Flying Faster Without ID 528
jjh37997 writes "A Homeland Security's privacy advisory committee member finds that flying without a photo ID is actually faster than traveling with proper identification. According to Wired the committee member, Jim Harper, accepted a bet from civil liberties rabble-rouser John Gilmore to test whether he could actually fly without showing identification. He found that traveling without ID allowed him to bypass the long security lines at San Francisco's International Airport, and get in faster than if he had provided his driver's license."
Lucky Him (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
As with all things, it helps to look sharp - whenever you find yourself in a potentially dodgy situation, stop and ask yourself, "how expensive of a lawyer do I look like I can afford?"
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read this, have mod points, and agree, please mod the parent up a bit instead of me.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
There's something to that. I think many mods read at 2 and up. I find that if any of my posts start at 2, they're much likely to go up. If I post w/out karma bonus, they're likely to languish at 1. Sure, I post some rather disposable comments at 1, but not all of them are as such. The difference in mod performance is much greater than the spread in post quality, IMHO. I'm sure being an AC, and thus starting at 0, is a double whammy, esp. since many people filter out ACs entirely.
--Joe
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
An ironic thing to ask in this particular thread, don't you think?
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Profiling is doubleplusungood. Everyone likes forensic science, though.
All terrorists are people. The terrorists who attacked on 9/11 were indeed arabs. This does not all the terrorists make. Where's your data that leads you to believe most are arabs
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
And the terrorists in that attack were not only white boys, but they were also Americans. And if memeory serves, McVeigh was younger, but Nicols was well into middle age.
Generalizing about who might attack doesn't help. Checking everyone equally for dangerous chemicals and weapons does. It's really that simple.
Here's a scenario to show that you're wrong. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit.
... and I look like I'm a terrorist ... I just find a white girl-friend who is the opposite of your "profile" and I pack her carry-on baggage with my weapons. Without her knowledge.
So, if I'm a terrorist
I get massive sympathy from her because I always
Re:Here's a scenario to show that you're wrong. (Score:5, Informative)
That's already been done. It's why profiling doesn't work. And I'm not middle eastern, I'm of pasty Irish ancestry. I could pass as a danish.
"In 1986, Nezar Hindawi, a Jordanian national then residing in Britain, told his pregnant Irish girlfriend to fly to Israel from London and that he would meet her there via Jordan. Before she boarded the El Al jumbo jet in London, it was discovered by airport security that the false bottom of her hand luggage concealed a bomb powerful enough to blow the jumbo jet out of the sky. She told authorities that the hand luggage was a gift from her fiancé Nezar Hindawi and that she could not believe that he would knowingly endanger her or his own unborn child. When Hindawi was arrested he revealed that he was a paid agent for Syria and claimed that he had been specifically instructed by Syria to romance and then impregnate a naive woman who could be utilized as a completely unwitting human bomb and thereby more likely avoid detection by airport security (who then operated according to standardized terrorist profiles). So convincing was the evidence of Syria's hand behind this attempt to obliterate a civilian passenger plane that Britain suspended diplomatic relations with Syria for a number of years thereafter."
More: http://www.bearpit.net/lofiversion/index.php/t272
Re:Here's a scenario to show that you're wrong. (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't that be pastry Irish ancestry then?
Part of me wants to offer my own /rimshot after that, but
then my joke was bad enough on its own that I'm sure I
have the will to go through with it.
Re:Here's a scenario to show that you're wrong. (Score:3, Informative)
You are correct in stating that searching based on prior data is better. However, this assumes that the terrorists don't know that you're looking for them. If the terrorists know that you're looking, they can deliberately disguise themselves or their equipment so that it doesn't match with your prior data, making your search no better than random.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
How many terrorist attacks on airplanes have we had since September 11? What, the shoe bomber? That's a sample size of 1. And all the time we hear about the increasing threat of "home grown terrorists." Slashdot readers should know not to extrapolate from small data sets.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Funny)
Slashdot readers should know not to extrapolate from small data sets.
