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TSA Bans Flight If You Refuse To Show ID
mytrip notes a CNet blog entry on the recent TSA rule change banning flight to anyone who refuses to produce ID. It's OK if you claim to have lost or forgotten your ID — you undergo a pat-down and hand search of your carry-on bag and you're on your way. The new rule goes into effect June 21. "The change of rules seems to be a pretty obvious case of security theater. Real terrorists do not refuse to show ID. They claim to have lost their ID, or they use a fake. TSA's new rules only protect us from a non-existent breed of terrorists who are unable to lie."
I've always wondered about why people don't seem to get that fake IDs can be used for more than just getting into bars. And in that, far more serious things. I had my own experience with having to provide an ID in a case where it was not needed or useful to them. I bought an account with Hostgator once and they had a policy of not allowing you to use a shell account without providing a faxed copy of your driver's license. I argued with the system administrator there that it was a useless policy as it doesn't prove anything as IDs can be faked. And especially with the low quality of a fax, how could they tell. I could easily put in fake details using any simple image editor. He actually responded saying something like "If I can prevent one security breach, then the policy is worth it.". He didn't seem to get that it won't stop anything. Hackers see policies as obstacles to get over, not impassable walls. What's sad is that Hostgator isn't the only company with this very same policy. They probably don't realize how many malicious hackers they already have one their systems.
All that IDs provide is another hoop for everyone to jump through, including hackers and terrorists. They are useless as a security measure to anyone who doesn't have the authority to validate them.
"Trouble maker" and "terrorist" are synonymous now.
Stand in line.
Speak when spoken to.
Have your papers ready.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Have already bought all of the fake IDs that they need to do their jobs because they are well-trained and financed. Nothing done here would capture the caliber of terrorists capable of actually pulling off another 9-11. All of the original 9-11 terrorists had their IDs in order.
After all, not one of the 9/11 hijackers had validly issued ID in their own names. Right?
Yeah. Maybe the next president will do something to fix the utterly idiotic "security" games the TSA insists on playing with airline travel. I'm not putting money on it, though.
What I find amusing is that you refer to the people creating these policies as "we". Like you've got any say in it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Also, an update from the Bush administration: We are not at war with Oceania. We have never been at war with Oceania. Miniplenty has upped the quality of their cigarettes this year by 30%, and has doubled our chocolate output! Hail, Big Brother!
Fuck DHS and the TSA. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. They're far worse (if they aren't yet, they will be, just wait) than any terrorist ever could be.
Sad part is, I'd move to another country if I knew of any better ones out there. Anyone know of a mostly English-speaking country that doesn't walk all over its citizens' rights? I know the UK is right out, and I hear Australia is pretty bad too.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
pushing down people that irritate them.
As pointed out, since you can lie easily, this is really just about control and dominance.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Good thing rising fuel costs will bankrupt the airline industry in a year or two.
Assuming all of those new laws and policies are for the "terrorists". That's why they don't make sense to you. NOW SHOW US YOUR PAPERS!
[emphasis mine]
So... refusing to identify yourself at the airport is equivalent to refusing to identify yourself when you're arrested.
Let's stop piddlefucking around and admit that planes are now airborne maximum security prisons. Because that's exactly how their "security" is treating passengers.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
When Conservatives constantly pule about government being the problem, they are close to right: conservatives in government is the problem.
Considering all their core principles are right out of Mein Kampf... developments like this are hardly surprising. Warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, citizens being held in secret and without trials: brought to you by either Nazi Germany or Conservative America. Take your pick.
In any big bueracracy, specifically government, there's really little incentive to be more efficient (or even more correct). Particularly with government, like the TSA, this is an example of people trying to secure jobs for themselves and their department.
This can happen in the corporate world, too: feeling the need to spend one's entire budget just so that it won't get cut in the following year. But at least there's likely to be someone who might find and correct that inefficiency. In government, there's incentive to keep it growing all the way up to the top.
So the next time you see some policy that doesn't make sense, think about who just got to keep their job because of its existence.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!
Only if you're an asshole and "refuse" to show your ID? Come on, how many people are really like that? If you're going to claim this policy for security reasons, don't allow an exception for "lost" or "forgotten" IDs. If it were for security reasons, ID would be required 100% of the time. Because it's for fascist reasons, they are willing to make a temporary exception to ease people into it. But, the 100% refusal to allow boarding without ID is coming. Mark my words. The time for action is now. I think I will somehow "forget" my ID every time I board a flight from now on.
bash: rtfm: command not found
There are thousands of people who get paid to make us safer from terrorists. I don't think they will be reducing the perceived risk any time soon. Announcements like this keep the terrorist threat in the news and make it look like they are doing something for their money.
