Government Asks Court to Keep ID Arguments Secret

RobXiii writes " CNN has a story on privacy advocate John Gilmore (Co-founder of the EFF) taking the federal government to court, to stop the requirement of ID for in country flights. In an ironic twist, the U.S. Department of Justice is asking the court to keep its argument for the secret law secret. How are we supposed to follow a law when the law itself can't be disclosed?"

Comments

The typical American cannot read the law

[0x0d0a]

And how accessable is legalese? How many people can read and understand the legal codes that govern their lives? Our legal code is absolutely huge, even ignoring case law that forms the precedent portion of it. Hell, the PATRIOT Act didn't get read by the legislators responsible for passing it -- do you expect the *people* to do so?

Re:The typical American cannot read the law

[Anonymous Coward]

How many people can read and understand the legal codes that govern their lives?

Not only read them, but then inturpet what they really mean.

I got stuck in a situation in the early 90's in South Carolina.
I had smoked headlight covers on my car. In SC, the law for headlight requirements is very specific. The headlight must be seen by a person from 300ft away. The headlight must be able to illuminate an object from 100ft away. With my headlight covers on, I easily met both of those requirements. Everything should be good to go. There is a third law that states a person can not alter the position or aiming of the headlights or physically alter the headlight assembly itself. That law sites specific examples of not moving the headlights to high, to low, or aiming them inapropriately, all related to blinding on coming drivers. Again, should be good to go. But wait, somewhere there was a forth law that only the police knew about... This one was a memo from the State Police headquarters stating headlight covers users shall be ticketed because it violated the states motor vehicle laws for headlight requirements. Yes, I got a ticket and fought it. I showed the judge my information and he showed me the letter from the the State Police. He dropped the charges because he could not tell me what part of the existing laws the headlight covers violated. The point being, even after researching the available laws and reading the examples of what the law is for, it came down to another persons interpetation completely different from mine as to what was legal and what was not.

On a side note, at the scene, I actually recieved two tickets, one for my headlight covers and one for the fog light covers. The State Police had the same exact car as mine (91 Mustang) but they did not even have fog lights. But since I had fog lights and they were then covered, I got two tickets.

Before any wise cracks about how headlight covers look stupid, they dim the lights to much etc.. I only used them in the day time (when i got my ticket) and they pulled right off in about 5 seconds for night driving.

Re:The typical American cannot read the law

[metamatic]

That's why I like the ancient Icelandic tradition. Once a year the Law Speaker would have to recite the law. All of it, from start to finish, from memory, without a break. If he missed bits, they were no longer considered part of the law. This kept a really good control over how unwieldy and impossible to understand the law could be.

Hell, imagine if our President had to recite the law once a year. There wouldn't be any space in that cranium for crap like the PATRIOT act.

I'm not sure that exactly the same system is workable for a modern society, but I am sure that I would seriously favor a system where one person had to recite the entire tax law from memory each year to determine how much we all paid. I see no reason why the tax system needs to be even a hundredth as complicated as it is now.

Re:Two things

[Proc6]

Two, I think they should let the airlines set policies for themselves. Consumers can pick the cheap airline that doesn't screen, or the more expensive one that does.

Yea that's a tough one. On the one hand I can understand consumer choice of how "violated" your privacy is to fly on an airline. On the other hand it's the federal goverment's concern when someone obtains control over the jet and crashes it into public, private and governmental buildings killing thousands. If the airline implements these requirements, then their passengers are free of the search requirement.

Since the government [theoretically] is only concerned when control leaves the airline and enters into the terrorist hands (because at that point the jet becomes a weapon), I'd prefer to see some requirements put in place that completely remove control of the jet from anyone on board and puts it in the hands of a security group on the ground as soon as there are any questionable issues on-board. Some manner in which the plane cannot be flown by terrorists as the control over the aircraft leaves as soon as its taken over.

Now that doesnt prevent someone from blowing up a jet in air, but hey, at least the damage is probably going to be a lot smaller if that happens as opposed to ramming it into the WTC.

Besides, we have Air Marshalls on jets still right? right? :/

Even more government creepiness...