Ahahaha! Oh, boy. Come back the next time there's a discussion about gender issues. In these parts, two anecdotes add up to a vast body of compelling, indisputable empirical evidence. :P
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Crap. Most of the terrorists I've had to worry about during my life have been Irish Catholics. Many of the terrorist attacks on US soil have been at the hands of white Christians. Racial profiling is bad because it doesn't work more than for any other reason.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Interesting)
OK, a brief mathematical point. If most Arabs are not terrorists, and most terrorists are Arabs, it does not follow that your highest probability of finding a terrorist will be by examining Arabs
I'll make a concrete example for you. Suppose you pick a group of people at random, and it happens to contain: 10 Arab Terrorists, 5 Non-Arab Terrorists, 90 Arab Non-Terrorists, and 10 Non-Arab Non-Terrorists. Now, you might argue that this does not reflect probabilities in the larger population, but... let me use this as an example, to make a mathematical pont.
In that situation, it is true that: Most Terrorists are Arabs. (10-to-5: among the terrorists, there are twice as many Arabs as Non-Arabs.)
In that situation, it is also true that: Most Arabs are NOT Terrorists. (90-to-10: among the Arabs, there are 9 times as many non-Terrorists as there are Terrorists.)
However, now look at the probabilities: If you examine Arabs only, your chances of finding a terrorist are 10% (there are 100 Arabs in the sample, 10 of them are terrorists). On the other hand, if you examine Non-Arabs only, your chances are finding a terrorist are 33% (there are 15 Non-Arabs, 5 of them are Terrorists).
I know these numbers seem skewed, but I want to make a mathematical point: just because most Terrorists are Arabs DOES NOT mean that you are more likely to find a terrorist by searching Arabs.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only is racial profiling "not PC" and "offensive" to those we hope to gain intel from, but it's stupid. If you profile Muslim Arabs, how many Ted Kaczynskis are you going to stop? Or Timothy Mcveighs? Or Eric Rudolphs?
Do you think our enemies are retarded? If we annouced to the world "we will only search arabs, never whites" exacty how many seconds would pass before they recruited a white person to blow up a plane?
Aesop said it better than I ever could:
A DOE blind in one eye was accustomed to graze as near to the edge of the cliff as she possibly could, in the hope of securing her greater safety. She turned her sound eye towards the land that she might get the earliest tidings of the approach of hunter or hound, and her injured eye towards the sea, from whence she entertained no anticipation of danger. Some boatmen sailing by saw her, and taking a successful aim, mortally wounded her. Yielding up her last breath, she gasped forth this lament: "O wretched creature that I am! to take such precaution against the land, and after all to find this seashore, to which I had come for safety, so much more perilous."
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell that to the cop who caught the Oklahoma City bomber, jackass:
You would have been harassing innocents, and would have ignored whity. Good thing that cop did his damn job instead of knee-jerking (or "using forensics" as you call it).
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose is not to stop terrorists. It's abundantly clear that the measures that have been taken are ineffective at doing so. The purpose of airline security is assure middle America that Something Is Being Done .
Towards that end, it's much more important that people who look "Middle American" appear to be given much more scrutiny, because they're the ones footing the bill - they have to be the ones to get the warm fuzzies and thereby get assurance that it's safe to fly.
If you want some idea of how completely absurd the whole thing is, try being a pilot (or just pretending to be one) at a smaller airfield (yes, that still services larger jets) and see how easy it is to access airplanes without a single challenge from anybody. At most, you'll be asked for the tail number of your aircraft - which you can read from the big freakin' characters on the side of every airplane.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Interesting)
Couldnt agree more.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3)
I remember flying to India and somewhere along the way (I think maybe in LAX when we were coming back?) there was a super white blond woman behind me in the security line. I could see nothing about her that was suspicious in any way. I went through without problems, all my stuff scanned fine (including some electronics).
However she got stopped because her Cover Girl compact was suspicious. The security guy said sometimes the mirror in it looks suspicious or something? It sounded like total crap
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Informative)
And if I've flown into the field, well, then I have access to everything - my airplane is my passport. Never mind that I could easily have stolen it from one of a dozen unmanned fields across the south of the country that I could pull out of my log book.
Let's look at Austin as a concrete example - it's a regular overnight stop for me as I have friends there. Half of the field is international-rated airline traffic with all of the bells and whistles. The other half is GA. In order to get on to the GA half of the field in my rental car, all I have to do is ring a buzzer next to the gate at the high-end FBO. Sometimes a voice will come on and ask me for my tail number (clearly visible from off the field) before opening the gate - sometimes the gate will just open. Funny, they don't try to X-Ray and explosive-sniff the car.