It's about covering their asses.
It won't prevent a big screw up, *BUT* in case of big screw up, they can show up the fax, and ask their phone company to confirm they actually did receive a faxed document (and didn't fake it quickly in MS-Paint which would be about the same quality) and thus claim "see, we did our part, we're innocent, you can't sue us". I've always wondered about why people don't seem to get that fake IDs can be used for more than just getting into bars. And in that, far more serious things. Fake IDs are a little bit more difficult to fake with good enough quality to pass strong security check. I'm saying it's impossible - there's a whole black market to contradict such claims. I'm just saying that making a fake passport that could get one through customs at a time when a country is in paranoid mode and enforce strict control of everything, isn't within the technical skill of the US teen with the black marked and/or color printer wanting to get drunk and quickly shows a faked student ID or driver license to a pusher in a badly lit entrance. (specially given the fact that the pusher will hardly even be able to recognised the hundreds of different IDs issued by all different universities and states - at least on problem less with unique IDs).
But apart from that, I agree with you. An ID is not a magical bullet that will solve everything, specially not security.
Mainly, it's just a quick tool to quickly assessing the identity and age of the bearer, when convenience of speed is important and implications of misidentification are low.
(A teen passing out on booze isn't very likely to kill hundreds of thousands of victims. As of that matters, neither are terrorists. Natural catastrophe, on the other hand... )
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Imigration Officer: What's your name, sir? ...
Passenger: Batman...
Imigration Officer: Come again? Your last name, sir?
Passenger: Suparman
Imigration Officer: Funny guy ahn? Take him down, boys...
While the other officers beat the crap out of the poor fella, the Imigration officer checks his passport out
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
You can't get a boarding pass without showing your physical photo ID (at least in the US, where TSA has jurisdiction). So how did you "lose" your ID from the point where you checked in and picked up your boarding pass, and the point where you got to the metal detectors and security checkpoints?
I call bogus on this. If this was really for security reasons, a photo ID would be required 100% of the time.
Security theatre indeed.
Let's take the downward trend of the overall airline experience and extrapolate. We'll examine the state of airline travel in ten years. All of the following has been verified for accuracy by traveling to the future.
In ten years, this is what it will be like to travel across the country by airplane:
First, you'll buy your ticket online for prices starting at $1400 or so, plus a $200 security fee tacked on for every flight segment. This is for each direction; there will no longer be "round trip" fares. All fares will be nonrefundable and nontransferable, and being late for your flight means automatic forfeiture of your fare and ticket, as there will no longer be an option to wait "on standby" for another flight or to change your ticket if your plans change.
When you show up at the airport, the first thing that happens is that you're put through one of two processes. Most people will go through a general process, which will be as follows: You get in line at the check-in, where you are questioned as to where you live, where you work, where you're flying, the purpose of your flight, what you're carrying in your luggage and on your person, whether you've purchased any electronics in the past six years, including electronics that you're not bringing on board with you, how much you paid for them, and why. During this time you will present ID and be photographed and fingerprinted; these will be input into the agent's laptop, which will immediately search through a government computer network of known terrorists, known criminals, known fugitives, people who are delinquent on child support payments, people who owe taxes, people who have been arrested in the last five years (even if not charged or convicted), people who are on the sex offender registry, people who haven't showed up to jury duty, people with bad credit, people who didn't register with the Selective Service System, people of other than Mexican origin who are in the country illegally, or people with unpaid parking tickets on their record. A match on one or more of these results in your being taken to a special room for additional questioning. There will be many false positives, so you'll wait in line for hours before being admitted into the interrogation room. This will mean that you'll probably miss your flight without a refund of your fare and with no compensation or rights whatsoever. If, by some miracle, you are seen in the interrogation room before your flight takes off, you'll miss it due to the length of the questioning process.
If you were not pulled out of the check-in line for interrogation, you go to the next step, which is to be weighed; at this point, you'll pay a dollar for each pound that you and your luggage weigh, plus $100 for each piece of luggage, $50 for your carry-on, and $25 for your personal item that you'll bring on board. Checking in will be free, but to obtain your boarding pass, you'll have to pay a $10 printing fee. The routing labels placed on your luggage will cost $5 each, and tags to put on your bag with your name and address will be a dollar each.
