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State Secrets, No-Fly List Showdown Looms
schwit1 writes "The Obama Administration and a federal judge in San Francisco appear to be headed for a showdown over the controversial state secrets privilege in a case about the U.S. government's 'no-fly' list for air travel. U.S. District Judge William Alsup is also bucking the federal government's longstanding assertion that only the executive branch can authorize access to classified information. From the article: 'The disputes arose in a lawsuit Malaysian citizen and former Stanford student Rahinah Ibrahim filed seven years ago after she was denied travel and briefly detained at the San Francisco airport in 2005, apparently due to being on the no-fly list. In an order issued earlier this month and made public Friday, Alsup instructed lawyers for the government to "show cause" why at least nine documents it labeled as classified should not be turned over to Ibrahim's lawyers. Alsup said he'd examined the documents and concluded that portions of some of them and the entirety of others could be shown to Ibrahim's attorneys without implicating national security.'"
This is the same judge who had the Oracle-Google Java case. He gave Oracle a huge slap down when they tried to argue that a trivial piece of code should bring down Android. I would love to see this guy on the Supreme Court, but unfortunately common sense and plain speaking will not endear him to anybody in Washington DC. #makestoomuchsense
As I am given to understand it, the No-Fly list consists of a list of the names of known terrorists, terrorist suspects, and the aliases that they have used. Back in 2004, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy was stopped and questioned five times at airports because "T. Kennedy" was an alias used by a terrorist suspect. It took the senator and his staff more than three weeks to get his name removed -- a process likely to be more painful and time-consuming for the average individual who only has access to the DHS TRIP ('Traveler Redress Inquiry Program') site.
Actually, the rules surrounding private planes are pretty strict.
They're trying to make them even more so:
http://www.dhs.gov/general-aviation
Even as it is, there's a whole host of people who can turn up unannounced and check a number of things, including searching you and the airplane, without requiring a warrant, btw.
Awhile back, 60 Minutes had a story on the No-Fly list, and there was a terrorist named "Robert Johnson", IIRC (if not, it was something similarly common), and a whole bunch of people were screwed from that one.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.