Slashdot Mirror
John Gilmore Sues Ashcroft et al. for Freedom to Travel
ChTom writes "John Gilmore initiated a federal suit today in CA Northern District against Ashcroft, et al, challenging the air travel ID requirement:
http://cryptome.org/freetotravel.htm
(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. )"
It does occur to me that it wasn't so long ago we criticized the Soviet Union for their inhumane policy of questioning any traveler they felt like.
Now we not only question almost every interstate traveler, we search them and arrest them if they question the legitimacy of the search.
Assuming this case isn't dismissed, my bet is the court says you have the right to domestic travel anywhere you like - by car or on foot.
- Necron69
You just need to get yourself one of these.
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
I'm probably gonna get marked troll for this, but here goes.
He's not going to win, for the same reason that you don't have a RIGHT to drive a car. Mr Gillmore is perfectly free to travel to his destination on foot or bicycle. I don't agree with that statement and think it contradicts the 10th amendment, but necessary and proper has prevailed. Air travel is interstate commerce, and thus can be regulated by the gov't.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
This isn't going to advance any of Gilmore's agenda. Setting aside the fact that there's no way he is going to win this legally -- because he isn't -- this is about the best piece of propaganda you could hand the government. He's just making himself look like a crackpot. By taking challenging a requirement like this, which most people are in favor of, he marginalizes all of the other more worthwhile civil liberty issues he might be associated with. Next time someone challenges Ashcroft on regulations of this sort, he can just retort with "well next thing you know you'll want to let people fly anonymously like that John Gilmore fella", and that'll be the end of that.
There are hills worth dying on and this isn't one of them.
On sept 18th, I again sought to go to NYC, to finish what I intended to do on the 11th - replace a bad firewall. Went to logan in boston, without valid photo id. By showing my expired passport, and have the MA state police search my record, they let me fly without event. At logan, I had to power on my laptop, unbox the cisco pix, and was fully searched with a wand metal detector by a somewhat overzealous latina girl.
Fast forward 12 hours - trying to leave NYC at laguardia, I went to the gate, went through security, was not asked to unbox the firewall for the metal detector, was not asked to turn on the laptop, was not manually searched for metallic objects. I breezed through until I actually attempted to board the place - when I handed them my ticket and expired passport, usair flipped out. After talking to the supervisor, and quickly realizing that there was no way I was going to get on the plane, I tried to get some answers from the supervisor:
"If you require valid id from all passengers, is it US Air's corporate policy that all passengers 16 and under need a US passport (because they can't have driver's licenses) for domestic flights?"
"no no no, you are different, you have id, you didn't bring it"
"that has nothing to do with anything. I would like a answer to my question - I have two siblings (17 and 12), and I would like to know if they will be able to fly USAir, as they don't have drivers licenses"
"blah, blah, blah" - basically, his body language and stammering said: I don't know what to say, basically, that, if we think you should have id, then you should have it. we won't discuss the qualifications for our assessing whether you think we should have id.
Basically, Logan was concerned about making sure that people were checked when getting on planes. Laguardia isn't too concerned abotu what you bring on, they just want to make sure that when it blows up, they have a good idea of who was on it
ostiguy
That's why the airlines never fought the rules, even though they are clumsy and inconvenient for ticket agents to enforce.
This is a ludicrous approach to the issue. You require a drivers license because you are the driver. You can ride IN a car without a drivers license. You can ride IN a bus without a drivers license. Why the hell do you need a license to ride in a plane?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
All your favorite sites in one place!
Another Orwellian-type (Soviet-type? Gestapo-type?) form of overmonitoring? A few things strike me from the challenge...
"United States courts have recognized for more than a century that honest citizens have the right to travel throughout America without government restrictions..." Well, we have to admit not all of those using our travel means in this country are honest citizens. The bulk probably are, but not all of them. So there has to be some form of verification/weeding out.
"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. " Now this I have a small problem with. I can (maybe) see checking things like criminal records or travel history.. but my credit record? My bank record? Those are in no way relevant to the choice I make to fly to Phoenix for the weekend.
