For Erich Scherfen, being on a government terror watch list isn’t just a matter of inconvenience. It could end his career.

Erich Scherfen served 13 years in the military, including flying National Guard helicopters.
Scherfen served in the U.S. military for 13 years, as an Army infantryman in the first Gulf War and then as a helicopter pilot in the National Guard. After receiving an honorable discharge, he was hired as a pilot by Colgan Air Inc., a regional airline operating in the Northeast and Texas.

In April, Colgan informed Scherfen that he was on a government list and would be suspended from his job. He was told he faced termination on September 1 unless he was able to clear his name.

But Scherfen, of Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, has been unable to do so and said fears it could mean he has no future as a pilot.

“My entire career depends on me getting off this list,” he told CNN. “I probably won’t be able to get a job anywhere else in the world having this mark that I’m on this list.”

Witold Walczak, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing Scherfen and his wife in a lawsuit, calls the government actions “unfair” and “unjust.”

“It is quite clear when the government does something that takes away not just your job, but your occupation, your career, they have to provide you with some means to clear your name,” Walczak said.

The lawsuit, filed this week in federal court in Pennsylvania, asks the U.S. government to remove Scherfen and his wife, Rubina Tareen, from any watch lists or databases that inhibit their travel.

Scherfen is a convert to Islam. His wife emigrated from Pakistan when she was 17 and is now a U.S. citizen. She runs a small business selling books and DVDs about Islam, publications she describes as nonpolitical. Watch the couple speculate on why they’re listed »

Scherfen and Tareen have both been stopped when traveling and told by security personnel that they are on “a list.” Scherfen calls it “embarrassing.”

Tareen said she thinks they may be on a watch list because of their Muslim faith and her Pakistani heritage. The two said they are not terrorists and don’t associate with people who are.

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Fingerprints are considered to be among the most personal of information, and fingerprint databases created and proposed in the name of national security have generated much debate. Recently, “Server in the Sky” - a proposed international database of the fingerprints of suspected criminals and terrorists to be shared among the U.S., U.K. and Canada - has ignited a firestorm of controversy. As have cavalier comments by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that fingerprints aren-t “personal data.”

Yet earlier this week, a measure creating a federal fingerprint registry totally unrelated to national security passed a U.S. Senate committee almost without notice. The legislation would require thousands of individuals working even tangentially in the mortgage and real estate industries - and not suspected of anything - to send their prints to the feds. The database and fingerprint mandates were tucked into housing and foreclosure assistance bills that on Tuesday passed the Senate Banking Committee by a vote of 19-2.

More at OpenMarket.org

We must be approaching an election……… from CNN:

A homeland security official tells CNN a joint FBI/Department of Homeland Security bulletin went out Wednesday to state and local partners warning of an uncorroborated threat to Wall Street - but the official emphasizes there is no credible threat to the homeland at this time.

The official describes the bulletin as being only three lines long, and says it relays “fragmentary” and “uncorroborated” information indicating that Al Qaeda is allegedly interested in hitting what was described as the “international stock exchange,” in other words Wall Street, possibly during March.

There was no further information about timing, method, or perpetrators.

Commissioner Paul Browne, an NYPD spokesman, confirmed the bulletin - and stressed this is an uncorroborated threat. He says it originated overseas.

The NYPD notified Wall Street and the network of security people in the financial district. NYPD adjusted its security posture “somewhat,” but not “significantly,” out of an abundance of caution, Browne said.

He notes that the area already has heavy security.

An FBI official says law enforcement partners in New York were notified out of an abundance of caution since Wall Street is a high interest target - but also said there is no corroboration at this time.

Today, more than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does-and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

InfraGard started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats.

“Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

InfraGard itself is still an FBI operation, with FBI agents in each state overseeing the local InfraGard chapters. (There are now eighty’six of them.) The alliance is a nonprofit organization of private sector InfraGard members.

“We are the owners, operators, and experts of our critical infrastructure, from the CEO of a large company in agriculture or high finance to the guy who turns the valve at the water utility,” says Schneck, who by day is the vice president of research integration at Secure Computing.

Full article at Progressive Magazine

CREW released a report today, “Homeland Security for Sale,” that highlights abuses and waste in the department. Examples:

From Homelandsecurityforsale.org:

Since its creation five years ago, Americans have been inundated with stories of waste, fraud and abuse at the Department of Homeland Security (”DHS”). Mismanagement, grossly excessive spending, criminal conduct and shady no-bid contracts within DHS have become regular features on the evening news and the front page of newspapers. As a result, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (”CREW“) has prepared a report documenting some of the most serious problems facing the country’s newest cabinet-level department.

Given the enormous size of DHS and the nearly innumerable issues facing the agency, CREW could not catalogue all of the problems. Instead, CREW has highlighted some of the agency’s most serious failings to see that those responsible will be held accountable and to spark a public debate about how DHS can and must be improved in the next administration.

Whether it is the chronic staffing vacancies, the worst employee morale in the federal government, the inoperability of information technology, our exposure to cyber-terrorism or FEMA’s fake press conferences, DHS’s failures are reported on a daily basis. In addition to the spectacular and well documented failures of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during and following Hurricane Katrina, there have been seemingly unending smaller outrages: that DHS purchased iPods for “data storage,” dog booties for hurricane recovery and designer rain jackets for munitions training, only to learn the iPods were lost, the booties unused and the firing range closed during rain.

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