Now it's time for security, which happens in several stages. First, you'll bring your checked luggage to the TSA luggage scanner, where they'll pile up bags for flights that are about to take off somewhere on the side while scanning and pushing through the bags going on flights that aren't taking off for another two hours. One out of every ten bags will be chosen randomly and moved to a holding area where it will be held for a month and then returned to the airport, which will try and search for the owner, a process that will be extremely backlogged and won't succeed very often due to shoddy record keeping. Of those bags that are not randomly selected, each bag will be scanned electronically, and following that, each bag will be opened to wrinkle up the clothing. Then the bag will be passed on to the baggage handlers, who according to the 2013 Airport Security Passenger Luggage Contents Protection and Loss Prevention Act will be required to produce proof of
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
that refuse to go along with the pack and surrender all of their rights when asked in a confident voice by an authority figure.
Bingo. They could not have made the intention any more transparent. It's not about security - otherwise why is pat-down good enough for people who just make up an excuse? It's about control and making the population submissive. We learn to bend over at the airport and it makes it easier to do it at the checkpoint, the federal building, the state border, or while jogging in a neighborhood in which they think you don't belong.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
...but it will catch the real enemy of this administration and of the tsa - folks willing to think for themselves and unwilling to be scared into submitting to big brother.
i already take off my shoes at the airport. and, because my job requires me to fly quite a bit and get where i'm going, i produce id (passport, usually). and every time i take the baggie with my toothpaste and travel-size deodorant out of my carry-on, i throw up in my mouth a little bit.
but i keep doing it.
because i have to pay the mortgage.
i can't remember who said this, but someone once said the 20th/21st century equivalent to the nazi war criminals' "i was just following orders" line will be "well, i had a mortgage to pay"...
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Amazing - and I am saying this in all seriousness. I did not know this was even allowed. For the past number of years (and really prior to that as well) I know that every time I took a flight, security person at the beginning of the line demanded to see my ID and boarding pass. To the best of my understanding there was no exception to that, they were fairly clear that I would not be permitted to proceed if I don't show the ID.
That and really I wouldn't even get through check in without one - airline registration counter person demands your id first.
Anyone actually flown without going through this in recent years? How did you do that?
I'm reminded of a story that came over the wires of United Press International, on September 10, 1980 (the teletype printed it during my shift while I was DJing, so I saw it with my own eyes):
========
Police in Laurel, Mississippi report receiving a call from a woman who told them she had been attacked by a band of elves. Investigating officers were dubious to begin with and the woman didn't help her credibility by pointing to a blank wall whenever she was talking about the window the alleged elves came through.
When one of the officers pointed out that there was no window where the woman kept pointing, she reportedly told them the elves had taken it with them.
=========
It appears the TSA believes that if we just get rid of all those windows, no more elves, er, I mean terrorists will come through them!!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Most airline employees can refuse to check you in if you donot have an ID. What good does not showing an ID to a TSA employee do unless you lose your ID between checkin and boarding ?
I was listening on the radio to someone talking about how Americans don't protest anymore, and we're being taken advantage of because of it. This shit would not have flown 20 years ago. 20 years ago we would have gone to the streets and demanded the head of Bush, Cheney, or whomever we thought was responsible for the deterioration of our rights. I wonder, what's the last straw? When will everyone else stand up and say that this shit is too much?
The government knows exactly how much I make. People can look me up on line and see where I live, and how much I paid for my house. Credit companies know if I am late paying my bills. My credit card company knows what kind of purchases I make, and calls me if I do something unusual. Amazon knows what kind of books I read. Netflix knows what kind of movies I watch. In my county, you can look up my name on line and see if I have an outstanding traffic ticket. So you think I am going to get excited about my "privacy" if I have to show an ID?
The whole purpose is for the TSA to make the traveller feel that they are being kept safe. Real safety has nothing to do with it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
If you're traveling alone, yeah. Amtrak wants $250 to put me on a train to a city 1300 miles from where I live, and at $4 a gallon I'd spend that much in gas if I drove myself. That's one way, mind you.
Southwest wants $300 for a round trip ticket.
1. The TSA stated on Mar 21 2008 that there is no such requirement: http://papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/tsa-080226-070-mocek.pdf
2. The requirement to present an ID was also found to not be required by federal court in the so-called "Gilmore" decision, in that someone could choose to subject themselves to additional screening. http://papersplease.org/gilmore/_dl/GilmoreDecision.pdf
3. If the TSA insists that "cooperative" fliers will be allowed through but fliers that simply do not provide ID won't be, this will be brought back to court, and the TSA will loose. They can't play with the rules like this, and if you read the TSA statement, they are basically saying FU to your rights that have already been upheld in court.
