The 'no fly' list. good thing or bad?

we've all heard or read stories about people being 'mistakenly' put on the no fly list and how hard it is to get taken off unless you're a standing US senator, but what happens when you're purposefully put on the list for exercising your rights?

http://rt.com/usa/news/no-fly-hicks-us-military-650/

Wade Hicks was en route to a US Navy base in Japan to see his wife when armed military guards informed him that they had other plans. Hicks, an American citizen with no criminal record, had just been put added to a federal no-fly list.

After being escorted off his plane during a routine re-fueling stop on the Pacific Island of Oahu, Hicks, 34, was left stranded in Hawaii this week. In an interview, he suggests that his opposition to a newly-created law that allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens at military prisons without charge or trial could be to blame for his mistreatment.

"I was very, very vocal about the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and I did contact my representative” about it, Hicks tells talk show host Doug Hagmann. "I do believe that this is tied in some way to my free speech and my political view."

According to Hicks, he has little reason to believe otherwise. He tells Hagmann that he formerly worked as a contractor for the US Department of Defense and has undergone extensive background checks in order to obtain an enhanced license that allows him to carry a concealed firearm. Hicks says he also holds on to a special identification card issued by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the US Homeland Security Department sub-agency that administers pat-downs and screenings at airports across the country. An investigation carried out by Hagmann has led him to locating no criminal history for the man whatsoever.

Hicks’ incident occurred on October 14 when a military plane Hicks had boarded to visit his wife, a lieutenant in the US Navy, stopped in Oahu to refuel. Although he had no issues with gaining admittance to the aircraft during the first leg of his trip, things went amiss in Oahu.There two heavily-armed officers entered the plane and escorted him to a small interrogation room at a military base and told him that he had showed up on the US “no-fly” list, despite having boarded a flight earlier that day in San Francisco where he had been subjected to military-sanctioned security screenings reportedly more stringent than the TSA treatment. He was hoping to visit his wife of only eight months when the mishap unraveled.

"They have given me no reason. They just basically are telling me, 'You can't fly because we said so,'" Hicks tells Hagmann this week. "They didn't know how I even left Travis Air Force Base."

"I said, 'If I could find a way off the island, I could leave'? They said, 'Yes, as long as you don't fly.”

I have serious issues with using the laws to punish dissent. do you?
 
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