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Airlines Have to Ask Permission to Fly 72 Hours Early
twitter wrote to mention that the TSA (Transport Security Administration) has released a new set of proposed rules that is raising quite a stir among groups ranging from the ACLU to the American Society of Travel Agents. Under the new rules airlines would be required to submit a passenger manifest (including full name, sex, date of birth, and redress number) for all flights departing, arriving, or flying over the United States at least 72 hours prior to departure. Boarding passes will only be issued to those passengers that have been cleared. "Hasbrouck submitted that requiring clearance in order to travel violates the US First Amendment right of assembly, the central claim in John Gilmore's case against the US government over the requirement to show photo ID for domestic travel. [...] ACLU's Barry Steinhardt quoted press reports of 500,000 to 750,000 people on the watch list (of which the no-fly list is a subset). 'If there are that many terrorists in the US, we'd all be dead.' TSA representative Kip Hawley noted that the list has been carefully investigated and halved over the last year. 'Half of grossly bloated is still bloated,' Steinhardt replied."
Back when I was young, the Soviet Union required internal passports... Seems to me that things are rapidly progressing that way here.... Maybe it's time to emigrate to Russia now that they're freer than Americans in America.
All American citizens who wish to retain their freedom of movement should immediately begin informing their local authorities whenever they travel, no matter the distance or means of transport. Imagine how quickly the police, FBI, CIA, TSA, et cetera will get tired reports filed by self-reporting citizens explaining in detail that they need to go to work, stop by the grocery store, or visit their cousin in Roxbury....
Apparently the TSA has forgotten that this is America and we go where we like when we like and how we like (unless we're in prison, of course) without Uncle Sam knowing where we are. Like the commercial says, " we are free to move about the country."
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
We may have to get to that point to satisfy the paranoids who would have me kicked off an airline if I forget to shave.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I've always dreamed of having enough money and spare time to pack a small suitcase, go to the airport, look at the departure boards, figure out what's leaving in the next couple of hours, and buy a first-class ticket to a destination I've never visited before.
What? I have to know three days in advance everywhere I want to go?
Shit.
I guess I'll just have to dream about having enough money to have my own Gulfstream, since once you get to that level of wealth, the rules that apply to the little people are no longer a problem.
What sort of computers are the TSA using if it takes 3 days to match a name to a database.
What century are we living in?
1 hour before boarding is reasonable. Allows data entry and organization for response.
Anything more is just a sloppy system.
With apologies in advance to Jonathan Swift, I think this is a great idea. But I'd go one step further. One could just as easily have driven a Ryder truck filled with explosives and put it under the World Trade Center. In fact, terrorists tried that once, and it almost worked. I feel strongly that we should be required to have a 72 hour screening period before renting a vehicle. Of course, if your car breaks down and you need a rental, you should have joined the "trusted driver" program ahead of time. We should also require such a screening before you can buy a car. After all, terrorists spent thousands of dollars on explosives for that truck, so what's another few thousand to buy or lease a car? I think you can see how important it is that only trusted patriotic Americans be allowed to purchase an automobile.
Further, automobiles only provide the casing for the bomb. We should have similar levels of trust for people purchasing bomb-making supplies. For example, we should require a minimum of a 7 day waiting period and appropriate security screening prior to purchasing fertilizer, as you can easily use that to make a bomb. Don't forget gasoline, either. We need at least a 72 hour screening period before you can fill up at the pump. People who need to fill up quickly should trade their privacy rights as part of our "trusted gas purchaser" program.
But that's not the biggest problem we face. The fundamental truth is that terrorists are people. None of these problems would exist if people prone to terrorist actions were not allowed to be born. For this reason, I would like to recommend a mandatory DNA screening prior to giving birth to children. Any children with terroristic tendencies should not be allowed to be carried to term. As an added bonus, these aborted fetuses can be used for scientific research, and in some cases, can be repurposed as a healthy food source for our nation's underprivileged.
I hope by this point you realize that this entire post is satire. My purpose in writing it is to show just how silly the argument of prescreening for aircraft flights in the name of national security really is. While I can't see the U.S. government actually going so far as suggesting that we eat babies to protect against terrorism, we are rapidly approaching that level of absurdity in our national security policy. I think it is time that we all take a step back, breathe, then laugh out loud at these policies at every possible opportunity. Only through laughter can we adequately portray the current administration and its policies as the laughingstock that they are.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Makes you wonder how long it'd take Joe Sixpack to get off the list...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
At my job we aren't so young and most have families and we still have to make last-minute flights from time to time. On more than one occasion this year I've had to book flights within 72 hours of departure.
I can tell you that in many business cases there is absolutely NO WAY that this proposal is workable. People MUST be able to make travel plans up to and including the day of departure. 3 days is just not workable and the business community simply would not tolerate implementation of this proposal.
There are also far to many last-minute trips made on compassionate grounds. What about flights arranged to see dying loved ones, or to transport donor organs, or to get special treatment at a distant hospital? Hell, you can get a passport faster than 72 hours under normal cases for such reasons. If your identity can be verified well enough to get a passport that quickly then clearing you for a flight should be much easier than that.
Three days? That'll never fly. MAYBE three HOURS, but not three days.