Isn't it weird? Conservatives don't have a problem with the government invading their personal lives, but they DO have a problem with the government invading the corporations' lives.
What a classic set of liberal distortions!
Conservatives, for the most part, do not want the government to enter our lives. However, we value the following rights as tantamount to freedom: a) free speech, b) freedom of commerce, c) the right to hold property and d) the right to get income from the investment of that property. That is why, as a rule, you will see conservatives balk at any sort of proposed rule about what kind of car, house, medicine, or anything else that a person might own or buy.
Conversely, the liberal would legislate the federal right to ALL property, and impose regulations on ANYTHING. Liberals always complain about "conservative fascism", but, then, their solutions always involve creating ever more regulation (and thus, devaluing property). Liberals might make you free in the Khmer Rouge sense of the word, but, ultimately, they make you poor.
In the free market state you Americans idolize, corporations and citizens should have the same treatment under the eye of the law. No more, no less.
Actually, we view corporations as distinctly less than the rights of citizens. However, corporations, via our shares, are our property, and therefor, we resist what the government would do with it. But, make no bones about it, in the eyes of a conservative, owning a stake in Exxon Mobil, or even the entire company, is no different than the legality of owning a pencil. It is my company, my pencil, and I can do with it what I will.
This is my sig.
There they actually check your passport to some reasonable degree. If nothing else they scan it with their device which performs a number of checks for security features that aren't easy to fake.
Problem with TSA checks is they aren't nearly so good. You show your driver license or passport to the guy, and they mark that you are ok on your ticket. Well they don't check real well, and as a practical matter it'd be hard to. Passports are somewhat standardised among nations, and there's only so many of them. Driver licenses there are tons of. In Arizona alone I can think of 6 different versions that you can currently find in circulation.
Thus it really isn't anything more than a "Does this guy have ID at all," check, which is useless. Passport checks aren't a magic bullet, but at least they are somewhat useful. It isn't that easy to get a fake passport that'll get through border security, and most nations do a reasonable job checking to make sure passports are legitimately issued (some like Canada get kinda silly with the amount of checks they do). It provides a reasonable way for countries to control their borders and who passes through them.
However this check is nothing more than "Security for show." There is no serious attempt made to see if the ID presented is accurate, and I've had times where they hardly glance at the picture, so long as it was the same hair colour and gender Id' probably get through. It is probably far less through than the check airlines do when you use an ID to get an e-ticket.
From the movie Southland Tales why does interstate travel require a visa? Because this is 2008, in a timeline where three years earlier terrorists set off two nuclear bombs in Texas, bringing the War On Terror to American soil and precipitating World War III.
International travel has become more restricting to some past decade and pretty soon United States seem to be becoming to require Southland Tales style interstate visa. At least starting from foreigners, i fear. Unless i drive my own car, big brothers can track where i am from the records i leave behind, such as using airline, train, rental car around states. as soon as it becomes very efficient and cost effective to construct such data base, or Big brothers may have already began to contruct such system in order to track "terrorists". Travel visas to another country where it is required are not too difficult to get. It basically comes with your ticket from tour company. Asking for VISA is basically asking people to prepare the legal papers that show purpose of visit to the gov'nt even if you are well known in the area(even high ranking officers, celebrities are required). Requiring some kind of ID is much cheaper than to track down everybody's life. In North Korea, you are required permission to travel to the shop down the alley from the government. someday, US govn't probaly don't even need those from spying everything around us.
This is an inane argument. There is not a bit of evidence that Al Qaeda or any of the Islamic terrorist groups are trying to undermine America by eroding our civil liberties. You may not have noticed it, but Islamic terrorists are not exactly big libertarians. Religious fundamentalists tend not to be. The idea that they recognize the power of Jeffersonian ideals and are therefore trying to move us away from them is farcical.
If you want to argue that such erosion of civil liberties is bad for the United States, such a case can be made. But to argue that this was the terrorists' intent is to project your own beliefs onto them.
When I was in school ( oh so long ago ), we were told that America was better than the Soviet Union because we were free.
... and here we are:
"The Soviets don't let you travel without paperwork - we would never do that because we are a free nation."