At the county-owned field in Florida I fly out of, there is simply no security after 6pm. The gates are left open and anybody can come and go. I had $10,000 of avionics stolen out of my airplane one night, and my A&P had a King Air have a couple hundred gallons of AvGas siphoned out of it just after Katrina. My insurance company tells me that this is not at all uncommon (thankfully, they paid up with barely a blink - much to my surprise).
At best, security is highly variable - there are tons of fields that an attacker could cherry pick access to. I'm confident that anybody who's been in the GA world for more than a few months could easily plan to access a passenger airliner without being challenged. And don't get me started on cargo jets...
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Funny)
Your phone records are clean, and there are no suspicious activities in any of your accounts. You also never detour from any of your travel plans, and have yet to dwell in any questionable places.
Sincerely,
Department of Homeland Security
PS - Your out of mayo, your upstairs toilet leaks, you haven't vacuumed in 9 days, and you might have better luck bringing your girlfriend to orgasm if you try position 32 of the Kama Sutra
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Funny)
My brother drove into a lake after passing three "Road Closed" signs. The officer who came to investigate asked my bro to join him in his patrol car, where he proceeded to flip through a thick book of traffic law/traffic violations.
After about a half-hour the trooper said, "Well, I'm not going to give you a ticket 'cause there just isn't a law for being stupid."
Ouch.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Interesting)
I was pulled over for speeding (106mph in a 70mph zone). Since the ticket was for "Exceeding 100mph", it was a mandatory court appearance. I showed up in a dress shirt, nice slacks and a tie. I plead guilty, and was fined $600. I was driving a Mercedes (A 1979 Mercedes, which is pretty inexpensive), but I'm sure the judge thought that me driving the Mercedes meant I have money.
The guy behind me shows up, and was charged with doing 105 in a 70, in the same exact location as I was pulled over, on the same day, by the same officer, but about 20 minutes after I was pulled over. He was dressed in worn out jeans & a wife beater, and was driving a rental Mustang. His fine was $250.
I'm still pissed about that, but I kept my mouth shut since the judge didn't suspend my license, and I was afraid he would hold me in contempt of court.
The Bakersfield, Ca courtroom is making the state a ton of money. The day I was in court, there were about 45 people in there, all charged with exceeding 100mph. I would imagine that they are one of the largest contributors to Bakersfield's economy.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not if... (Score:3, Informative)
Which, given the fact that it was Bakersfield, may have been impossible to do. In that case, the safest thing to do would be drive at a comfortable speed and stay in the right lane.
Re:Not if... (Score:4, Insightful)
I tried to use that excuse to get out of a speeding ticket and even chatted with a couple of my civil engineering buddies at the state transportation department. After that chat, I gave up and pleaded guilty. The research doesn't back the "everybody else was doing it" defense.
-h-
Re:Not if... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't stay in wolfpacks or drive too fast for conditions - if everyone else is then I take my own advice and take alternate routes. That's how you avoid having to be cut out of your car.
Drive out west (Score:3)
Actually I agree that 100MPH in mixed traffic is probably too fast (though if they are all modern cars with good tires and braking systems...)
However, drive out in Utah or Wyoming or Kansas some time. 100 MPH can be perfectly safe during the day if traffic is very sparse, because you have the visibility and thus lead time to safley drive that speed.
That is why in some states like Colorad
Re:Not if... (Score:4, Interesting)
Then your civil engineering buddies are wrong. I was big into transportation when I was in college. I did more research on that topic than all my other subjects combined. I found books published by the state of Texas that said the *worst* following distance was 2 seconds. That's the following distance that guarantees the worst possible crash. At closer distances, the two cars strike with less force, even though they are both moving. At longer distances, the following car is slowing and the front car is stopped, lessening the impact.
And you'll never talk your way out of a ticket with the truth. It's better to be polite than explain. You'd ba hard pressed to come up with something that every rookie doesn't hear on his first week, and cops are lied to on a regular basis, so even if you are telling the truth and it is valid and reasonable, they will presume you are lying unless proven otherwise.
