Posted on 07/18/2002 8:09:28 PM PDT by zeugma
July 18, 2002
Air Traveler ID Requirement Challenged
Secret rule demanding 'Your Papers Please' claimed unconstitutional
San Francisco - Civil libertarian John Gilmore today challenged as unconstitutional a secret federal rule that requires domestic US travelers to identify themselves.
"United States courts have recognized for more than a century that honest citizens have the right to travel throughout America without government restrictions.| Some people say that everything changed on 9/11, but patriots have stood by our Constitution through centuries of conflict and uncertainty.| Any government that tracks its citizens' movements and associations, or restricts their travel using secret decrees, is violating that Constitution," said Gilmore.| "With this case, I hope to redirect government anti-terrorism efforts away from intrusive yet useless measures such as ID checks, confiscation of tweezers, and database surveillance of every traveler's life."
At issue is a series of secret security directives issued by the Federal Aviation Administration and/or the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), in consultation with the Department of Justice and the Office of HomelandSecurity.| The directives appear to require US airlines to demand identification before allowing customers to travel.| Because the directives are secret, no citizen actually knows what they require.
On July 4, Southwest Airlines staff prevented Gilmore from boarding a pre-paid flight from Oakland to Washington, D.C, where he intended to petition the government to alter the ID check.| He then went to San Francisco International Airport and tried to purchase a similar ticket on United Airlines.| Both airlines, though unable to identify any actual regulation requiring him to identify himself, prevented him from flying.| United stated that they were following an unwritten regulation that had only been communicated to them orally, and which changes frequently.
"History shows many abuses when government agents can demand 'your papers, please!'" said Bill Simpich, an Oakland civil rights lawyer, and lead attorney in Gilmore's suit.| "TSA plans to deploy 'CAPPS II' later this year. This will use your ID to search in a stew of databases like credit records, previous travel history, criminal records, motor vehicle records, banks, web searches, and companies that collect personal information from consumer transactions.| Your life history will be gathered and scanned, using secret criteria, whenever you book a flight or arrive at an airport. If the machine decides you're a risk, the airline will not let you fly, and federal cops will show up to interrogate you.| They will probably tell you that you were 'randomly' selected for all this attention, but they will be lying."
Gilmore v. Ashcroft, filed today in Federal Court for the Northern District of California, challenges every secret regulation that demands identification from innocent citizens, or restricts their domestic travel.| Such regulations are unconstitutional because they are unpublished; require government agents to search and seize citizens who are not suspected of crimes; burden the rights to travel, associate, and petition the government; and discriminate against those who choose anonymity.| The case also argues that because the regulations are secret, they violate the Freedom of Information Act.
Mr. Gilmore is a businessman, civil libertarian, and philanthropist. He was the fifth employee of Sun Microsystems, an early author of open source software, and co-creator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Cypherpunks, the DES Cracker, and the Internet's "alt" newsgroups. He serves as a director on several for-profit and nonprofit boards.
The legal complaint, FAQ, and other case documents can be found at:
http://cryptome.org/freetotravel.htm
Personally, I believe this state already exists to a great degree. Many do not yet. There will come a day though, not all too terribly far into the future, when people (the older ones amongst us most likely) who will look around and ask "how did this evil thing happen"?
With any luck, I'll be around to observe that most of it happened by their own insistance on the implementation of the nanny state.
This profiling and monitoring of airline customers is of no real use whatsoever in combatting terrorism. Does anyone out there really believe that hi-jacking a plane is now even possible given what we witnessed last year? In a plane full of people, I'd be willing to bet that there will be a couple who would rather die on their feet than be willing participants in the possible murder of thousands.
The way of such things has now changed. Mr. Beamer points the way for us.
Opposing basic aviation security puts you on the side of the terrorists. You should be ashamed. If you want to hide your identities so bad, don't travel by air.
Can you explain to me how requiring ID to board an airplane helps anything at all?
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I also beleive that if the government didnt require it *for the moment I'll give the plaintiff the benefit of the doubt and assume they do) the airlines will still want to see ID so this is all a moot point.
You mention that people can take a bus if they don't wanted to be subjected to the invasive policies of airport personnel. I would advise you to read the pleading filed that is referenced on the source link. They are requiring the same identification procedures on bus lines now too. About the only way you can now travel without being subjected to the "your papers please" rigamarole is by walking or riding a bike. This is hardly efficient means of travelling the country.