Once again, the government is demonstrating an obscene overreaction to terroristic threats on our soil by ignoring key portions of the Constitution in the same of 'public safety.' Well, at this stage the cable guy can't come into my house (soon, maybe: TIPS), I can't fly to Miami (this crap, maybe), and I have to sit at home (or set up a motion-based webcam, look for sneak-n-peek in Patriot Act) to see if my domocile has been searched. Hell, I can't even surf for pr0n on Google anymore without being federally monitored.
If you asked me, the terrorists have managed to pull of some significant victories. It's a damn shame.
-'fester
What a crock of sh*t. Requiring IDs wouldn't have prevented those terrorists from boarding the plane. They all already had IDs. At best, assuming that it is impossible to fake an ID (and we all know how true that one is), mandatory ID checks at airports will only prevent currently known and watched terrorists, it will do nothing to stop the vast majority of fanatics, almost all of who have no criminal records.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
I believe that the airlines screen out their frequent customers and "pick on" their non-frequent or one-time customers.
As I read the suit, Mr. Gilmore is not objecting to being required to show ID, he is objecting to the GOVERNMENT requiring that he show ID.
Just as you should be free to walk down the street without being required BY THE GOVERNMENT to show identification, so should you be able to board a plane without being required BY THE GOVERNMENT to show identification.
If the airlines themselves want to require ID (for tickets, seating whatever) that's fine. But the government has no absolute right to require you to show identification whenever they feel like it (in the absence of a crime, probable cause, whatever).
And for those of you comparing this situation to cars and driving, remember Mr. Gilmore is not operating the vehicle, he is merely a passenger. Would you like to show ID every time you are in a car that gets pulled over for speeding? Have a background check run on you when you hit a DUI checkpoint in a car full of people?
This issue is not as black and white as it seems.
-ajb
Comment removed based on user account deletion
How is he to do that if there are secret federal regulations requiring the airlines to demand your identity papers before you can fly?
I don't think John is suggesting that planes should not be secure. He's saying that one should not secure planes by taking away the right of free travel, free anonymous travel, from the people of the USA.
Some of you are willing to give up that right, does that mean all should? Or should we all be required to show our papers when we travel and have our movements tracked?
As to the option of not using the airplane, can you tell me how that works in a country the size of the USA? Should people who wish to protect their rights be relegated to forms of transport orders of magnitude slower, which effectively make it impossible to travel on short notice to many places?
Why should travel at the speed necessary to conduct business in this country be a privilege rather than a right?
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/01/13/pilot.detained/
The pilot was going through the screening process around 7 a.m. EST when he "made an inappropriate comment relative to security," said US Airways spokesman David Castelveter, who said the airlines was "cooperating fully" with the investigation. "We find this type of behavior intolerable," he said.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
In several places along the western half of Interstate 10 (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas), all cars must exit and submit to random searches. They're mostly looking for smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
You don't need a State issued ID to be a passenger in a car, on a bus, a boat, or any other form of transportation. The thing here is that there are federal regulations (written or not) that require you to prove who you are in order to be a passenger on a scheduled commercial airliner.
Note I specifically stated "scheduled commercial airliner". All of this airline security is just a smokescreen. Did you know that chartered flights don't have any of these security restrictions?
On a chartered flight you can drive your car up to the plane and board without ever passing through any security checkpoint. The size of the plane doesn't matter, nor do the number of passengers (to the best of my knowledge).
If the terrorists are going to do this large-plane-into-larger-building thing again, they'll be smarter to get on a large corporate jet, like a chartered 737 or something. They wouldn't even need to sneak anything on board, just act like really rich people. They could load their luggage with C4. They could board with guns conceled in their coats, take over the plane and fly into anything. No plane full of pesky passengers to thwart any hijaking attempts.