And, just so you know, more fatal car crashes involve someone traveling under the average speed than over the average speed. So, if you are at the average speed or a little above, you are statistically safer than those below the average speed. And, had you actually talked with competent engineers that worked on roads, they would have told you that going with the flow above the speed limit is *safer* than going the limit. The limits are supposed to be set at a speed above the average speed in the absence of limits. However, political pressures and practial reasons get them set below the engineering standards. The City of Dallas was found to be setting the limits so low that it violated state law. Real engineers (and not imaginary ones) would have gone on a rant about how the politicians muck up their proper engineering and don't follow the 85% rule, even when specified in state law.
So, care to try again and tell us about how all the "experts" think that traveling 55 on a road packed with everyone else going 80 mph is safer than going 80? The only "experts" that would say that are either worried that saying it will get them fired, or they are paid spokespeople for organizations with political motivations (often not "experts" except in their own minds - see Ralph Nader for an example).
Re:Not if... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always thought that the right solution to this is to reduce that governmental body's tax income by exactly as much money as it takes in in fines. This way the government has no financial incentive one way or the other, and will presumably only pass and enforce laws when they're actually in the interest of the community. And those fines would reduce the tax burden on the supposedly-harmed society, reimbursing the citizens who had been transgressed against in the most direct possible way.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2)
Leaving out the race-card for the moment, just the fact that this guy was part of the TSA and that he was accompanied by a reporter smelled of 'set-up' to me. He announced that he would take the challenge, went home, made a few phone calls to let everyone know what was happening so that the next day, when he showed up at the airport, everything would go smoothly.
I'll be more interested to see what happens when a few "regular citizens
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2)
White people under the guise of trying to be PC get searched much much more often.
To the point of being absurd.
I dont think the 80 year old with the knitting needle is gonna hijack this plain.
I dont know what airports you go to, but most are afraid to search the arab looking guy because of a lawsuit for profiling.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:2)
Hell no... (Score:2)
Re:Hell no... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you want to want to bet the security supervisor's phone call went:
"Any idea why a Jim Harper might be trying to fly without an ID? He says he mailed it home instead of carrying it with him."
"Jim Harper... like the Jim Harper? White, brown hair, balding, thin widow's peak, short beard and mustache, grey eyes?"
"Uh, yeah, that sounds like him."
"He's on the DHS privacy committee. Make sure he's not sneaking a fake bomb on the plane or anything, but don't keep him from flying. And don't let on that you know who he is."
I mean, the people checking him out probably had access to hard-to-fake photographic identification than anything he could possibly be carrying himself. And a quick Google reveals that his new book is about "How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood". It seems obvious that, if he attracts enough attention that somebody looks him up, he'll be given exactly the treatment that he got: pretend to ignore his identity and check him sufficiently thoroughly that you'd catch it if he had anything prohibited.
Re:Lucky Him (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, remember this story? [cbsnews.com]. If the kind of conspiracy you are expounding were true, don't you think it would have been a lot easier to ID Senator Ted Kennedy than freakin' Jim "Nobody you'd know" Harper?
Re:Lucky Him (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh oh... (Score:2)
Well, I say welcome... it's been meaningless to me for a while.
You still need ID to purchase a ticket (Score:2)
Re:Uh oh... (Score:2)
http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001065.html [hasbrouck.org]
Re:Uh oh... (Score:4, Informative)
not that shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not that shocking... (Score:2)
Re:not that shocking... (Score:2)
Sadly, this is true on either side of the puddle. And one of these days some white Texan [thememoryhole.org] or some white Oklahoman [msn.com] will get away with it, and everyone will stand around in shock and awe that some white person [wikipedia.org] would do such a thing. For about 30 minutes. Then everyone will go back to hurling epithets at people that don't look like they do.
Meanwhile we get pretend security against some enemies.
Re:not that shocking... (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, you seem to have little understanding about the nature of terrorism. In my country (the UK) we've had quite a bit of terrorism over the last thousand years... only one round of deadly attacks have been carried out by non-whites. Thousands of people have been killed by white people in the PIRA (who have also tried to kill the prime minister - and were nearly successful) as well as killing from the UDA/UVF/Real IRA/old IRA. Not to mention that but Guy Fawkes was white - he tried to kill all the members of the House of Lords and the king...