As citizens we have the right to travel. This mobility used to be one of the things we held up as an example of one of the requisites of a free nation, unlike the former USSR where all travel was controlled and monitored. We already have to have what are in effect internal passports in the form of drivers licenses to participate in any meaningful way in society. It's only going to get more and more restricted in that way if people don't realize what a precious thing actual liberty is and start standing up for it rather than just meekly going along with whatever Fedgov or any of the related Stategovs decide is necessary.
Hi-jacking an airliner in our current climate is such a remote possibility as to be almost laughable, as everyone is fully aware of the possible result. These feel-good 'security' measures do nothing to enhance our security, and in fact have only one effect, that is, to make us a less free nation.
I, for one, will not fly again until some sanity begins to prevail in this nation. Apparently a lot of people agree with me on this, if the loss statements being reported by every airline but Southwest is any indication.
Sure, I can explain that. We've been conditioned for decades to think such things are the normal course of things for people travelling on the public roads by a continuous onslaught of propaganda. If you look at early court decisions about driver's licenses, you'll find that the only people who needed the things were people actually engaged in using the public roads for personal profit like truck or bus drivers.
After years of beating a contrary position into people's heads, it has come to the point where people just accept it as a fact that licenses to exercise your right to travel the public roads are required. You can't even fight it in court because the very idea is now so ingrained that it presents an extreme case of cognitive dissonance in any judge who would hear it and he will dismiss it as nonsense despite any documentation on the subject you might produce. The history of this is really quite interesting as it is a study of what is effectively brainwashing on a massive scale. That's not to say that a conspiracy to implement this is required, it just gradually came to be because Fedgov and the various Stategovs saw it as a nifty revenue raising measure and means for instituting control and expanding their various fiefdoms.
Google is your friend.
Nicely said. You are a bit more succinct than I.
The airlines are private corporations, they have no obligation to let anyone on them
Which is why discrimination laws are bogus/bad law. The government has no right to force itself on private persons and their businesses. It is those that employee us that together go to work each day to benefit ourselves, others and society. Needing permission from the government to do what comes natural is as absurd as issuing a patent for a natural earth borne "drug". The government has such oppressive fees and regulations that a pharmaceutical manufacturer can't afford to bring a natural drug to market because without a patent every other drug company could have unrestricted access to the natural occurring drug.
If they make the showing of an ID a prerequisite to having their ticket accepted, that is their business. There's always the bus if you dont want to tell people who you are.
If operating a private airline without government intervention the airlines long ago would have armed their pilots. Instead they're chasing after ID "security". It's their business yet their pilots aren't even armed.
I also beleive that if the government didnt require it *for the moment I'll give the plaintiff the benefit of the doubt and assume they do) the airlines will still want to see ID so this is all a moot point.
It's not moot because chasing after IDs while not first arming pilots is the problem. Pilots should have been armed since the late sixties-early seventies when hijackings first became a real problem.
Since 1970 it might have cost the major airlines a billion dollars to arm their pilots for the last thirty-two years and prevented the 9-11 terrorist attacks and several dozen more hijackings since 1970. Arming pilots is low cost insurance. How much money have the airlines lost just since 9-11? Oh, that's right, the government gave about a billion dollars of taxpayers' money to the airlines because the airlines -- in "bed" with the government -- didn't arm their pilots and thus shot themselves in the foot -- so to speak.
Which airline would you fly: the airline that advertises its pilots are armed or the airline that doesn't arm their pilots? Oh, that's right, government regulation prohibits an airline from advertising its safety records... fewest crashes per 1,000,000 flights, fewest hijackings -- you get the idea.
Imagine that after 9-11 an airline, say for example, South West airline was to advertise that they have always armed all their pilots. They'd deserve the sudden increase in customers that United and American airlines didn't consider worth protecting.
That's how a private airline market should operate free of government intervention. Politicians and bureaucrats aren't the smartest people in the world and they do know how to create an endless torrent of new laws and regulations each year. Many implemented in the airline and aircraft industries. They, parasitical politicians and self-serving bureaucrats don't solve problems--they create problems that need not exist.
* * *
As citizens we have the right to travel. This mobility used to be one of the things we held up as an example of one of the requisites of a free nation, unlike the former USSR where all travel was controlled and monitored. We already have to have what are in effect internal passports in the form of drivers licenses to participate in any meaningful way in society. It's only going to get more and more restricted in that way if people don't realize what a precious thing actual liberty is and start standing up for it rather than just meekly going along with whatever Fedgov or any of the related Stategovs decide is necessary.
zeugma, this should help towards that.