"The Soviets tell everyone that the restrictions are 'for their protection', but it is a lie."
"The Soviets distort the news which is reported to the people."
Fast forward 25 years
Being shaken down for "papers" and "inspected" by the powers that be when we travel (air, auto, borders) or sign up to do an honest day's work.
All while living under an administration which distorts information as a matter of policy, supporting war with lies.
Not only that but we are losing out economically to a nation which is officially Communist.
So what did we win in the "cold war", exactly ?
I'd move away, but that would be allowing them to win.
Lets make THEM move away and get on with the business of restoring our nation !
Lurking in the desert
This kind of thing reminds me of the recent immigration paperwork I had to do. They have a few questions you have to answer no to in order to get a visa to enter the country (ok, so it says you could still get one, but I highly doubt it). Here is the one that makes me groan ever time I see it:
Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities, or any other unlawful purpose? Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State? Have you ever participated in persecutions directed by the Nazi government of Germany; or have you ever participated in genocide?
Now who exactly are they expecting to exclude based on that question? If you have or are planning to do any of those, are you honestly going answer truthfully? Maybe it catches really dumb terrorists?
that refuse to go along with the pack and surrender all of their rights when asked in a confident voice by an authority figure.
Bingo. They could not have made the intention any more transparent. It's not about security - otherwise why is pat-down good enough for people who just make up an excuse? It's about control and making the population submissive. We learn to bend over at the airport and it makes it easier to do it at the checkpoint, the federal building, the state border, or while jogging in a neighborhood in which they think you don't belong.
I don't get it. When someone says, "May I see your ID, sir" and I show it to them, am I suddenly under their control? Have I suddenly lost the right to... I don't know.. speak freely when I show ID? People all over the world have had to show ID (passport) to travel from country to country. How is this different?I'm sorry, I can't keep up that charade any more. If you lose all self control because someone asks you for ID, you are fucking idiot and you shouldn't be leaving your town anyway.
Seriously, WHAT CONSTITUTION RIGHT IS INFRINGED ON BY HAVING TO SHOW ID?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I've flown without ID since 9/11, and it hasn't been a hassle before, and it won't be now. You just tell the TSA employee manning the metal detector line that you don't have any form of photo ID, they look at you funny, sometimes make a snide remark, pat you down, search your carry ons, and then let you go.
All of the airport ID checks are security theater, not just this recent change in regulation. Identity in very few cases conveys any sense of risk. If I know that a guy is named John Smith, and he's REALLY REALLY named John Smith, that doesn't tell me a damn thing about whether or not he's going to blow up a plane, or stab a flight attendant, or do whatever else gets to the Allah Virgin Merit Badge nowadays. Identity is only useful when you can correlate a person to a threat level. The "No Fly" list is, I guess, supposed to be a way to make that correlation, but it's obvious that it's a failure, and really, it'd be near impossible to create any kind of database that made ID-based security features meaningful without a far greater level of privacy invasion than the average citizen is used to, because it's not just enough to compile a list of bad guys, you have to compile another list of guys that are A-OK.
But you wanted your name on your post, so you had to log in. IOW, you had to identify yourself
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
This is not about terrorists. This is about control of the "difficult" people in the population and making an example of them for all to see.
The American citizen.
Terrorist carrying a hidden razor and shaped charge:
- "Oh Officer, I forgot my ID, Sir. Of course I'll be cooperative, I am an upstanding citizen with no reason to be disrespectful to authority.". Boards plane. Maims, murders, yadayadayada.
Upstanding citizen:
- "I don't have to show ID to board a plane. I'm a free man with inalienable constitutional rights." Tasered. Told to put your hands behind back, can't because of tasering, tasered again harder. Handcuffed. Trialed for treason, hung, yadayadayada.
Send your spendthrift head of state this
See where I'm going with the this? If the Fourth applies to ID here, then it has to apply EVERYWHERE!
Now, I understand that we don't want federal police officers asking us for ID at every corner. (Not that they don't have better things to do) I think it has something to do with the fact that you wanting to travel makes it reasonable.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Absolutely not. By asking this question, you've demonstrated that you're ALREADY under their control.
And as far as what constitutional rights have been violated, you are ignorant and misunderstanding the bill of rights. The bill of rights is not an enumeration of what rights you have - it's merely a list of a few of your rights that the framers thought so important as to merit special mention.
In fact, some were against a bill of rights for the very reason that they felt that the ignorant would see them as your only rights. As a compromise, the ninth amendment was added to make sure people understood this fact:
Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
As you have demonstrated, it didn't fucking work.
