[Sorry for the long delay in posting this. It was accidentally left queued
in my Out box.]
At 07:42 PM 11/3/2001 -0800, Tim May
On Saturday, November 3, 2001, at 07:02 PM, Steve Schear wrote:
At 01:20 PM 11/3/2001 -0500, you wrote:
http://www.wartimeliberty.com/article.pl?sid=01/11/03/1813233
Military Bars Green Party Leader from Flying posted by declan on Saturday November 03, @12:36PM from the airports-are-now-a-no-speech-zone dept.
If the information provided in the article and your interview is reasonably accurate I suggest the Green Party, which is fairly popular in Maine, and others who oppose this sort of McCarthyesque law enforcement take direct action against them. By that I mean they identify the "thugs", including towns and photos, and invite the opposition to shun them in every legal way possible (e.g., denying them service at restaurants, shops, service stations, etc.)
This terrible situation shows what happens when the Government--cops, soldiers, agencies--have control over who is allowed to fly.
In the older system, general security was NOT tied to ID. No ID, no tickets. The pressure exerted on this Green Party woman could not have been applied as easily.
That this woman was obviously--if we are to believe what has been reported--singled out for harassment is a sign of what's to come. Consider the possibilities:
-- people like Cypherpunks put on a "watch list" and similarly harassed and ultimately blacklisted
-- journalists whose very jobs depend on airline travel may find themselves less willing to criticize government, lest they be added to the blacklist.
-- any person on the outs with government may find himself added to the blacklist
It really is no business of government to know the identities of those whose bags/etc. they are checking. Having government able to single out some travellers for special processing is a recipe for this kind of mischief.
BTW, the _wrong_ tack to take would be some argument about a "right to travel," some over-ruling of Southwest's or United's right to pick its customers as it wishes. The preferred approach should be to have no ID at the _security_ checkpoint and to not have any laws requiring ID tied to tickets. In other words, the situation as of a few years ago. Then that Green woman would a) not have been stopped in the first place, and b) would have been able to hop any other flight without anyone being the wiser.
Much of this is a result of too much Federal authority, almost all of it based on "creative" interpretations of the Commerce Clause. Has the FAA's constitutional authority ever been challenged? Those that oppose these travel restrictions need an effective alternative to airlines. Something along the lines of a VTOL air taxi could replace some short haul airport traffic. Ideally these taxis would be entirely automated, accept cash and keep no record on customers. Its too bad companies like SoloTrek http://www.solotrek.com/mjet/index1.html and Moller http://www.moller.com/ haven't been able to "get off the ground" ;-) steve