By Cynthia Price
Each year since 1981, the Friends of Hackley Public Library has chosen a distinguished person with ties to Muskegon (often a native) to give a talk as part of the Hackley Distinguished Lecture series. The event’s official title is “The Charles Henry Hackley Distinguished Lecture in the Humanities,” and the selected individual embodies the ideals set forth by Hackley himself.
For its 38th year, not only was the speaker, Jeffrey Kahn, exemplary in terms of his career and his scholarship, but he also has a significant message to spread.
Kahn was born in Muskegon and is a graduate of Mona Shores High School. Interestingly, in 1990, he won first place in the Robinson Essay Scholarship competition for high school students that was a for years part of the Hackley Distinguished Lecture program (and is now a separate award).
His lecture was drawn from one of his greatest areas of expertise: the relationship between security and liberty after the 9/11 attacks. (Another, which has brought him international honors, is on human rights and legal reform in Russia after the Soviet Union.)
His lecture, “Round Up the Usual Suspects: Terrorist Watchlists and Civil Liberties,” sounded the alarm that the United States has gone too far in naming people to such databases as the “No Fly List,” depriving citizens of some of their most basic rights in the area of due process of law.
At the same time, he says, the shared law enforcement watchlists defy the separation of powers on which the U.S. Constitution is based, in that the executive branch is ignoring the need for judicial branch review of decisions about who will be on the list, the standards for adding people to the list, and how to appeal inclusion.
And, Kahn says, we all are not paying enough attention.
He started off by quoting from the film Casablanca, where at the end a law enforcement officer tells his assistants, “Round up the usual suspects.” (The Kevin Spacey film The Usual Suspects took its title from the same well-known saying.)
But, Kahn says, what was at the time an alarming enough concept is now a much bigger threat to civil liberty as a result of the Internet.
Kahn’s most recent book, Mrs. Shipley’s Ghost: The Right to Travel and Terrorist Watchlists (printed by the University of Michigan Press), takes as its starting point the work of a bureaucrat, Ruth Shipley, who from the period 1928-1955 was solely responsible for determining whether or not people could travel to foreign countries. Many will find it surprising that at that time the State Department’s Passport Office, which Shipley headed for so long, decided exactly who would travel out of the country. When citizens were done traveling, they had to return their documents to the passport office in Washington D.C.
The laws changed, but after airplanes were used successfully to mount attacks on 9/11/2001, the War on Terror allowed passage of legislation that creates a No Fly watchlist (and other related lists).
In the age of computers, anonymous officials create lists without oversight, and as the numbers grow and grow, a click of the mouse allows access to information from which the people clicking are very detached. FBI agents nominate people on the list through using a simple form – and there is no one checking to see if there are simple errors. In fact, in one case Kahn knew well, a woman appeared on the list simple because an agent switched lines when entering data on the form.
Kahn’s research indicates that in one five-year period there were over 469,000 nominations for the list, and the rejection rate for nominees was just over 1 percent.
Since the lists are very closely guarded secrets, people “accused” have no opportunity to know why, to confront their accusers, or even to find out if their names appear.
Moreover, as technology advances and such software as facial recognition comes into use, links to the watchlist become dangerous indeed.
And, as Kahn pointed out in his lecture, this has not even resulted in a safer society. Both the “Shoe Bomber” and the “Underwear Bomber,” who were disarmed by passengers, failed to appear on the No Fly List, and as domestic terror has increased recently, for the most part it has not even concerned air travel.
The solution? Primarily, Kahn says,
voters and advocates need to be aware of the scope of the problem and give some thought to whether the tradeoff of civil liberty for security is worth it. Judges, he said, are beginning to raise issues, and elected officials need to hear from citizens who share their concerns.
“A people who declare themselves free, and yet do not police the conduct of their leaders, will not taste that freedom for long,” Kahn warned.
Kahn gave a copy of his book to Hackley Library and, though he warned that his watchlist website contains malware, more information about his work can also be found at https://jeffrey-kahn.com/
In addition to Kahn’s lecture, The Friends of Hackley Public Library gave out two Hackley Commendations for Service at the event, held June 6 at The Block on Western Avenue. One went to John and Kathleen Snider for their many contributions to the local community, and filmmaker/community activist Jon Wesley Covington received the other.
Kahn thanked the Friends of Hackley Public Library, Carol Ann Balcom, Joe Zappacosta, Camille Gabris and Kimberly Dershem, for their assistance with his lecture. For more information about the Friends, visit www.fohpl.org.
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