The off-road journey that America has traveled in the five-and-a-half years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 has been costly and treacherous. Civil liberties have eroded. Privacy rights have been trampled on. Suspicion and paranoia have become cultural mainstays. We have lost our way—led astray by a pack of charlatans masquerading as leaders who took advantage of us when we were most vulnerable.

But the time has come to wrest the wheel from these misguided and misguiding rogues, who would have us believe that the road to greater safety and security must of necessity be paved with relinquished rights and liberties. They could not be more wrong. The way to counter terrorism and defeat those who ostensibly begrudge us our freedom is not by becoming less free. It is only by more fully and forcefully embracing and promoting the freedom that it is our great privilege as Americans to possess that we can hope to counter terrorism and totalitarianism. Those who would tell you otherwise are simply steering you wrong.

Yet another cautionary tale, here from the Washington Post:

Ordinary Customers Flagged as Terrorists

Private businesses such as rental and mortgage companies and car dealers are checking the names of customers against a list of suspected terrorists and drug traffickers made publicly available by the Treasury Department, sometimes denying services to ordinary people whose names are similar to those on the list.

The Office of Foreign Asset Control’s list of “specially designated nationals” has long been used by banks and other financial institutions to block financial transactions of drug dealers and other criminals. But an executive order issued by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has expanded the list and its consequences in unforeseen ways. Businesses have used it to screen applicants for home and car loans, apartments and even exercise equipment, according to interviews and a report by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area to be issued today.

“The way in which the list is being used goes far beyond contexts in which it has a link to national security,” said Shirin Sinnar, the report’s author. “The government is effectively conscripting private businesses into the war on terrorism but doing so without making sure that businesses don’t trample on individual rights.” [full text]

The article goes on to offer some examples of individuals who have unjustifiably been treated with suspicion and experienced difficulties as a result of the OFLAG list:

Tom Kubbany is neither a terrorist nor a drug trafficker, has average credit and has owned homes in the past, so the Northern California mental-health worker was baffled when his mortgage broker said lenders were not interested in him. Reviewing his loan file, he discovered something shocking. At the top of his credit report was an OFAC alert provided by credit bureau TransUnion that showed that his middle name, Hassan, is an alias for Ali Saddam Hussein, purportedly a “son of Saddam Hussein.”

The record is not clear on whether Ali Saddam Hussein was a Hussein offspring, but the OFAC list stated he was born in 1980 or 1983. Kubbany was born in Detroit in 1949….

Saad Ali Muhammad is an African American who was born in Chicago and converted to Islam in 1980. When he tried to buy a used car from a Chevrolet dealership three years ago, a salesman ran his credit report and at the top saw a reference to “OFAC search,” followed by the names of terrorists including Osama bin Laden. The only apparent connection was the name Muhammad. The credit report, also by TransUnion, did not explain what OFAC was or what the credit report user should do with the information. [full text]