Posted on 08/20/2009 7:53:45 AM PDT by sassy steel magnolia
Starting this year, Americans will have to get government approval to travel by air. As Privacy Journal revealed last fall, henceforth "Permission Now Needed to Travel Within U.S." Getting a reservation and checking-in for air travel will soon require Transportation Security Administration authorization. That permission is by no means assured: For example, if your name matches a "no-fly" list, even mistakenly, you can be denied the right to a reserve a seat on a flight. If your name is on a "selectee" list, you and your possessions will be searched more thoroughly before you can board. What is going on here?
Protecting air safety is essential, but professional screening at airports already provides for it. Giving the TSA as an official agency the additional authority to decide who gets to go where reaches beyond safety into overextended governmental power. This newly minted "Secure Flight" rule fundamentally imbalances long-standing citizens' rights both to travel and to be left alone. If your name appears among hundreds of thousands on "watchlists," you assert that the government should not require ID to fly, you don't want to reveal your date of birth for concern about identity theft, or you don't choose to declare your gender, you can stay home.
By combining the requirement for government photo IDs in order to fly with checking government watchlists including potentially every passenger, "Secure Flight" puts the federal government into the business of licensing travel. All travelers will need government OK in order to board a flight, or take a cruise. What the government can allow one day, it can forbid the next. All things considered, isn't this a higher-tech and later-day version of South African domestic passports or eastern European checkpoints? In fact, because of the high technological capacity of the U.S. version, aren't its implications for travel control of plane, train, bus and subway travel much more far reaching? It's incredible that something like this is happening relatively unrecognized in America.
While some people consider the requirement to show ID or reveal a birth date a small trade-off for security, what is at stake here is the right to travel. That fundamental freedom of movement appears in the Articles of Confederation in the right to freely enter and leave all the states of the then small union. It was so fundamentally a part of American citizenship that the privileges and immunities clauses of the Constitution included it without explicitly mentioning it again for the more perfect union. With a large and expansive nation now ranging from Hawaii and Alaska to Washington DC, that right to travel nationally, and petition the distant government, is even more fundamental. Yet some courts maintain that if you can walk, you don't need the right to fly. People have the right to walk around freely without carrying a national ID; why do they have to show one to travel? The Supreme Court has yet to rule on the scope of the right to travel but lower courts have tended to restrict it more narrowly than the Founding Fathers would approve.
Clearly, the air ID and "Secure Flight" rules mean you cannot travel any distance reachable only by air without official permission. Moreover, the system can easily be extended to Amtrak as a government railroad, which already requires government ID in order to purchase a ticket. It can further be extended to urban rapid-transit networks tied to travel cards, and private inter-city buses requiring IDs to buy tickets or board coaches. These are the bases for an internal passport system in the U.S.
There are a lot of practical issues here too. The assumption that any "no-fly" list includes all potential wrong doers is implausible, and first time criminals would by definition not appear until it's too late. Many people on these lists are there because their names are similar to those who are suspect for other reasons. There are perhaps a few hundred people whose past activities merit keeping them off the streets, let alone flights; the small group is better caught through search warrants and good police work before they come to the airport. To demand that 750 million annual passengers have to get government permissions to fly creates a needle in-a-haystack approach to locating a few potential wrongdoers (none so far have been caught by the matching). "Secure Flight" is simply an ineffective use of scarce resources that sweeps much too broadly over people's most basic rights to travel and be let alone.
What can you do? Like other regulations quickly promulgated at the end of an outgoing administration, these rules need to be delayed and reconstituted. Contact your Senators, Representatives and the White House to suspend such ill-considered regulations now. Insist that the government create a system that makes flying safe without granting federal officials the final say over permission for citizens to travel. Otherwise, the traveling public may be detoured onto a perilous downhill road to being permanently grounded.
Never plan on flying again.
The airlines don't need my business. They have amply convinced me of that by treating me like a criminal when I set foot in an airport.
I choose to avoid constitution-free zones.
Sue me.
“Permission Now Needed to Travel Within U.S.”
The communists had more freedoms then the free people of American.
What a quaint saying.
Papieren, bitte
Government control freaks have long wanted internal passports, and were very jealous that the Soviet Union had them and the US didn’t.
The insistence that the bus lines also tightened security goes hand and hand with this. This leaves only POV transportation, which can usually be tracked by credit card use. And for those carrying more than a few hundred dollars, they can be detained, and their money seized, on suspicion that it is proceeds from a drug transaction.
ping for later read.
I’m with ya there. I won’t fly because I got tired of proving myself innocent (going through checkpoints, etc. manned by $8 per hour rent-a-cops (TSA employees) who can question me without end if they so desire). My F150 can fly at 78 mph and get me anywhere I need to go including Alaska with no papers necessary to cross state lines (for the time being)..
The straw that broke the camel’s back? Several years ago I was leaving Montreal on a flight back to the U.S. My job required international travel and my passport had so many stamps from so many countries, I was seriously questioned as to why I was traveling so much, who did I work for, why was I required to go, who did I see when I went to these countries, where did I stay, what equipment, exactly, did I work on, etc..etc..They held me so long that I almost missed the flight even though I was 1.5 hours early (at the time I was going through security). At that point I said the he*l with it and started driving. It’s actually worked out well as I’ve seen this country from one end to the other as few have..but never again will I fly..
We will never willingly step on any airport property or fly on any airlines. We have flown enough in our life time. It just is not worth my time to travel and go through the process. Airlines and the TSA our out of our lives permanently.
...or if you want to board a flight to Washington, DC for September 12......
We be driving there....
I fly over 100k miles a year. It is not fun, and sounds like its going to get even less fun.
I fly alot. This week was the first time I was asked for my birth date and gender when I purchased a ticket. Is this part of the program?
Going by boat to Viet Nam is not really an option for me, so I have to fly when I go. Obamacare was looking inevitable for awhile and I did begin to investigate what it wold take to make me a permanent resident somewhere in Southeast Asia. My next flight there may be my last flight altogether.
Pinging.
Starting this year, Americans will have to get government approval to travel by air.
As Privacy Journal revealed last fall, henceforth "Permission Now Needed to Travel Within U.S."
Getting a reservation and checking-in for air travel will soon require Transportation Security Administration authorization. That permission is by no means assured:
yeah how about requiring good photo id and proof of citizenship to register to vote and id to vote? fraudulent voting/ certification can have more force on our country than an airline terrorist..just look at the WH now..
Lucy, may I be the first to post...
We (Americans) now need more ID to sit on a US bound airflight than is needed to sit in the Oval Office.
There.
I feel better now.
Thank you (again) for the pingy.
Give me a break.
The airlines aren’t treating you like a criminal. They are merely doing what the FAA says they have to do. If you got searched, well so did I. And many, many more.
The feds have told them they have to do this, and they can’t discriminate between grannies and terrorists. Stupid rules, but not the fault of the airlines.
If you’ve got a problem with that, don’t blame the airlines. They’re barely surviving now due to pressure beyond their control: unions, federal regs, high fuel prices, recession, a public afraid to fly.
Place the blame where it belongs and quit bellyaching.
I only fly if I’m crossing an ocean or in a private plane. Between the way the airlines treat passengers and the way the TSA thugs act I just refuse to give them my money.
I’ve flown twice on a domestic trip since 9/11 and was sorry I did both times. If I could drive to St Barths and St Lucia I wouldn’t fly commercially at all.
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