On Saturday, September 15, 2001, at 07:01 AM, Derek Balling wrote:

Readers Digest and Yahoo are sponsoring a poll that asks various questions about what freedoms people are willing to sacrifice...

http://ypolls.yahoo.com/rd1/

Hitting up public opinion for bad policies in a time of sorrow is wrong, in my opinion, and its important that all sides get their voices heard on this topic.

The sheeple are being asked in online polls, in man-on-the-street surveys by news crews, just how many civil liberties we should give up. Tim's Alternative Poll: Q: What do you think should be done to those who violate the Bill of Rights, for example, by suspending various of our civil liberties?: a) arrest, trial, and, if convicted, lengthy imprisonment for tens of thousands of cops, judges, bureaucrats, and others complicit in any way whatsoever with this suspension of civil liberties b) victims should fight back with all resources, and, if possible, kill their attackers c) all government employees involved in such a suspension should be herded together and then doused with aviation fuel and lit... d) we should demand to know why the CIA, er, the Taliban, altered its plans to hit the Capitol and instead diverted at the last minute into a nearly empty section of the Pentagon

On Saturday, September 15, 2001, at 04:03 PM, Steve Schear wrote:

...

The sheeple are being asked in online polls, in man-on-the-street surveys by news crews, just how many civil liberties we should give up.

Unsurprisingly, here are the current results after about 4500 votes:

No carry-on luggage, except for small purses, briefcases or diaper bags Yes 73% No 26%

I don't count this as a civil liberties violation. However, it's idiotic. After the worries about _bombs_ on planes, the call was for an end to _checked_ baggage, that all baggage would be _carry-on_. Now it swings in the other direction. I have long accepted that air travel may someday involve people changing into travel smocks and carrying essentially nothing with them. (One idea I heard years ago made some sense: airlines could save a fair amount of costs by eliminating luggage completely and having cargo planes carry any necessary luggage. Passengers could ship a bag ahead of time and have it at their destination.) Naturally, I'd like to see more "rules competition": airlines that have El Al levels of security competing with "All Smoking, All Guns" airlines competing with "No forks and knives" airlines.

Passport inspection, even on domestic flights Yes 75% No 24%

Since internal passports cannot be required, this is problematic. However, I support the notion of Tim's Airline demanding any kind of papers it wishes to.

Searches of all passengers using metal-detection wands Yes 94% No 5%

Already done, already ineffective. Catches _some_ guns, not others. Doesn't catch Zytel knives, sharp pieces out of laptops, aerosol cyanide, etc.. (The woman whose office was immediately next to mine was killed when an airport employee carried a gun on board her flight, forced his way into the cockpit, and (apparently) shot the pilots and/or the control electronics. Her plane fell from 35,000 feet into the hills near San Luis Obispo. A PSA flight, circa 1987-88.) The real violations of civil rights are the many proposals, some likely to pass unanimously in Congress, to outlaw strong cryptography, to require key escrow, to suspend Fourth Amendment protections (even more so than they have already been ignored), to ban certain organizations (so much for freedom of assembly), and to dramatically increase wiretaps. --Tim May