Are you seeing a pattern here.
One attack by non-whites does not mean that they are all terrorists. The evidence says that you should, if anything, be stopping white people.
Re:not that shocking... (Score:3, Interesting)
well you say we are at war... but I remember the war ending
You will never remember that. This war is designed to never end.
Re:not that shocking... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny, I don't recall hearing a declaration of war or a ratification of such by congress since 1944.
Pay attention people! We are not "at war". We are merely "warring"!
Re:not that shocking... (Score:2)
So if we go with your plan, all the terrorists have to do is find one white Chechen to join up, and they can walk right on the plane with a bomb while innocent Arabs (and people mistaken for Arabs) have their privacy invaded.
Re:not that shocking... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and over 78.2% of statistics are made up. Al Queda and its ilk may be all the rage when talking about terrorism, but I assure you there are plenty of non-Islamic terrorists around who would love to do harm to the United States. Timothy McVeigh wasn't Middle Eastern, and there are plenty of extremist groups in the US that are made up entirely of whites. Looking internationally, we have FARC and other guerilla groups in South America, ETA in the Basque region of Spain, the “Real” IRA in Northern Ireland, and the list goes on. Recently there has been an uptick in female suicide bombers, so the male part of your profile doesn't really hold up either. I suppose the age range is still fairly accurate, but I wouldn't want to guarantee that it will stay that way.
The point is, racial profiling would at least have a strong argument if it were actually effective. Unfortunately, all it really means is that the next terrorist to strike won't fit the profile. It's not like it takes long for a terrorist group to figure out what security agents are looking for and change strategies accordingly.
Honestly... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Funny)
Somewhere, the Goatse Guy is quietly weeping... muttering to himself "what a waste... what a waste"...
Re:Honestly... (Score:2, Funny)
Well, it's an extra twenty bucks if you get it done in town.
KFG
Re:Honestly... (Score:2)
For some people it's a perk.
For one thing, you can cut down on doctors' visits significantly.
If you're travelling with kids, then yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Funny)
If everyone did what he did (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If everyone did what he did (Score:2)
Re:If everyone did what he did (Score:2)
This new machine had been installed in half the lines and I was lucky enough to get chosen for one of you on my last flight.
The was some GE contraption placed before the metal detector that would have one person enter it at a time. You would enter the machine, and then it would blow puffs of air at you from every direction. Then it would wait fo
Re:If everyone did what he did (Score:5, Informative)
In response to people claiming, "that works for white people... but what about the rest of us?" I say "bullshit!" I was TSA and frankly, as much as many people would LIKE to be able to do profiling, there is so much going on to discourage it (at least at DFW airport) that I feel VERY confident in asserting that it doesn't matter if you're Arab. I recall working at a checkpoint when a man of Arab decent was delayed slightly while people frantically made phone calls in a back office. This guy was on the "No-Fly-List" and they were attempting to clear him through the FBI or whatever federal agency. Ultimately, either they cleared him or they couldn't reach anyone who knew what to do with this case. Some 15 minutes later, I saw him bowing and praying on a rug that he brought with him facing in the direction I presume must be Mecca...on the SECURE side of the airport. They let him through anyway.
As I was leaving the TSA, "No ID" flyers were becoming more and more common to the point that the procedure as described in the article sounds about accurate. So yes, everything is screened in the fullest allowable detail. But frankly, there isn't enough manpower to handle everyone like that.
If everyone learned this trick, they'd have to change the way they do things or hire more people or both.
Now that said, my experience is that the longer part of the line is outside of the "corral" area. The entrance of the corral is where the ID checker is... and that ID checker is an AIRLINE employee, not government. So if you want to play that game, be sure that the line before the corral is shorter or non-existant. Otherwise, before the ID checker, you're still waiting in line for quite some time.
The real problem is getting your boarding pass (Score:5, Informative)
He just proved you can get through the TSA checkpoint with a valid boarding pass without an ID.
If you do not have ID and try to checkin for your flight at the airline desk you will get what John Gilmore got in the article - a refusal from the airline to give you your ticket.