This space available.
Yes. After 9/11, nobody is going to sit back and wait while the hijackers "take this plane to Cuba". Anybody tries anything funny, like light their shoelaces, and if the passengers don't kill them, they'll get duct-taped to their seat for the remainder of the flight.
Meanwhile, the terrorists are looking for a weak spot. Someplace where law enforcement has overlooked. If we take some responsibility for our own security, there won't be any weak spots, regardless of TSA oversights.
Have gnu, will travel.
My solution is easy, well, sort of easy. OK, so it's still just showing an ID. But I've found out a real good way to make the TSA people squirm a lot. I have licenses to carry a concealed firearm in multiple states (I am an ordinary citizen, not a retired police officer or anything like that). And of course those licenses reside in my wallet.
The requirement for IDs don't stipulate specifics, just that it be a "government issued photo ID." Well, the concealed carry permits are, technically, a "government issued photo ID" as they are issued by a state government. The TSA folk don't have a choice but to accept them as identification. But it sure does make them squirm!
In fact, some were against a bill of rights for the very reason that they felt that the ignorant would see them as your only rights. As a compromise, the ninth amendment was added to make sure people understood this fact:
Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
As you have demonstrated, it didn't fucking work. First, the Bill or Rights states what government may NOT do to you. "Congress shall make no law..." or "...shall not be infringed"
Next, um, while I'm no Constitutional scholar, I'm pretty sure that the Ninth Amendment doesn't mean translate to "Everything not mentioned here is also a right".
You could have made a more convincing case by going with Amendment X, anyway.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
But don't sit here and bitch about your "Rights" like flying is some sort of Constitutionally protected Right.
Where on Earth do you get stupid notions like that? Ever read this: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."?
Just in case you're not familiar, the Constitution is written to limit government's rights, not to give jerks like you the ability to say "you don't have the right to do X because somebody 200+ years ago didn't think to write it down." Newsflash: there were a number of people back then who opposed putting the Bill of Rights into the Constitution because they argued (correctly, it turns out) that if you start listing some rights that people like you will start saying that since other things aren't included therefore they aren't rights. The Ninth Amendment was an attempt at compromise--one that gets roundly ignored by the federal government and especially the Supreme Court. Seeing as how the Supreme Court has been on the wrong side of just about everything as time goes on (slavery, separate but equal, etc.) that doesn't exacctly mean much either.
Oh, and by the way, airline security (thanks to airline lobbying) is now a function of the federal government. So how about not dragging out the "it's a private business they can do what they want" argument when you're talking about something the federal government does?
Say, what language do you think in: Moo or Baa?
Truth, Justice. Or the American Way.
You're talking about two different things. Drivers licenses, library cards and fishing licenses are simply an acknowledgement you certified as qualified for a certain privilege. Additionally, you can only require that those items be turned over with a warrant.
The Supreme Court ruled a few years back that asking a person's name if they are at a Terry Stop is constitutional. A Terry Stop is a limited form of confinement where an officer has "a reasonable suspicion that criminal activity has, is, or is about to be, committed." However that is the limit of what an individual is compelled to do. You are allowed to refuse to show an ID. You may not be arrested for that refusal. If you refuse to show a driver's license at a traffic Terry Stop, your license priviliges may be rescinded but you aren't required to turn over the ID itself unless you're arrested.
The TSA isn't asking who you are. They are requiring you without reasonable suspicion to turn over your property to get onto a plane.
That would be the fourth, prohibiting search in the absence of probable cause. Government agents are not permitted to demand your ID unless they've already stopped you for cause. They can ask, and most people (me included) don't mind just showing it in response to an even colorably polite request. But they're required to take "no" for an answer. That's kind of the definition of a free country.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Yes, you are free to turn around and walk away. Which means you are voluntarily accepting a more limited existence than other people, a more limited freedom of movement.
And when they require ID to get on trains, you'll be more limited still - but you'll be OK with that.
And not for safety - the 9/11 hijackers all had valid ID. No, you're willing to submit to demands of authority that increase safety and security not one bit... and in fact may decrease them, by instilling a false sense of security, by creating a bottleneck of massed passengers (a wonderful terrorist target), by diverting resources that could be better used...
You're willing to do that, to let authority tell you what to do just for show, to let authority make useless demands throughout your everyday routine... why?
