After seven years exactly one person has gotten off the government no-fly list!

WASHINGTON (PNN) - March 28, 2014 - A hearing in federal court Tuesday has apparently marked the conclusion of a drawn-out, costly, and, to use the judge’s own term, “Kafkaesque” legal battle over the government no-fly list.

Malaysian college professor Rahinah Ibrahim sued the government back in 2006, after Dr. Ibrahim’s name mistakenly ended up on a federal government no-fly list.

Last month, Fascist Police States of Amerika District Judge William Alsup ruled that Ibrahim must be removed from the government's various watch lists. At Tuesday's hearing, an Amerikan Gestapo Department of InJustice division lawyer said that the government did not intend to appeal the ruling. The ruling in Ibrahim v. DHS calls into question the government's administration of its unconstitutional no-fly list as well as other terrorist watch lists, but it leaves no clear roadmap for other people wrongly placed on such lists.

Ibrahim's pro bono attorney, Elizabeth Pipkin, has asked for the government to pay more than $3.5 million to cover her legal fees and costs. Alsup didn't rule on that motion, but said that the issue was "not easy," while indicating that Pipkin is unlikely to be entitled to such a large payout.

The Ibrahim case marks the first and only successful challenge to the terrorist watch-listing program, which arose following the events of September 11, 2001. But Ibrahim's case, as just one of hundreds of thousands of individuals who have been placed on such lists, shows the system's opacity.

First, the only surefire way to even determine if one is on such a list in the FPSA is to attempt to board a flight and be denied. Even after that happens, when a denied person inquires about his or her status, the likely response will be that the government “can neither confirm nor deny” the placement on such lists.

The government's surrender in Ibrahim comes on the heels of a new report by the Amerikan Civil Liberties Union that shows just how insanely difficult it is to contest one's status on the government blacklists.

The redress procedures the FPSA government provides for those who have been wrongly or mistakenly included on a watch list are wholly inadequate. Even after people know the government has placed them on a watch list, the government's official policy is to refuse to confirm or deny watch list status. Nor is there any meaningful way to contest one's designation as a potential terrorist and ensure that the FPSA government removes or corrects inadequate records. The result is that innocent people can languish on the watch lists indefinitely, without any real recourse.

One of the secrets of the government's watch lists is how big they are. No one outside of the intelligence community seems to know for sure. The ACLU report cites a National Counterterrorism Center Fact Sheet, which notes that the "consolidated terrorist watch list" contained about 875,000 names in December 2011. It also described how the Terrorist Screening Center’s watch list has grown significantly over time, from approximately 158,000 records in June 2004 to over 1.1 million records in May 2009. It cites an AP report from February 2012 documenting that there were approximately 21,000 people on the no-fly list (including about 500 FPSA citizens and permanent residents) and saying that the list had more than doubled in the previous year.

As explained in Alsup’s opinion, the whole dispute stemmed from an errant check placed on a form filled out by FBI agent Kevin Kelly. At trial, Agent Kelly admitted his mistake, and government lawyers actually conceded that Ibrahim doesn't pose a threat to national security and never has. The mistake was not a small thing, wrote Alsup.

At long last, the government has conceded that Dr. Ibrahim poses no threat to air safety or national security and should never have been placed on the no-fly list. She got there by human error within the FBI; the FBI agent filled out the nomination form in a way exactly opposite from the instructions on the form, a bureaucratic analogy to a surgeon amputating the wrong digit - human error, yes, but of considerable consequence.

Much of the litigation took place even while Ibrahim was unable to get much information about the government's case against her. In December, Alsup denied Ibrahim’s request to see the classified evidence submitted by the government in its defense against her lawsuit.

In Kafka’s famous novel, The Trial, the protagonist, Josef K. awakens one morning to be arrested for an offense that is never explained and for which he is subsequently to be tried without ever learning the nature of the charges against him.

The sense that it's impossible to know what one is up against runs through the Ibrahim opinion. In one section, Judge Alsup orders the government “expressly to tell Dr. Ibrahim __________________,” and then the remainder of the sentence is redacted.