Re:The real problem is getting your boarding pass (Score:5, Insightful)
E-Tickets (Score:3, Informative)
Just touch the correct button & give the machine a bit, it'll kick over to the next screen without asking for your credit card. Punch in your confirmation # and you're good to go.
Re:The real problem is getting your boarding pass (Score:2)
but you can get your ticket without showing any id from those check in machines, assuming you are carrying on everything.
--ST
DOS airport security (Score:3, Insightful)
TSA employees wearing baby blue surgical gloves then swiped his Sidekick and his laptop for traces of explosives and searched through his carry-on, while a supervisor took his ticket, conferred with other employees and made a phone call.
I wonder how many people it would take to DOS that procedure?
I never understood this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I never understood this (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, its to save the airlines from "terror" against its profit margins by disallowing people from swapping vouchers or tickets. Showing ID will ensure that only the person they're made out to will use them. No safety issue, aside from the shadowy watchlist that nobody knows about.
Re:I never understood this (Score:2, Insightful)
Because in theory they know who a lot of the dumb bad guys are and can check....
Re:I never understood this (Score:5, Funny)
Because, if everyone takes their ID on the plane, if Johnny Terrorist blows the plane up, then everyone can flap their ID cards really hard which will put the fire out, and also it'll just be like lots of little birds flapping their wings, so the plane will float down gently instead of crashing.
Also, if you are brown, carrying an ID card means you won't blow up the plane. And if you are white, carrying an ID card means you are not brown or a muslim, so you also will not blow up the plane.
Somehow, I don't believe this yet (Score:2)
Re:Somehow, I don't believe this yet (Score:2)
So, between the meeting's close and 6 AM the next morning, he was on the phone to everybody at TSA telling them of this publicity stunt and to make sure that it all went smoothly.
This works for Customs as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This works for Customs as well (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This works for Customs as well (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks for the advice bozo. I tried this and it didn't help me any. Followed your advice to the letter, and I ended up in the slammer with Bubba. It seems that marijuana plants are not allowed, and they don't just take the plant off you. I couldn't walk right for a week afterwards.
He had a reporter with him (Score:4, Insightful)
Less is better? (Score:4, Funny)
No Fly List. (Score:3, Informative)
A guy I know was jailed for refusing to show ID... (Score:5, Interesting)
Last year, he tried to board an airplane... without showing an ID, and without submitting to a secondary search.
He was carrying only his boarding pass and a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Cheeky fucker!
He spent several days in jail, and got some really scary letters from the FBI (hi guys!).
Scanned copies of the letters, photos of the event, and his own musing are posted here [tinyurl.com].
Now, I don't agree with Russell's focus on "civil disobediance" -- I prefer to focus on political change (ie, getting good people elected into office, passing good laws, repealing bad ones, etc). In addition, I think this particular act of Civil Disobedience was poorly chosen -- he was trying to make the point that it should be the airlines, not the government, that sets the rules for any particular flight.
But still, ya gotta admire the sheer cojones of standing up to the FBI, and doing it with a sense of humor (see the letters he wrote back to the Feds, they're hilarious!)
Russ is just one of the hundreds of pro-Liberty activists out here in New Hampshire, one more member of the Free State Project [freestateproject.org]
Yes, you can take the short line sometimes (Score:4, Funny)
I pretty much already knew the answer (no as long as you're not planning to sell it here), but by going up through the shorter line and having a plausible reason for doing so, I was able to save an hour. So yeah, you can get some time savings doing this sort of thing. Not sure I'd go for the body cavity search route to save waiting in the ID line, though. I guess that depends on if it's a business trip, or a recreational one.
Perception of Reality (Score:5, Insightful)
This proove the old adage that the world is not driven by reality but by the perception of reality.
I would argue that no one in their right minds would try to highjack an airplane again. In the past highjacking was a political statement. Usually the highjackers would fly the plane to a neutral airport and make demands. Often this would include the release of fellow members of their organization who were incarcerated. If you were an unlucky passenger, you would be an unfortuante pawn in a global chess-game. (Obviously there were exceptions.)
After the terrorist attacks on 11 Sept. 2001, no passenger will sit still and let a highjacker take over an airplane. Highjacking is now synonomous with suicide attacks. In my opinion, the real danger to airline travel comes not from highjackers but from explosives being placed on the airplane, e.g. Pan Am flight 103.