Why? Maybe you just don't want to feel like one of those dirty hippies always talking about "rights" and "freedom" and such? Maybe you think authority is something to be admired and respected? Maybe you just want to be a good German?
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doesn't the constitution grant free passage between states? I think this is pushing a bit far. We all know the TSA is nothing more than those same minimum wage flunkies as before, now with a shirt and four times the power.
They're using their grammar skills there.
"TSA's new rules only protect us from a non-existent breed of terrorists who are unable to lie."
This is silly and misses the point. They protect us from something far more dangerous to the regime: People who refuse to have their rights flushed away.
You have it backwards. Asking what right they're violating is looking at it from the wrong angle. Instead ask what part of the Constitution authorizes them to require ID for travel. Remember, if it's not in the Constitution, they can't do it.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Being forced to show ID to buy alcohol is also a travesty and a horrible civil rights violation which, strangely, almost nobody cares about.
As for using my name when I buy the ticket, that's entirely circular reasoning. The only reason I have to use my real name when I buy my ticket is because I have to show ID when I check in, and the names must match. If there were no ID requirement then I could maintain privacy when purchasing the ticket as well.
Talking about hundreds of people trying to make their flights is also circular. You wouldn't have clogged security lines in the first place if the TSA's policies weren't so completely absurd.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
Frankly I don't understand why they can demand credentials even *with* cause. I mean, it's expedient, but I don't see how the justice system falls apart if you can't immediately ascertain someone's name and birthdate. In the modern era adults regularly carry government-issued credentials with them. But that wasn't always the case, and things seemed to work out okay.
Moreover I think it's absurd that your driver's license contains anything other than a number that can be used to tie your original test results to some sort of authentication system (we currently use a picture, there are better and more anonymous alternatives) and to tie driving-related court records to a specific licensee. In a traffic stop the cop needs to know that the person driving has been authorized to do so, and that the authorization has not been withdrawn. He does not need to know my name, birthdate, or any other identifying information.
And after the traffic stop, even if I am citied, the government does not have a legitimate need to track any additional information in relation to my traffic violation. You should not be able to determine where I live, when I was born, what personal or real property I own, or lookup other non-traffic convictions simply by knowing my driver's license number. We've allowed this to happen because it's convenient for law enforcement, but that's a pretty weak defense against the potential (and demonstrable) abuse.
It's not just drivers licensing either. if you're arrested for any reason, even if you are never charged and are released within minutes of being booked, the police will keep your fingerprints, DNA, and anything else they can get their hands on. They'll tie that information to your real and personal property registrations, your address, name, birthdate, drivers license, social security, and phone numbers. In some jurisdictions you can request that these records be destroyed, but it doesn't happen automatically. And in most jurisdictions you have no way to remove all this tracking information from law enforcement databases. There is simply no need for the government to keep those records; they are collected and stored simply as a convenience to law enforcement, to make prosecution more efficient. Not more just mind you -- I could tolerate some of the tracking if I believed it improved justice -- just more efficient.
If you're talking about optimizing the process, it takes absolutely NO TIME to NOT check id cards.
I remember when the ID requirements were just to keep people from selling each other unused tickets on the cheap.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
"Then there's that part of the speech, when you're flying, where they say if you are unable or unwilling to open the emergency door, you shouldn't sit next to it. Does that bother you? Unwilling? Now, who is the jerk who is unwilling to open the door of the burning jet and let us all out? I didn't even think a person like this existed, but they know he's out there, they wrote him into the speech. Not only that, they know he operates under a strict moral code, whereby he must confess if he is called on it. Ok, you got me."
Here is what makes "terrorism" interesting. Terrorism on its own is close to harmless. The Spain bombings, 9/11, the London bombings... all of those bombings didn't even dent those nations. Even 9/11 was just a drop in the bucket. 4000 or so people dying in the US? It won't even register as a blip on US death rates for a year. A couple of knocked over towers? Those are a little costly, but they pale in comparison to even a minor hurricane.
The terrorist attack itself was a pin prick against a giant. The problem is that the giant in response decided to saw off its own hand to keep from ever being pricked again.
While the attack itself did minimal economic damage and a barely noticeable effect on the number of people living and dying in the US (especially next to such terrors as cancer or heart disease), our response to it did horrible.
I am not even pointing to the government response alone. The government did terrible damage to itself by implementing policies that make business harder, travel harder, and importing students and skilled laborers harder. Lets not even considered the more intangible damage done to civil liberties. Even worse, people's own reactions turned a minor disaster into a major disaster. Being terrified of airplanes despite the fact that you are vastly more likely to be struck dead in a car did terrible economic damage. Fear that lead to reduced spending did horrible economic damage.