As for the air-force shooting them down when they left the flight path? Well, imagine the hijackers treating the plane like a German V2... keep the normal flight path until they get near/over a major city, they just point the nose at the ground. Aim for something large downtown. 35,000ft to impact in under 7 minutes. Even if the plane was hit by a missile from a figher jet, it'd still fall in a flaming wrek over the city.
Or perhaps this... You can learn to fly a small plane like a Cessna, Beechcraft, Piper, etc in a matter of days. At least well enough for a suicide run. These planes have a usable cargo load of above 1500lbs in most cases (that's a LOT of bomb). Imagine a fleet of 19 of these things loaded with high explosives making a systematic hit on a downtown area. Again.. no metal detctors, no bomb-sniffing machines, no passengers to deal with. Just the attackers and their ordinance.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Fortunately, Mr. Gilmore is inadvertently doing a huge favor for the entire nation. By publicly challenging a very important airline security policy, he is allowing the courts (hopefully not the wacky "anti-God" court in California) to set a precedent allowing airlines to protect themselves from terrorists. And that will help us all be safer in our offices and in our planes.
We don't need people to protect us in our planes. We're perfectly capable of protecting ourselves on a flight. Look at the shoebomber. He tried something funny and got the shit kicked out of him, then arrested. If you scan news reports in the months after 9/11 you'll find several instances of people causing disturbances on airplanes and in every single instance they got ganked by the passengers and were restrained until the plane could land.
Americans won't stand for it anymore. In the 1980's the stakes were lower. Americans knew that if the plane was hijacked that they could keep their cool and cooperate and be released relatively unscathed when it was all over. Now days we know that the price of complacency during a hijacking is death, and Americans like to go down swinging. The odds of anybody being able to successfully hijack an airliner are drastically lower than they were on September 10th, and the terrorists know this. That's why I think that their next target will not be airplanes. It will likely be truck bombs on bridges or in front of buildings (a la Tim McVeigh). It will probably eventually be suicide bombers in our shopping malls. It might even be biological and chemical agents being disseminated in our office buildings and schools or dropped from small private airplanes. Commercial airlines haven't got anything to be worried about now I'd imagine.
I mean honestly, what is more terrifying to the average person? The possibility that someone may crash a fully loaded commercial airliner into the Statue of Liberty or that you may get blown to shreds while standing in the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggley (or whatever grocery store you frequent)?
An ID check at the gate does not and cannot prevent a hijacking. An ID check tells you who a person is -- his/her name, SSN, DOB, possibly criminal record, and so forth. It does not tell you what the person's intentions are.
There are terrorists who are U.S. citizens. There are terrorists who are white Christian boys with no connection to Axis of Evil[tm] nations, much less to Al-Qaida. There are terrorists with clean criminal records, and with honorable military discharges. These folks are just as capable of hijacking a plane, should they wish to, as Osama's boys are. As it happens, the last bunch decided to blow up some Federal employees in Oklahoma City instead.
Tools to prevent a hijacking cannot be tools that are used on the ground, because hijacking attempts do not take place on the ground; they take place in the air. You don't know if a person wants to hijack a plane until he tries, just as you don't know if a person wants to hold up a store until he tries. So when he tries, you need to be able to stop him.
Armed persons charged with defense of the airplane seem to be a good idea in this regard. Federal air marshals are one way to accomplish this; arming and training pilots is another; hiring security guards is another. There are other methods as well. Pick a few of them.
(Naturally, this logic only applies if the goal is to prevent hijackings. If the goal is to cast a segment of the population as "suspect" or as second-class citizens on the basis of some datum which can be divulged by an ID check, it does not. However, despite a few isolated cases of what look to me like unjust discrimination on the basis of race or political affiliation, I have not seen any evidence that it has become a policy goal.)
"The reality of life in the US in the 21st century is that without ID checks and other security measures at airports, someone may fly the plane that you have a right to travel on into a building."
The reality of life in the US in the 21st century is that with ID checks and other security measures at airports, someone did fly the plane that you have a right to travel on into a building.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Because the petitioner has ID, he is not sufficiently affected by the rule, and therefore doesn't have standing to sue.