This internal review sought to answer the question “Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in newspapers?” Although panels met and “experts” debated various theories, few got to the essence of the problem.
Journalists claim to be on a search for the truth, yet we print the obvious lies of political spokesmen every day. Watch any of the Sunday talk shows and you will see all the political hacks offering up the party line unchallenged by the talking heads who host these vehicles of misinformation. THE RANT A disposable commodity called truth
Mainstream media reporters and journalist are too lazy to put forth the effort. They choose to open doors wherever possible and keep them open. The very people the media should be reporting as crooks, criminals and scoundrels are the ones they praise.
What a colossal hoax it is. For of course the interviewee -- the bigger the better to which politicians and bureaucrats are among the biggest with academics and "specialists" bought by the media mantra of open all doors coming in right behind -- those people (hidden crooks) being interviewed would never open the door if he or she knew that the reporter intended to expose them as frauds.
Put rhetorically: Do you really think a politician or bureaucrat would welcome an interview conducted by a reporter or journalist knowing that he or she was going to expose their participation in government fraud? Do you think mainstream reporters and journalists would expose the politicians and bureaucrats for their frauds knowing that they'd be shutting the door to any future interviews with that politician or bureaucrat and his cronies?
Conversely, there's a large and growing cadre of articulate, well-thought-out writers on the WWW. They are the opposite of the lazy reporters that rely on the easy-to-open doors of covering for crooks. In essence, they are unreal easy-open doors that can slam back shut in their face.
For the articulate writers on the Web, their open doors are among themselves, and their readers. Their essence is that they have to honestly earn an open door policy with their interviewees and they welcome their readers feedback. Often looking for other articulate writers of integrity and honesty among the feedback they get from readers.
That the mainstream media is liberal biased is not a reflection of congress or the alphabet bureaucracies. It is with both Republicans and Democrats that the government is what it is. The whole good-guy-bad-guy betwixt political parties is a ruse. For voting for the lesser of evils still begets evil.
As Mr. Brown used to jokingly ask us neighborhood kids, "Do you want a fat lip or a busted eyebrow?" That was not lost on me. From Democrats you get one, from Republicans you get the other. There are no winners and losers in politics for they (reps and dems) are two sides of the same coin. The only losers are the citizens, their prosperity and well-being which is mostly represented by the business community. The only winners are parasitical politicians and self-serving bureaucrats. ...Hot on their heels the mainstream media and academics catering to government crooks.
No doubt about it. These homeschooled teens are gung-ho about what they are doing, and, come fall, poised for another round of adventures in education. They are also preparing themselves, early in life, for adulthood. As Miriam puts it, "I think that high school just puts off the inevitable in terms of organizing your life, being responsible, and learning how to be self-directed."
The government facilitates that with public schools and the end result is worse than just putting of organizing ones life. ...It re-directs people's lives in subtle but disastrous ways. It weakens people to indoctrinated mush which makes it easy to lead them around. The market creates the textbooks to suit the government and they overflow into the private schools as does the general curriculum.
Good and bad are relative -- that's what professors are teaching college students. As do politicians, bureaucrats and mainstream media reporters and journalists lead by example.
What reporters and journalists never tell their audience
about crooks, criminals and frauds in government.
The Genie is Out of the Bottle
"They [government] demand strict accounting regulations to prevent billion dollar business frauds while they evade responsibility for a trillion-dollar government fraud," he added. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
He said it's ironic that no one in Washington is demanding an end to Social Security. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
It's only ironic if the person thinks the government has high standards of ethics, integrity and honesty. Or, ironic because that's the image they want people to perceive. That's where the mainstream media and academia join the party -- a government party. Honest, hard-working citizens need not apply.
Congress has created so many laws that virtually every person is assured of breaking more than just traffic laws. Surely with all this supposed lawlessness people and society should have long ago run head long into destruction. But it has not.
Instead, people and society have progressively prospered. Doing so despite politicians creating on average, 3,000 new laws each year which self-serving alphabet-agency bureaucrats implement/utilize to justify their usurped power and unearned paychecks. They both proclaim from on high -- with complicit endorsement from the media and academia -- that all those laws are "must-have" laws to thwart people and society from running headlong into self-destruction.
Again, despite not having this year's 3,000 must-have laws people and society increased prosperity for years and decades prior. How can it be that suddenly the people and the society they form has managed to be so prosperous for so long but suddenly they will run such great risk of destroying their self-created prosperity?
