Readers Digest poll - vote now

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Sat Sep 15 19:12:18 PDT 2001


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





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