Or perhaps this... You can learn to fly a small plane like a Cessna, Beechcraft, Piper, etc in a matter of days. At least well enough for a suicide run. These planes have a usable cargo load of above 1500lbs in most cases (that's a LOT of bomb)
... most of the energy would go away from the building, harmlessly out into the air. Unlike on the ground, where the energy would eminate outward in a hemisphere (instead of a sphere), most of it doing damage to the target area.
... he could have done more damange with an armload of bricks and lived to brag about it.
... which frankly makes me more than a little nervious as I work across the street from one of the primary 'targets' the pundits always like to talk about when exploring such scenerios.
First, most GA Cessna's, Pipers, and Beechcraft (I own one of the latter) have a usable load of only between 800 - 1100 lbs. By the time you have a 200 lb adult male, that amount is reduced to 600 lbs. The number you cited includes fuel, which weighs a significant amount.
Even if you loaded up with 600 lbs of c4 in an aircraft, especially a light aircraft with neither the speed, fuel capacity, or mass needed to do anything remotely like 9/11, you would pretty ineffective. Indeed, from the terrorist's point of view it would be a collasal waste
As has been demonstrated in Florida and Italy, there isn't a whole lot of damage you can do with a light aircraft, even one full of fuel. The things are flimsly and light, don't carry all much fuel to begin with (my Beechcraft carries 60 gallons), and don't have much usable cargo weight. The kid in Florida managed to break a window in his suicide run
Your scenerio with the charter of a large aircraft is more realistic, but light aircraft on the other hand are about the least effective delivery method you can use, unless of course you have a dirty, or atomic, bomb and just need altitude for maximum dispersal...maybe you'll irradiate an extra mile or so, but of course, there again, concentration will be reduced, making the overall toxicity of the event signficantly lower than a ground attack.
Ditto for biological or chemical agents.
Frankly, terrorists chances of success are a lot higher if they just rent a large truck and drive it up next to the target
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Story 1:
I am an arab american, palestinian to be exact (born in palestine but adopted as a baby by american missionaries).
A few weeks after 9/11 I had to fly from my home in Hawaii to Witchita Kansas (the home of modern aviation I might add, this is where all the big planes are made). I expected the worst.
Throughout the entire trip, I was never once searched nor questioned. I waltzed right through with minimal checks (e.g., normal xray, that's all). Everyone was asked to compare their ID with their ticket, by a guard at the gates EXCEPT on the way out of Witchita... there, I showed my ID and a very irate guard told me she didn't need to see it and to please move on (nobody else was in line with me either).
Now... I certainly look arab. I AM arab... I would expect to be profiled. However, being adopted I do not have an arab name, and being adopted as a baby, I do not have an accent. Add a Hawaiian Aloha shirt and viola... an arab waltzes right through security.
Story 2:
In december I took a vacation back to the mainland with a male friend of mine. Again, no checks, no stops, no Scarlet Pumpernickle (the *S* search S they scrawl on your ticket). On the way over there was a HUGE search line. I saw a number of pakastani women (in full garb) in one line and IMMEDIATLY got in that line. The pakastani women were made to stand over rubber mats and they were very well checked. I was brisked on through, no check. Hrmmmmmmm. Profileing? Lousy job.
Interestingly enough, on the way back my friend made an expensive impulse buy of a Parrot. At the gate, this time, we both received the Scarlet Pumpernickel... were very simply patted (the guy in front had to remove his shoes, but we were wearing rubba slipahs and they didn't make us remove them). However, they insisted that the parrot had to be removed from the cage and searched. My friend refused and said the parrot would simply fly away. Eventually the captulated and allowed us to board the plane without checking the parrot.
Story 3:
Friend of mine owns a hotel here. About a year before 9/11 a 80ish year old couple came to the island and, on one of their hikes, found a huge bowie knife (7 inch blade, huge thing). THey put it in their luggage and returned to the mainland.
AFTER 9/11 (this January for that matter) they returned to Hawaii. Upon flying from the East Coast, making transfers, and then flying to several islands over several days (therefore, lots of security checks), lo and behold they found in their suitcase, the forgotten bowie knife. HOW did this make it through that many security checks?
Bottom line? Profileing? Yes, it happens (witness the Pakastani women) - but they're doing a lousy job. As I heard the head of Israel security say the other day on TV... "yes we profile, but we only profile those we need to... there is no need to profile an 80 year old couple". With this type of thinking - it's obvious to me that even if you ARE arab... having no accent, an enlish name, and an aloha shirt, or being 80 years old, gets you out of the profile list. If it's that easy for me to figure out, won't others figure it out too?
Security is only good if it WORKS. Security for security sake does nothing. Losing your rights over security that does not work is a travesty.
Aloha
Because despite the Gov's and Media's spin on things, the attacks on 9/11 did not require a lot of skill, planning or tactics. It does not take a genius to hijack a plane and fly it in to something as large as the WTC towers or The Pentagon.
Learning to fly a jumbo jet (after it's already in the air): rather simple.
Buying plane tickets for four flights that take off around the same time: one visit to travelocity or expedia or any other ticketing web site.
Hickjacking a plane: please, any moron with anything resembing a weapon could do that.
Because the goal of the people who planed, and the people purpetrated the attack wasn't the most effective way to kill people. They merely figured out the best way to stike the most fear/terror in to the people of the U.S. They succeded. They've caused the US Gov to start stripping away fundamental rights. They caused people to fear travel, and large buildings.
On top of the initial attack, they've inderctly caused hundreds if not thousands of deaths in Afganastan, which was not in any way responsible for the attacks. The planners/operators of 9/11 were mostly Saudi Arabian and they used Saudi money. So are we attacking Saudi Arabia? Nope, we're attacking the people of Afganastan.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
It's a major issue: does the Government have the right to track your travel? Historically, the answer for U.S. citizens within the US has been "no".
U.S. Transportation Security Agency regulations 1544.201 do not call for an ID check, just searches of passengers. Airport employees are subject to stringent ID checks, but passengers don't seem to be. And those regs are dated February 22, 2002; they're definitely post-9/11.
Gilmore's lawyers have probably read that material. The ID requirement doesn't seem to rest on law or regulation. Airlines may wish to impose such a requirement, but the Government doesn't seem to.
The reality of life in the 21st Century is that, thanks to 9/11, someone attempting to hijack an airliner will be lucky to survive the passengers' response. The last reported bomber on a commercial aircraft arrived at the destination airport trussed in the belts of, IIRC, twenty-odd passengers.
Other friends of mine have seen drunken, abusive passengers put on notice by other pasengers that they need to cool it or suffer the consequences. Outcome: suddenly quiet drunken passengers. Alert citizens have always been able to protect themselves better than the government ever could.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Meanwhile, airlines are pushing to give easy wave-throughs to business-class travellers, while harassing economy-class more. Of course, the 9-11 terrorists WERE travelling in business class exactly to be closer to the cabin.
All window-dressing.
An ID makes absolutely no difference to the security . The perps of 9/11 all had valid IDs. Some posters say that they had "deportation orders" against some of them; even so, it wouldn't have made a difference because airlines don't check against any 'deportation lists'. Even if they did, I can get a passable fake Drivers License for a couple of 100 bucks. And what does the gate attendant in, say, Boston know about an (say) Alaskan DL? They all look different! The airline attendants don't specialise in ID verification; they are ticket agents, for crying out loud!
Well first you have to blow a hole in the airplane and since Air Marshals carry frag rounds that can not penatrate the skin of the aircraft thats not an issue.
I just wanna make sure that I'm clear on this whole guns in the sky issue. Currently there are F-15/16's standing on alert across the country to shoot down any hijacked airliners. So its ok to send a sidewinder missle up the ass of a 767 but if Uncle Louie takes a stray round while the pilot is placing a double tap in Osama's head its somehow a bad thing? Wake up people!!!