My point is this. Terrorist are hardly worth mentioning for the acts that they commit. They rank far FAR below other dangers that are likely to kill you. McDonald's and swimming pools kill far more people than terrorist do in the US. Cars kill vastly more people, and yet we manage to soldier on in utter indifference. The only thing that hurts about a terrorist attack is our very own response. If we want to defend against terrorist attacks in the future, prevention isn't the answer. Snatching low hanging fruit, like reinforcing plane doors and telling passengers to kick the shit out of anyone trying to get into the cockpit is fine and relatively cheap. Where the REAL savings would come from is if policy makers could find a way to dampen their own and the publics responses to terrorism. The damage is done when we react by chopping our own limbs off. If we could find a way to not react so violently, terrorist attacks, while hardly a good thing, would be FAR less destructive.
Actually yes, there is.
As your post correctly says, it would be ridiculous to suggest they directly care about or are motivated by any issue of our civil liberties. However they do indeed consider it part of a means to an end.
From Sun Tzu's Art of War:
Bush (and his entire administration) has a simplistic cartoon image of the enemy. The administration has declared that any coverage of what bin Laden as been saying is giving him free airtime and is giving aid to terrorists, has even played any such coverage carring coded instructions for an attack. And thus the media has been cowed into self censoring any such coverage. No coverage of what he's actually saying and no media analysis of what he actually wants and no media analysis of the terrorist whys and hows.
This is why The War On Terror has been so badly botched. The administration has a cartoon image of the enemy, and the public has little-to-no understanding of the enemy. Bush blindly did exactly what bin Laden wanted him to do.
Why did bin Laden instigate the 9/11 attack? What was the logic behind it?
Most people can't answer that. Saying bin Laden is evil is a hollow cartoon explanation, that evil people do evil things is a useless insightless answer. Saying "They hate our freedom" is a total fiction, a convenient administration soundbite to rally the public.
There was a chain of logic behind 9/11. It was an evil and tortured logic, but an identifiable and comprehensible logic. One must understand that logic to properly understand and fight that enemy, to understand not to unwittingly do what the enemy is hoping you to do.
First, what do bin Laden his cohorts ultimately want? What is the ultimate intent? A pan-Arab Caliphate. To unite the entire Arab world under one Islamic theocracy. That is bin Laden's utopia, that is his perfect answer that will supposed solve all the problems he sees of the world. bin Laden fundamentally doesn't give a shit about the Western World, he's perfectly happy for the rest of us to (figuratively and literally) go to hell.
So bin Laden's notion is that with the aid of Allah all Muslims should and would rise up and overthrow all of the corrupt Arab governments (and yeah those governments are generally pretty corrupt) to institute one unified Islamic rule. Of course bin Laden has gotten nowhere with that, and he decides that the only reason this plan has fails is because the Evil Western Nations have been protecting and propping up those corrupt Arab governments. And yeah, we have been protecting and propping up the Saudi Royal Family. And yeah, Saddam Hussein was all ours, he was a brutal dictator but he was a completely secular ruler and we gave him HUGE material support as a counter point to Iran. And we have been propping up other such governments for oil stability and other strategic interests. He doesn't "hate our freedoms", he hates us for stabilizing the Mideast and for working to keep Arab governments from collapsing in chaos, because he has the notion that such collapses and chaos would lead to an Islamic Utopia.
bin Laden's tactical and strategic ideas are based on his Afghanistan fighting against Russia, and his view of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. His view on rallying fighters to the cause is to provoke the enemy to overreact, to provoke the enemy to brutality, so that the enemy loses support and so that the enemy creates bin Laden's army for him. What is the purpose of the terrorist attacks on Israel? To provoke Israel to strike against the terrorists, and to provoke
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
but to an elf- you look like a native of Brobdingnag with pores the size of quarters....
:D
Yeah, but in elf terms I'm hung like one too.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Since the airline industry is a private industry, not a part of the government (nor is the TSA), they can simply ban you from flying, forever. The option to fly is not a "Right" granted to us by the Constitution, fortunately or unfortunately.
It is no different from a Circle-K gas station kicking you out for loitering. It's their property and they can set their own rules and guidelines (within the boundaries provided to them by local, state and federal regulations, of course).
All this does is penalizes the true citizens and rewards the terrorists for their actions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --