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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?"
First rule of the law: You do not talk about the law.
Second rule of the law: You DO NOT talk about the law.
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It's a secret.
I don't know about you, but more and more I feel like I'm in one of those countries that the U.S. fights to "Get rid of their evil totalitarian regeim."
I wonder at what point the general american populous will realize that things have gone bad. I would say right now that more than 80% of the population is still in the dark about these problems creeping up.
My own mother doesn't believe me when I tell her about all of it.
Of course, "more intense" is just airline speak for "bend over, please".
RTFA: "The government contends its court arguments should be sealed from public view and heard before a judge outside the presence of Gilmore and his attorneys."
T!
starts talking about how Gilmore is making a big deal about presenting his ID, remember this: the hijackers of the various planes on 9/11 used their own names. They did not try to hide who they were.
If my name is not on one of the secret lists the government maintains how is showing my ID with my real name going to stop me from doing anything? I'm not a list!
Besides, if I'm going to crash a plane (or car, boat, whatever), or use whatever vehicle as a mobile bomb, into a building or public gathering, why should I care if I use my real name or not? I'll be dead anyway.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Gilmore has a website, http://www.freetotravel.org/ with more info and court documents regarding his case against the US government.
But all the terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks HAD VALID IDs!!!! Thus, the secret law serves absolutely NO purpose!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"You are under arrest, please come along quietly."
"I haven't done anything! What am I being charged with?"
"We can't tell you."
"What about my Miranda rights?"
"Ok, you may or may not be under arrest."
"I want to contact my lawyer."
"Sorry, where you're going to be held no lawyers are permitted."
"What?!? You can't do that!"
"Ah, but we can and have, it's for the good of the country, you'll understand."
"Oh, well, if it's for the good of the country... but..."
"But what?"
"The country is not the government, but people like me, how can the people be arrested and tried in secrecy for their own good?"
"You ask too many question *fwit*"
"What did you just do?"
"I played the Patriot Card, by questioning the policies and actions of the goverment you're patriotism is now officially called into doubt!"
"Unbelievable!"
"It's a brave new world."
"I'll still need to let my family know I've been arrested."
"Sorry, can't let you do that, either, it might endager their patriotism."
"How?"
"If they feel the same way about this as you, they may call us into question, thus jeopardizing their standing as patriots."
"Um, how is that again?"
"It's for their own good, you see? We need to take you in and not have our policies and procedures called into question."
"Well why am I being taken in?"
"Ok, just between you and me, you'll probably be charged with possible subversion."
"For what?"
"For questioning your arrest."
"Ah."
"Come along now, we have a nice prison to keep you in."
"It's not one of those horrid places, is it?"
"Oh, no, this is run by Halliburton, it's very nice."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One of the major reason to keep the requirement to show ID on domestic flights is it allows the airlines to stop people from transfering tickets and increases their sales. If you buy a non refundable ticket and your plans change you can't sell the ticket to someone else to get your money back, the best you can do is pay a fee to change your flight times or buy another ticket. Not that I agree with this, it is just one of the possible reasons from the airlines perspective.
You do realize that all the 9-11 terrorists had proper ID, right?
First of all, his primary question is: Do citizens currently need to show ID in order to travel in their own country?
The answer is a resounding "no". He is free to travel by foot, bike, motorcycle, car, boat, or other device himself while not violating applicable pedestrian or traffic laws, or by bus or train, entirely anonymously.
Further, in his quest to "expose" this situation, he found at one of the largest airports in the country, San Francisco International Airport, that he WAS indeed allowed to fly without ID (if he submitted to a search).
Second, because some unnamed worker for United Airlines "told him" that there was a "secret law", are we to believe that there is, then, such a "law"? That a random United Airlines employee is the ultimate fount of information on this topic? The fact that SFO would indeed allow him to fly with no ID negates his claim that ID is required by a "secret law" on its face.
Further, claims variously made by privacy advocates assert that showing ID is worthless; that the September 11 hijackers all had valid, government issued photo ID. Sure they did. But some form of identification, fake or not, gives authorities a place to start in an investigation, rather than nothing at all.
