Thought I'd share my testimony with you all, in case you don't look at the testimony on the state.gov website. I couldn't help the snark. I've had it with these people. I'm guessing they laugh (actually, I've seen them laugh in a committee meeting about the pro-rights people) to themselves when they see some citizen such as myself attempting to present facts and rational arguments against their never-ending encroachments on personal liberty. I don't see any workable realistic strategy for changing things around here. My only hope now is that pro-rights people will be in the White House and have the majorities in both the House and the Senate and that maybe there will be some national reciprocity legislation that will force Hawaii to change things for its residents (if every other state CCW had to be recognized they couldn't really use the "public safety" argument to deny residents the same right... no, wait, they would. I mean, tourists carrying, that's one thing, but Hawaii people are too f*cked up to do that without creating havoc, or something
). The White House pro-rights would also likely mean several SCOTUS appointments which might bear well (so to speak) for our future rights. I'm open to other ideas...
February 25, 2016
Judiciary Committee Chair, Vice Chair, and Members,
Please vote NO on HB1813.
I'm sure all the members of the committee have done their due diligence and carefully researched the multitude of problems with the "Terrorist Screening Database" which HB1813 would use as the standard to deny law-abiding Hawaii citizens, without any due process whatsoever, of their fundamental individual natural/God-given enumerated Constitutionally-guaranteed civil right to keep and bear arms, but I am entering this into the public record not for the already well-informed committee members, but for the general public who may not be so well-educated about the numerous problems with the "Terrorist Screening Database", and might be puzzled by your votes against this bill, having the ill-informed and mistaken idea that legislators “want terrorists to have guns”. We all know, of course, that nothing could be further from the truth. We need only look to all the other bills filed and working their way through the Hawaii legislature with broad support to clearly see that many Hawaii legislators want to remove access to firearms from a far wider group of citizens than merely “terrorists”.
The problems with the "Terrorist Screening Database" are many, far too many to go into here, so I will simply briefly mention a few of the problems so the public knows that HB1813 would not serve the citizens of Hawaii.
Firstly, no one knows if they are on the "Terrorist Screening Database" until they try to travel or engage in some other activity, such as attempting to purchase a firearm and undergoing a required background check, when they are "flagged". Senator Ted Kennedy (among other well-known public figures) was on the list (he was also on the much smaller "No Fly" list) and stopped numerous times from boarding airplanes. This was apparently because he had a name similar to a person who was a member of the Irish Republican Army who had blown his arms off while constructing an explosive device. I guess the "Terrorist Screening Database" forgot to mention "no arms" as part of it's description, or perhaps the database did include that descriptive information, but out of an abundance of caution Kennedy was prohibited from boarding on the possibility that “those could be prosthetic robotic arms”. Who knows? What we do know is that Kennedy of course, over a period of many months managed to get his name off the "No Fly List"/"Terrorist Screening Database" eventually. Regular citizens are not so lucky. One person was on the list for TEN YEARS before finally getting the case into court where it was discovered that it was a clerical error that had placed them on the list, and then the lack of due process options that kept them on the list.
There is no due process by an independent outside means, such as a court (except after many years and spending tens of thousands of dollars), for redressing one's mistaken appearance on the "Terrorist Screening Database". There is a process, but it is inadequate, as addressed by several reports by the U. S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. “[T]he TSC’s [Terrorist Screening Center] redress activities identified a high rate of error in watchlist records. In addition, we believe the TSC needs to address the timeliness of redress complaint resolutions.”
How high is the error rate and how many people are so effected? From the same report by the Inspector General: “We examined 105 records subject to the routine quality assurance review and found that 38 percent of the records we tested continued to contain errors or inconsistencies that were not identified through the TSC’s quality assurance efforts.” How many people does a 38% error rate become? “The watchlist database continues to increase by an average of over 20,000 records per month and contained over 700,000 records as of April 2007.”
The nine years since that publication until February 2016 would mean an increase of 2.120,000 names on the list, bringing it to a total of 2,820,000 names. At an error rate of 38%, that would mean that 805,600 of those named on the list are on the list in error. That is a significantly large number of people who would be denied their rights without due process, simply due to government incompetence.
Now, what are the criteria for being placed upon the list in the first place, even if it weren't riddled with such a high degree of errors? “The TSC’s general criterion for including a record in the consolidated watchlist database is that the nominating agency must have provided evidence of a nexus to terrorism.” Please note that “nexus to terrorism” includes people who might be neighbors, co-workers, relatives, acquaintances, etc. of a person who may (or may not) have some legitimate “nexus” to actual real-world terrorist activity. This criterion is far too broad and vague and obviously, as the Inspector General notes: “[T]he database contains records for individuals that should not be watchlisted.”
There are at least one million names, maybe two million or more on the "Terrorist Screening Database". If you go to the FBI website where they address their process for redressing possible errors in the database, they assure us that they have “AN attorney on staff [emphasis added]” to address such issues. That's one busy attorney.
A recently discussed concern is that this being a “domestic” (not “international”) database is that the criteria for including (only) American citizens in this database may include perfectly legitimate and lawful First Amendment-protected political speech, and yet such activity results in placement on the "Terrorist Screening Database". There is much evidence that such is the case, and this raises concerns about government overreach and the “chilling effect” such terrorist designation has upon lawful activities protesting government actions. One has to wonder with such broad and vague criteria that perhaps even people submitting strongly-worded public testimony to government agencies opposing what such citizens view as tyrannical unconstitutional policies and laws, and perhaps using accusatory language regarding failure by politicians to uphold their oath of office to uphold the Constitution, might end up on such a list. Is that what the founders had in mind with the First Amendment?
There are many more problems with the "Terrorist Screening Database" and thus the idea that it should be used for denying law-abiding citizens of Hawaii their rights, but the above ought to be sufficient to allow previously uninformed citizens to see the wisdom of defeating HB1813.
thank you,