This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, January 18th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Following the attack on the Capitol, the TSA placed many people suspected of

participating in that attack on no-fly lists.

Problem is that many of those people, perhaps even most of them, didn't do anything but attend a rally.

Patrick Eddington discusses the use of no-fly lists when criminal charges haven't been filed,

and the broader risk of these kinds of actions to Americans when they occur without due process.

I've received many memes in my texts from friends among others and I read on the internet

in various places and seeing this sort of very stark video of a man who's been

denied the ability to fly on a plane and he's crying and crying that he's been called a terrorist and a lot of people jumping on and just dunking on him and making fun of him and

so well maybe you shouldn't have wrecked the capital you jerk and I my first

thought was well if this guy wrecked the capital why is he standing around in an

airport crying why isn't he under arrest why isn't he in jail and but more broadly I

think a lot of people have taken some shameful joy.

I believe there's a German word for that in seeing these right-wingers essentially denied the ability to travel quickly and

efficiently which air travel of course does and and they've done so with

these no-fly lists. Airlines have their own but the federal

government is sort of the the keeper of the ultimate no-fly lists.

So before we understand whether or not these people are appropriately on a no-fly list,

let's dig down a little bit into the background of what no-fly lists actually do. So the original one of and has of course kind of mutated over time yet you actually have several different tiers.

You've referred actually to kind of the bifurcation that we have.

The airlines themselves of course have their own list of passengers who, because they've been problematic in the past, let's say the angry drunk who does not understand how to deal with things on a plane.

...