Barack Obama undermines Donald Trump’s proposals for Muslim registry by scrapping government tracking system, by Nick Allen.

President Barack Obama’s administration attempted to undermine his successor Donald Trump’s potential plans for a Muslim registry by scrapping a controversial tracking system that could have been useful in setting it up.

The US government formally ended the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) which required visitors from 25 countries where extremist groups are operating to register with the US government.

The programme’s elimination could make it more complicated for Mr Trump to launch his own registration system for Muslims. NSEERS was set up in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Men from countries mostly in the Middle East, but also including North Korea, were required to register with the government. That included having fingerprints and photographs taken and notifying officials of a change of address.

The programme was suspended in 2011 when there were 80,000 foreigners on it. …

An ACLU spokeswoman said: “With this action the US is on the right path to protect Muslim and Arab immigrants from discrimination.”

Apple, Google, and Uber refuse to build Muslim registry.

Donald Trump Corrects the Record: Media Proposed Muslim Database, Not Me, by Charlie Spiering in Nov 2015.

Donald Trump corrected reports from the media suggesting that he actually wanted a government database for all Muslim Americans to be registered in order to stop terrorism.

“I didn’t suggest a database – a reporter did,” he wrote on Twitter moments ago. …

As Breitbart’s Joel Pollack wrote, the media has used the exchange [in a reporter’s interview] to smear Trump as a ‘Nazi.’ Former Florida governor Jeb Bush criticized Trump’s comments, calling them “abhorrent.”

Another front on the culture war is taking shape. The US census already asks people’s religion, and it can probably be inferred from other databases too.

hat-tip Stephen Neil