what exactly can the government do to him to any of us whether we're on the watch list or not as a journalist my first hunch is to go straight to the source Michael German is a former FBI agent who has experience with the terrorism watch list what is the internal designation given to people who are on that watch list Notre suspected terrorists do you need to be a known or suspected terrorists to be given that designation no you do not there's plenty of evidence that people were put on these lists were investigated for no reasons
so you're building this expanding pool of suspects based on little or no real evidence what are the most extreme things that can happen to you if you end up in that system there's so little transparency that we don't know all the ways the watchlist maybe you so from a deprivation of Rights standpoint there's a lot you can lose let's say I'm you know I'm an American citizen i get taken into secondary screening surely I have Fourth Amendment protections right not at the border anything coming across the border could be contraband and therefore the government has
a right searched it without work the agents that take me to secondary screening have the authority to read the contents of my emails or my text messages and not just read them but put them in a database for other agents across the intelligence community to read them all of that information and collectively cross-border so i think a lot of people are not aware of this what you're saying that is that at least some of our Constitution protections don't exist when we're in a border crossing or an error we're coming back from abroad right you might
try going to the airport tomorrow and see how you do
