What's sad is that I didn't even need to know the facts to agree that what you said was true.
select * from TUSCAN.Errorists;
So I would say that there is more than one bureaucratic mistake that happened here. Nobody went back to Agent Kelley for years and asked, "Hey, man. Why did you fill out this form this way?"
He would have looked at the form, blinked twice, and said "Oh, shit!"--which is what I'm sure happened at the closed court proceedings when he was deposed.
It rather looks like that she was put on the list just because of an overzealous agent who didn't want to risc anything or maybe mixed up her name. And he didn't care to put that back, esp. after she complained. So they played the national security game for a while.
Surely that would be easier than years of litigation, no?
Government constantly shows that it shouldn't be trusted with anything sensitive. It makes stupid mistakes, but never admits that. How many cases happen that nobody ever realizes, because they are swept under the rug?
In the end we all should believe that they are "good" and competent. In spite of them proving us wrong all the time...
If a mistake was made, it should be easy to correct and not be followed by years of fighting to not only keep it from being corrected but to keep it a secret. They've successfully kept most of it a secret, even though the direct victim had their suffering eased.
The indirect and ultimate victims of this, our individual rights and society's ideals, are still suffering.