But the perception in the US is that flying needs to be protected, so the result is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Others have pointed out that if you are not white, have any kind of middle eastern origins, and you try to fly without an ID, you're pretty much screwed. And because the TSA has near absolute authority about whether or not you fly, they can deny you boarding simply because they feel like it.
The result of all this is that flying, IMO, is not significantly safer than before. We are concentrating our resources on "fighting the last battle." Making sure passengers have proper Identification doesn't make flying any safer. One could point out that some of the highjackers on 11 Sept. 2001 had valid IDs, after all they entered the country legally. As a society we should concentrate our efforts on preventing bombings or other bomb like devices. The "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in late 2001 probably represents a greater threat, yet checking to make sure he has proper identification isn't going to help.
I would argue that the checks they do at airports to check for explosives are worthwhile. But making sure you have an ID with you are not.
The article doesn't prove much... (Score:4, Insightful)
Incidentally, a little politeness can go a long way when dealing with government workers, especially in places like an airport or the DMV. Just think: these people deal with complaining a**holes all day for crappy pay, you might actually make their day a little brighter by being polite, or, God forbid, almost friendly. The time for civil disobedience in not after waiting 2 hours in the DMV line.
"rabble-rouser": good or bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this intended as a favorable or pejorative description of John Gilmore?
If John Gilmore is a rabble-rouser, then in my opinion the USA needs more rabble-rousers. If we had 100 million of them, the politicians would never have dared take away all our rights.
SFO experence (Score:5, Informative)
Guard - "How did you copy this" the secuirty check station guard asked
Me- "It's not a copy"
Guard - "I can't let you through, this is expired"
Me - "No, it's not expired, I just renewed it"
Guard - "This looks like a photo copy"
Me - "If you take the time to read it it says temporary. California does the same thing if you renew out of state. You staple the paper renewal to the expired plastic. If you have questions, call this number below".
Now, to be fair, I do understand how a laser printed license does look suspicious. But spending time in cali I also know your average liquor store has on hand a book of respective licenses, what they should look like, and even pictures of ones that fall apart easily (Washington). This leads me to believe at least in California liquor is more secure than airports.
Re:SFO experence (Score:3, Interesting)
Attempted - not recomended (Score:4, Interesting)
As a bit of background, my license had just expired and I was in the process of getting a new one. I checked the law ahead of time and discovered that for a Canadian citizen to travel to and from America via land, sea or air the only identification that you *need* is a birth certificate. Picture ID is strongly encouraged. A Passport is an even better idea.
I got stopped at just about every possible interval on the trip - checking my bags, passing through security, getting through customs, getting on the plane, getting back through customs when I landed - by people that apparently had no understanding of the law.
Every single person insisted that I could not travel without a Driver's license. Flashing the yellow sheet of paper that passes as a temp license in BC didn't get me very far. I even had to ask the customs official to ask their manager to look up the information. Neither one of them knew what was going on.
It is possible to do these trips without proper identification, but it's such a pain in the neck it's not really worth it.
Go, Jim Harper! (Score:5, Interesting)
He testified to help us pass an anti-RealID bill, which came within a hair of becoming law.
As I wrote in another post, see
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=830740502
for footage from a big protest against REAL ID here.
I had a long argument with NH Senator President Gatsas about the "id requirement" issue in flying and we (Jim and I) insisted he was wrong, that we could fly without any ID, if we were willing to submit to a secondary search. Kudos to Jim for proving us right!
(For those wondering what politics in New Hampshire is like... Yes, not only did I have an argument with the Senate President, but he called me back within 5 minutes of my sending him an email. We have that sort of an open and accessible legislature. Come and see it in action, there is nothing like it anywhere else. 400 State Representatives, 24 Senators, all paid a mere $100 a year, and little in the way of staff or offices.)
Re:Like in a "prisoner's dilemma" ... (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you mean by 'fail'? Terrorists would take over a plane? Maybe nobody would be allowed to fly - bet the airlines would be keen on that scenario. If EVERYBODY defected business would go on as usual. No way the airline industry is going to stand for stopping large quantities of people from boarding planes.
Re:"In fact, today, I'm the safest guy on the plan (Score:3, Funny)