But please, even in light of that, remember: he WAS allowed to fly with no ID at SFO, and chose not to. I expect that he thought he'd find he would be denied everywhere, but then still chose not to fly at SFO simply because he didn't want to be searched and so it wouldn't stop his little "Achtung! Papers, please!" stunt before it started. That's his choice. And if you'd argue against a search, then you might as well argue against ALL security measures at airports.
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
While one should always keep bias in mind when considering the source, that isn't a blank cheque to dismiss entirely any source which expresses an opinion you disagree with.
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..
Seems the bigger issue is the governments request/demand that the arguments be sealed. Even if Gillmore and his attorneys were able to attend, the arguments being kept from the public is still a bad thing! Hope this doesn't become a precedent for future government hearings regarding privacy/patriotism.
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.
Where is the law written down?
What part of the US Criminal or Civil code contains this law? When was it passed by Congress and when was it signed by the President? That's how laws happen in this country.
Oh wait. It wasn't passed by Congress.
It's a federal regulation then. Regulations happen when a federal agency is granted specific rights to create little mini-laws by Congress. So it's published in the Federal Register, as required for all federal regulations, from the EPA to HUD. Even the FAA has to publish all of their regulations on everything in the Federal Register.
Oh wait, it wasn't published in the Federal Register.
Perhaps it's an Executive Order then? The President has limited authority to do things like that within the Executive branch, which can be overturned by either Congress (by passing a law striking down the EO) or by the courts. Of course, executive orders are generally published unless there is a very good "national security" reason not to. Given that all of the terrorists on 9/11 had valid (not even faked, truly valid) ID's, this argument isn't carrying much water.
It comes down to this: Ignorance of a law is no excuse for violating the law. The only way that postulate of the legal system works is because all laws have to be published in specific ways, like the Federal Register. If there are "secret laws" that can't be read, then you could be violating it.
They don't tell you what the law is that requires ID checks. They tell you that the law requires it, but they don't tell you exactly what law requires it, the penalties for noncompliance, or even the agency responsible for enforcement of the law (is it DHS, FAA, NTSB, TSA?).
If I don't agree with the law, if I think the law isn't just, which agency do I get my congressman to go after to fix it?
There could be a secret law against eating M&M's on the day after Labor Day. Oops. Since ignorance is no excuse, the vending machine cops should be by shortly to deal with me. What if I accidentally get on a plane without and ID check? How many years can I go to jail for? What's the limits on the fine I may be forced to pay? Is it a felony, a misdeameanor, or a criminal act?
Is checking ID just required for commercial airlines, or do General Aviation pilots need to check their friend's ID before they go on a little sightseeing trip? Since the law isn't written down, nobody outside the agency responsible knows.
should be shot
Each piece of legislation should reqire that it is signed by the people who voted for it, with a statement asserting that they have read and understood the meaning of the law.
If they fail to sign it, or it can be demonstrated that they did not understand what they were signing (everone else) up for, then the law should be rendered automatically null and void.
If we were talking about a contract to which the legislators themselvs would personally be bound, you can be sure thhat if they did not read it personally, they would get thier lawyers to read it before they signed it.
Its absurd that they should be able to sign the whole poulation over to be bound by laws that they have not read before adding them to the statue books, and it is irresponsible for anyone to obey these laws.
It just encourages them.
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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)
Bias is one thing, credibility is another. Michael Moore has none.
You entirely missed the point. The poster was not talking about some piece of information gleaned/interpretted by Michael Moore. He was referring directly to interviews in which those who had voted for PATRIOT admitted that they had not fully read the act.
Bias does not magically change video tape. You can discount whatever spin you find in f911, but please dont deny flat-out evidence. PATRIOT is bad, was passed in a time of desperation, and is now being reconsidered. This is a Good Thing. Introspection and questioning MAKES democracy!
Congressmen(people?) have admitted it in other forums as well. But it shouldn't matter. Are you claiming that Moore falsified those interviews? Cause thats a pretty serious alegation, far more serious than creative editing or bias. You're going to need a lot more than a bitchy website for that one.
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.
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.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak