All your mentally ill children are belong to us

[Declan McCullagh]

"Nomen" doesn't get it. 

One can say it's no business of government while supporting the right
of private firms to do background checks on their passengers, or
strip searches if that's what they feel is necessary. Of course that
also means supporting the right of travelers to take their business
elsewhere if they find the measures objectionable.

-Declan


On Thu, Nov 08, 2001 at 06:30:03AM +0100, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> Marc de Piolenc wrote:
> > Nomen Nescio wrote:
> > > And yet we expect airport screeners to ignore past acts of terrorism
> > > by a wild-eyed fanatic boarding a plan, 
> >
> > I don't recall anybody being required to do that. Quite a stretch,
> > unless you can cite an example.
> 
> Read this from Tim May, November 3:
> 
>    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.
> 
> He suggests having no ID or other history information available to
> help screeners make their decision, nothing but whatever clues can be
> gleaned in the brief moments available.  Anybody want to fly *those*
> friendly skies?