First, the "no-fly" list contained only known terrorists, and applied only to preventing them from boarding aircraft in the US. Then we started adding people whose political views the White House doesn't like, and asserting our right to pull people off international flights that merely make a stopover in the US before continuing to their destination in another country. (We've done that to at least two Canadian citizens that I know of, one of whom we subsequently exported to Syria for torture -- because, you know, we're America, and we don't torture people; we just offshore the job. And now we claim that torture is OK for us, too, so long as we're doing it In Good Faith.)
Now, as Bruce Schneier reports, we've progressed to applying the no-fly list to international flights that never even land at a US airport, but merely happen to overfly US airspace, and sending orders ahead to the flight's destination to have passengers arrested there for having the wrong name.
What's next? Are we going to start asserting our right to enforce the no-fly list on any flight anywhere in the world that an American citizen is on, regardless of whether it ever enters US airspace or a US territory? And hell, why limit it to that, after all, an American might board the flight at a later stop. Why don't we just assert a right to bar people from flying anywhere in the world if they have a similar name to someone whom we think might possibly be a terrorist (or merely disrespectful of the current administration)?
War is peace. We have always been at war with Oceania.
Minor update: I somehow managed to omit the actual link to Schneier's report.