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of an editorial in the Chicago Tribune (written by Molly Ivins) last Thursday:

"The Department of Justice has asked the Government Printing Office "to instruct depository libraries to destroy five publications the department has deemed 'not appropriate for external use.' Of the five publications, two are texts of federal laws. They are to be removed from libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to a law office or law library," according to the American Library Association. All the documents concern either federal civil or criminal forfeiture procedure, including how to reclaim items that have been confiscated by the government during an investigation."

What possible reason could there be to destroy federal legal publications? Thank you, Adolf, ahem, I mean John Ashcroft.

-Mark

The world changes.

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when we used to be make fun of secret laws in The Soviet Union back in the eighties. The commies also tortured political dissidents. Now it has all turned around. The USA is where you have secret laws, have to carry papers around, and can be detained and tortured idefinetly without a court order.

And all this changed after the Bush coup in 2000. Think about it..

And this will become a training video

[denis-The-menace]

One balmy May evening back in 2000, Dudley was standing around minding his own business when all of a sudden, a policeman pulled-up and demanded that Dudley produce his ID. Dudley, having done nothing wrong, declined. He was arrested and charged with "failure to cooperate" for refusing to show ID on demand. And it's all on video.

On the 22nd of March 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Dudley's case, a case that will determine whether Dudley and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show "the papers" whenever a cop demands them.

Welcome to the club

[Richard_at_work]

Here in the UK, laws were brought in just after 9/11 that allowed the British Government to do a number of things:

• Hold suspects on terrorism charges for long periods of time or indefinately without trial
• Present secret evidence to the court, without the defendant or the public knowing what that evidence was or even that it was presented

Sources: Secret Courts and Detention Law

Re:Welcome to the club

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha, I think we have the imprisoning people on terrorism suspicion (they don't even have to be charged) including US citizens.

Also, you can lose your citizenship for supporting "terrorist groups." Lets say that the Israeli government labels some Palestinian groups terrorist and an US citizen with family in Palestine gives their relatives money. In this instance, if the relatives contribute to that organization, the US citizen can be stripped of his citizenship because Israel is our ally. Of course, the citizen contributing directly would have the same if not more severe effects.

If the PATRIOT Act was in place in the late 80's, American members of anti-apartheid groups could lose their American citizenship because they could and probably were labeled terrorist....(make your own conjecture here)

The US Govt. won't let me fly ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The last three times (in the last 14 months) I've tried to board a flight I've not been allowed. Even the three airlines involved feel that my name is getting mixed up with someone else's but they can't fix it. I've filled out the DHS form: nothing. I've called everyone including my Congressman's and Senators' Offices and they can't fix it. I'm screwed and will be for years to come. Unless I hit the roadway I'm not going anywhere.

Considering one of the flights was for a job interview this really sucks. The funny/sad thing is at a previous job about seven years ago I had a DOE Class Q clearance. Now I can't even get on a plane and no one [claims] they can fix it.

Real people are getting hurt and hurt badly because of this law. I hope Gilmore prevails.

Re:U.S. becoming a totalitarian system.

[Fnkmaster]

The people who watch Fox News already agree with everything that's being said on Fox News. They watch Fox News because it doesn't challenge their assumptions about the world, which might upset them. They watch Fox News because you don't have to think hard to determine how you are supposed to feel about an issue, it's spoon fed to you (e.g. O'Reilly Factor - here's the smart, hard-hitting conservative, and the weeniest liberal we could find to "debate" him in an edited, but of course "non-partisan", forum where all points the liberal makes will be cut out!).

I want the news to challenge my assumptions. I want investigative reporting uncovering causes and correlations that I didn't know existed before. I want open-minded reporting that doesn't bash reasonable perspectives on both sides of the political spectrum. I don't really see why the politics of the owner have to be so flagrantly reflected in the reporting - CNN was owned by Ted Turner for many years, who has many radical positions I don't agree with, but while not perfect, I've certainly never seen that kind of flagrant bias on CNN (about an equal number of people seem to accuse CNN of overly liberal and overly conservative bias as far as I can tell).