http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/albany/2015/03/8563606/proposed-terrorist-registry-could-list-tens-thousands-new-yorkers Proposed terrorist registry could list tens of thousands of New Yorkers
[image: proposed-terrorist-registry-could-list-tens-thousands-new-yorkers] ALBANY—A proposed public registry of terrorists in New York could include tens of thousands of individuals who have never been convicted of a crime. State Senator Thomas Croci, a freshman Republican from Long Island who is chair of the Senate's homeland security committee, sponsored a bill creating the list. As the bill is currently written, it would currently apply to more than one million people tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, few of whom have ever been convicted of a crime. Croci has said that he will amend his bill, which passed a Senate committee without debate last month. The “New York State Terrorist Registry Act <http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/S3464-2015>” would create a public list of people similar to that which exists for sex offenders. It is aimed at individuals like the “Lackawanna Six,” who were convicted in 2003 of aiding Al Qaeda and have since been paroled. “These are people who I think we all agree are bad,” Croci said. “They’re roaming around somewhere in upstate New York.” The proposal would require anybody who has been either convicted of a terrorist offense or committed a “verifiable act of terrorism” to put their name on a publicly accessible list of terrorists residing in New York. As defined in the bill, committing a “verifiable act” includes having one’s name appear on the FBI’s “terrorist screening database.” According to investigations by entities such as the *Los Angeles Times* and the American Civil Liberties Union, there are more than a million people in this database. In 2013 alone, nearly half a million names were added. More than a third lacked information as to why they were included. Those who are added have often done nothing to evoke suspicion of dangerous activity; people can “be listed simply because they are related to or know someone who is suspected of terrorism, even when there is ‘insufficient derogatory information’ for the person to otherwise be listed on his own,” according to <http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-terrorist-screening-database-20140813-story.html> the *LA Times*. Each of these individuals would be required to put their name on a government list designed to inform their neighbors that they should be watched, and to submit DNA samples to the state. “We’re in the process of clarifying the verifiable act language and that will be different from what you’re seeing now,” said Croci. “It will be more explicit as to what that means and it’ll be more restrictive.” The bill would also let the state’s Division of Homeland Security petition judges to add people to the terrorist registration list who have not committed a verifiable act of terrorism if they are deemed to present a “serious and immediate risk.” People added to the state’s list could petition for their removal. This process however, goes through elected state supreme court justices; it is not unthinkable that some judges would be hesitant to remove them for fear of being seen as soft on terrorism. Additionally, the homeland security division has the power to appeal judicial decisions, and a person on the list would continue to be branded a terrorist while the appellate process drags out. Even if this language were cleaned up, several experts have argued, it would result in the public shaming of people who have never committed a violent act. “The word ‘terrorism’ causes irrational fear in many people, but it is so poorly defined and so misapplied to innocent behavior that putting people on a terrorism registry would simply spread fear without providing any protection to the public,” said Stephen Downs, the former chief attorney for the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct and founder of Project Salam <http://www.projectsalam.org/about.html>, which scrutinizes prosecutions and convictions of Muslims accused of terrorism. “We work with people who have been called ‘terrorist’ merely for donating money to a charity, or for offering social hospitality to a friend, or traveling abroad without any intention of engaging in violence against anyone.” Downs and attorney Kathy Manley wrote a report <http://www.projectsalam.org/Inventing-Terrorists-study.pdf> contending that 72.4 percent of terrorism convictions since September 11, 2001 have relied on “preemptive prosecution that w[as] based on suspicions of the defendant’s perceived ideology and not his/her criminal activity.” In some of these instances, people were convicted solely because their relationships with militant individuals allowed for charges of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, according to the report. In other cases, people have been lured into terrorist activity by government informants. In the “Newburgh Four” case, the federal government offered four people, including a drug addict and a man so mentally ill that he kept bottles of urine in his bedroom, up to $250,000 to attack a synagogue. While the jury convicted these individuals of terrorist charges, few observers thought they posed a real threat. “Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, a man whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope,” said the presiding judge <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/12/newburgh-four-fbi-entrapment-terror>. “I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that there would have been no crime here except the government instigated it, planned it and brought it to fruition." Yet these individuals would be subjected to a form of public shame that goes beyond what convicted murderers face. Last month, Manley, a co-author of the Project Salam report, won a Court of Appeals case that voided local laws subjecting individuals on the sex offender list to more restrictions than those that appear in state law. Croci’s bill passed the Senate’s Veterans, Homeland Security and Military Affairs committee last month. It passed unanimously without debate, and as is the case with an overwhelming majority of bills considered in committee in Albany, no outside experts were invited to publicly testify. It does not currently have an Assembly sponsor. __._,_.___ ------------------------------ Posted by: "beowulf" <[email protected]> ------------------------------ Visit Your Group <https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/grendelreport/info;_ylc=X3oDMTJmdDRydm9wBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzIwMTk0ODA2BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTMyMzY2NwRzZWMDdnRsBHNsawN2Z2hwBHN0aW1lAzE0MjU5Mjc0Njg-> [image: Yahoo! 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