit for compensation, and also to be removed from the no fly list.
A few days ago, the government appears to have prevented her daughter (a U.S. citizen) from flying to America to testify about it. The government claimed in court that they did not prevent her daughter from flying to America with the no fly list, but apparently the airline provided the daughter with a copy of the no fly order. Generally, the airline is instructed not to provide said orders to the traveller, so the traveller has no way to know why they aren't allowed to fly.
This sort of lawsuit is difficult to make - the government has argued it should be dismissed because she can't prove the problem is that she is on the no fly list.
I don't see what the government expects. They go out of their way to keep things secret, like with FISA courts and the gag orders on the no-fly list, and then they say "she can't prove it was us" as a defense. Hello? Rule of law?
That is exactly what the government expects. It is a catch-22 (you can't know that you are on the list (through official channels anyway) unless you sue them into confirming it, and you can't sue them unless you can prove that you are on the list. A seemingly insurmountable circular dependency.), and it is by design.
Comments
I haven't been following the news on this particular story (shame on me). Is there something that can put this story into context for me? It was fascinating to read but hard to understand without knowing the story.
A foreign Stanford student was denied boarding, presumably due to the no fly list. Conjecture is that the root cause is confusion between a terrorist organization "Jemaah Islamiyah Malaysia" and a professional organization "Jamaah Islah Malaysia".
Inability to fly to return to Stanford/Silicon Valley has obviously caused a lot of complications and trouble for her, which can be interpreted as monetary damages, and she has filed suit for compensation, and also to be removed from the no fly list.
A few days ago, the government appears to have prevented her daughter (a U.S. citizen) from flying to America to testify about it. The government claimed in court that they did not prevent her daughter from flying to America with the no fly list, but apparently the airline provided the daughter with a copy of the no fly order. Generally, the airline is instructed not to provide said orders to the traveller, so the traveller has no way to know why they aren't allowed to fly.
This sort of lawsuit is difficult to make - the government has argued it should be dismissed because she can't prove the problem is that she is on the no fly list.
I don't see what the government expects. They go out of their way to keep things secret, like with FISA courts and the gag orders on the no-fly list, and then they say "she can't prove it was us" as a defense. Hello? Rule of law?
That is exactly what the government expects. It is a catch-22 (you can't know that you are on the list (through official channels anyway) unless you sue them into confirming it, and you can't sue them unless you can prove that you are on the list. A seemingly insurmountable circular dependency.), and it is by design.
Thanks for the quick summary!
This is nuts.
A better definition would be: "This makes perfect sense, and it is easy to understand how it happened, but it is evil and intolerable."
How does a lawyer get to the point where they can defend something like this?