The government is the all time champion of cooking the books and it has the gall to point fingers at the whole business community because of a few bad apples. The entire business community and employees that support it should stand tall against a government feigning to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books.
If there was ever a prime example of the fox guarding the hen house it is the government claiming to protect the little guy from organizations that cook their books. President Bush will have to militarily smash down terrorism. For that is his job. It's not the President's, congress' or the government's job to manipulate the economy.
The business community with their employees will have to stand tall against the PC-status-quo fox -- self-proclaimed authorities claiming/feigning they'll use the government to protect the little guy and a complicit media and academia that supports them; for they are all the fox -- to regain their rightful place as the champions of honest business that has always increased the well-being of people.
The government, having already manipulated the economy to almost no-end, President Bush can play the unbeatable five-ace hand of replacing the threat-of-force IRS and graduated income tax with a don't-pay-the-tax-if-you-don't-want-to consumption tax. For example, implement the proposed national retail sales tax (NRST). Not only would that win votes for Bush and republicans in congress it would boom the economy.
Where will it lead?
War of Two Worlds
Value Creators versus Value Destroyers
Politics is not the solution. It's the problem!
The first thing civilization must have is business/science. It's what the family needs so that its members can live creative, productive, happy lives. Business/science can survive, even thrive without government/bureaucracy.
Government/bureaucracy cannot survive without business/science. In general, business/science and family is the host and government/bureaucracy is a parasite.
Aside from that, keep valid government services that protect individual rights and property. Military defense, FBI, CIA, police and courts. With the rest of government striped away those few valid services would be several fold more efficient and effective than they are today.
Underwriters Laboratory is a private sector business that has to compete in a capitalist market. Underwriters laboratory is a good example of success where government fails.
Any government agency that is a value to the people and society -- which there are but a few -- could better serve the people by being in the private sector where competition demands maximum performance.
Wake up! They are the parasites. We are the host. We don't need them. They need us.
* * *
After all, in calling for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commissioner Harvey Pitt, McCain declares, “Government’s demands for corporate accountability are only credible if government executives are held accountable as well." Does that mean U.S. senators? Congress, Accounting, and the Free Market (McCain is grandstanding again)
"Too often, we have cooked the books, exploited off-balance sheet accounting, fudged budget numbers and failed to disclose fully the nation's assets and liabilities. If we in Washington are to have credibility in the public eye as we address the corporate accounting mess, we must reform our own fiscal practices," said McCain. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
Prove it first. It's not like it's a new discovery or problem. It's a seventy-year-old problem. It's just that now politicians and bureaucrats have trapped themselves and the general public is becoming increasingly aware. They've been caught and McCain is getting interview time to peddle gussied-up compassionate government.
"Allowing Americans to invest responsibly a small part of their payroll taxes will not only save Social Security, but will provide them with greater retirement income than those who no or will soon depend on Social Security checks," said McCain. Social Security Called A Bigger Fraud Than Corporate Scandals
Notice McCain so readily self-proclaims himself and government the authority to allow Americans to invest part of their own money. But he has a condition; it most be done responsibly. And who decides what is responsible? Certainly not the all-time champion, cook-the-books bureaucrats and snake-oil-salesmen politicians.
They -- self-proclaimed authorities -- are running citizens and society headlong into destruction.
It certainly offers no security as it has been show in Illinois and Tennessee that members of the DMV have sold fraudulent but "legal" driver's licenses to illegal aliens from arab countries since 9/11/2001. The names and addresses are bogus. What good does it do to "prove" that the name matches that on the ticket?
The only "secure" ID is a passport and the airlines know better than to require domestic passengers to present their passports (especially for in-state trips).
Shades of "double secret probation!"
Agreed. I have to have a valid ID to drive, to buy a drink or tobacco, to cash a check. I feel much safer if the airlines know who is getting on a plane. In fact, I think it's a reasonable expectation when I buy a ticket, that the airline knows who is on that plane.
This is common sense. It isn't curtailing my movement. Anyway, even before 911 I was asked to produce ID to get on a plane.
Suppose the plane crashes...how is the airline supposed to notify your family that you've died?
Secondly, there's another thread here championing the flight attendants on the first plane to hit the WTC for communicating the seat numbers of the hijackers, enabling authorities to identify them. Explain that dichotomy.
I am not at all in favor of a police state, but I do not think requiring ID to fly is out of line in any way. People do NOT have to fly, anyway. They can cross state lines anyway they choose without showing ID. IE: this is not unconstitutional.
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