Both sides of this one have valid arguments...

The guy looks squeeky clean on paper, but none of us know WHY he was put on the watch list. Presumably due to his wife's associations, and we have no way of knowing whether or not there might be some shady links. It's entirely likely, even probable, that one who is active in the muslim-immigrant community could rub elbows with bona fide AQ types...possibly without knowing who they are. If we had ALL the info, we might be more supportive of the goverment's decision.

But we do need some sort of oversight on these sorts of programs...the government makes mistakes, and is often staffed by narrow-minded people who, if left unchecked, might not always do the right thing.

There is a very legit requirement to maintain the integrity of our national intelligence capabilities...disclosure of some info compromises system capabilities or, in the case of HUMINT, blows the source out of the water.

I think there should be a national board, consisting of congresspeople (or their delegates), intel community officers, and a federal judge or two which would review and arbitrate such complaints in a classified forum. This would not provide the individual with all the details of the intel involved, but would hopefully provide a balanced judgement taing into account the strength of the suspicions and the needs of the person involved.

Ultimately the reason the government can do this sort of thing is becaues they are not infringing on "rights", but rather privileges...nobody has a constitutional right to air travel or 121 employment. If they told you that you could not leave your home state or city, that would be a different story. But in this case there's still greyhound, amtrack, and avis