It goes beyond that though--the same proposal not only wants lists for all flights arriving or departing US locations, it wants flight lists for ALMOST EVERY FLIGHT THAT PASSED OVER US AIRSPACE as well...which means they'd like the government to demand passenger lists from Canadian and Mexican airlines for many of their flights that never touch American soil. Not enough to violate their own civil liberties--in the name of safety everyone's liberties must be unduly curtailed.
The US is still in the 19th century as far as rail travel goes compared to the rest of the world. Maybe this will help us realize that there are other options.
Your numbers actually pale in the light that given US population, lets say 380M, will require a steady death toll of about 5M per year to keep the population at the same level with an average age of 75 years. Coming to 69% of all death are caused by old age and 0.06% of the death are due to terrorism.
So, the major thing that needs to be forbidden is to die of old age, since that seems to be the cause of 2/3rds of all problems. Maybe everybody needs to be screened to prevent them from aging? Or maybe everybody should be on artificial support so that we can fix the statistics.
Though I agree that the headline is somewhat sensationalist, I think we all have to keep in mind that the root of the problem lies in the fact that TSA is trying to make a stupid process more efficient. (Instead of say... eliminating the stupidity altogether.)
Let's review some basic ideas:
1) Knowing who people are doesn't (by itself) prevent terrorism at all.
2) Even if it could, IDs could still be forged.
3) Even if IDs couldn't be easily forged, this would still be a violation of the rights of American citizens. By this I mean that, the government has no innate right to stop you from traveling UNLESS and UNTIL they can charge you with something specific.
The main concern I have is that in trying to make things "easier", the TSA/DHS/Fed. Government is generally are simply breaking all the limits and chains that are placed on them for good and sound reasons. Things should NOT be easy for the listed organizations. They should require work and effort. This is the only way to ensure that they will actually do their job instead of just creating a big list and adding people's names to it.
In other words, imagine the lists of lists we might have in the future in current trends continue:
+ No-fly List
+ No-drive list
+ No-shop list
+ No-protest list
+ No-publishing list
+ No-(Insert your activity-here) list
I don't want to live in that country. How about you?
On a long enough time scale, most everything balances out.
The premise of the libertarian movement is small governement. There is a reason that a candidate like Ron Paul is getting so much press and support now - the actions of the government are becoming onerous and encroaching on basic human freedoms.
What the world needs now is a large group of people to collectively tell the state (Read: US FEDERAL GOVERENMNET) to "Back the fuck off" and stay where they belong: defending the country against known threats, domestic and international and creating real domesitc security (not this fake, fear mongering/engineered solution cycle).
"Watch lists" are part of LAZY POLICE WORK. If there is a person that is planning something - investigate them, charge them, arest them. Follow the laws we have now. All the rest of this crap in the name of security is just plain ineffective, lazy behavior driven by the need to cover their asses and assauge their fears that they will be accountable if any thing happens.
The reality is that there is no way to stop terrorism, and people have to get OK with that. If some sicko wants to kill a bunch of people, he or she will. If some sicko wants to fill a truck with fertilizer and gas, and drive into a building, they will. Tough shit. Somebody should have listened to their pleas for help long ago. Living is a world that makes it impossible for someone to bring down a plane is not a world that I want to live in, becuase it means draconian crontrols on freedoms. Those same freedoms we fought for and won hundreds of years ago, and many have died defending. I'd much rather we build a world where people DON'T WANT TO BRING DOWN PLANES. That is completely possible, and if we spent our energies there instead of the current track, we would all have happier, healthier lives.
The debate is not "should we have watch lists or not". The debate is, "who came up with this ridiculous crap and how soon can we remove them from power?"
as a society, we have often failed miserably in managing the factors which really cause death and suffering: diet, exercise, and environmental quality.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to live in a country that 'manages my diet.' Similarly, I don't want to live in a country that 'manages my exercise.'
I could see there being some social movement to encourage a better diet and more exercise, but I am not keen on government being the mechanism to 'manage' either of these.
I suppose in the future, when we all live in high rise apartment buildings along light rail transit corridors, possibly the government will be 'managing' our exercise by lining us up twice daily for sit-ups. While there are doubtless social planners looking forward to wielding that level of power over people 'for their own good' I don't think it will be accepted.
Microsoft says legacy (serial/parallel) ports are bad. They don't obfuscate the hardware enough.
I second your thoughts and will add a snippet that I posted to my blog after returning from a last minute business trip today:
...
"I had an o-dark-thirty flight home from Orlando this morning. When I got to the Southwest counter, there was no line which was a cool thing. I stepped up to a kiosk, and a guy about my age and with no baggage stepped up to the one next to me. I checked in and was handing my bags over when I heard the guy explaining that his flight doesn't leave until tomorrow morning but he was checking in early so that he could get an "A" boarding pass. (If you've never flown Southwest, then you wouldn't know why that's important. But I digress....) The Southwest employee told the guy that he can check in online. And that's when he explained that he can't because he's on the TSA "No Fly" list. I mentioned that their website has some process you can go through to get off of the list. That's when I found out that this poor guy has gone through that process dozens of times, but always ends up back on the list two months later. Not helpful when you've got meetings in Orlando every other week like he does (and oddly enough, like I seem to lately as well). So he's given up on the process and just drives by the airport 24 hours before every flight to check in at the counter. About the only thing I could find to say was "Well, I guess that what happens in Vegas doesn't really stay in Vegas." He laughed.
And so his painful odyssey through the transportation system continues...
"Papers please?" "
--Insert catchy