Your Right to Travel Anonymously: Not Dead Yet

ChiralSoftware writes "Remember John Gilmore's fight to be able to travel on commercial airlines without having to show ID? It has dropped out of the news for a while, but now it appears that the fight is continuing. I remember in the 80s we used to make jokes about Soviet citizens being asked "show me your papers" and needing internal passports to travel in their own country. Now we need internal passports to travel in our country. How did this happen? The requirement to show ID for flying on commercial passenger flights started in 1996, in response to the crash of TWA Flight 800. This crash was very likely caused by a mechanical failure. How showing ID to board a plane prevents mechanical failures is left as an exercise to the reader. How mandatory ID even prevents terrorist attacks is also not clear to me; all the 9/11 hijackers had valid government-issued ID. I hope the courts don't wimp out on this fight."

Comments

Re:Why else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before he added "Iraq Cluster Fuck" to his resume, his crowning achivement was getting Nutrasweet (which is neither nutricious, nor particularly sweet) to market.

Re:The horse is out of the barn for good.....

[stud9920]

It's spelled "sans". And putting random words in French is not "chic". Same remark for "faux". What's wrong with "fake" ? I guess you can't even pronounce "sans" of "faux" correctly.

Michael Moore is an amateur

[Katravax]

He's a publicity-seeking self-aggrandizing hack that accidentally manages to get things right on occassion. His most recent only told 1/10th of the story on 9/11, and then pretty much pinned it all on Bush, and Bush is barely more than a clueless puppet of the real power-brokers. If you want to hear a real patriot, listen to Alex Jones. He's a bitter pill at first, but once you realize he backs up 100% of what he says with public, mainstream news sources, you can't help but know he's right.

Re:TWA Flight 800

[Master of Transhuman]

It's people with empty skulls like yours who need the tinfoil hats to keep the rain out.

The noise of the rain on the tin also insures you'll never hear anything rational which might penetrate your delusions that all is well in the world.