Stewart’s answers presuppose that having a government which knows enough about which citizens are flying to make a reasonable identity-based security system work would be acceptable to Americans or that it would not cause major problems elsewhere.
I recently bought my father “Three Felonies a Day” by Harvey Silverglate. I think that the questions of prosecution for overly vague and broad laws would be made far worse if central databases tracking each individual in detail were implemented and meant to be shared with law enforcement.
If there is a way for innocent people who somehow end up on a list to clear themselves without being elected to US Senate, I’d say yeah, let’s draw up long lists of suspects that we subject to extra screening. However, that does not seem to be the system at the moment.
Mr. Baker blames the privacy activists for the long delays. As far as I remember the original plans was going to look into a lot more than birth dates. It seems to be a rewriting of history to suggest that all the government wanted was a lousy birth date.
Tatil, that’s the point. I am sure there are those who think that Senator Kennedy and Cat Stevens are exactly the sorts of threats we need to be concerned about….
Chris Travers: I am sure there are those who think that Senator Kennedy and Cat Stevens are exactly the sorts of threats we need to be concerned about….
Cat Stevens, or Yusaf Islam or whatever he is calling himself now wrote that song before his conversion to Islam. After his conversion he severely disappointed me, a Cat Stevens fan, by supporting the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death. I wonder why he might be considered a threat.
Orin Kerr: CrazyTrain writes:
None of the activists’ objections are about the Constitution, as far as I know: The objections are being made solely as a matter of policy.
Orin — my comment was in jest, but since you raised the issue, it is my undestanding that many on the right (eg, the Cato types) objected to RealID on constitutional grounds. Now, on my understanding of the case law (which ain’t bad, but is not as good as you obviously), those constitutional arguments (both 10th amendment and 4th amendment) are not likely to win in court. Nevertheless, there are clearly serious constitutional objections to Real ID in the same sense that Randy Barnett’s constitutional arguments are serious — ie, they may not have a lot of play in the case law, but they have root in history (real or perceived), etc., that thus play well with certain constituencies which then pressure representatives to object to the act on constitutional grounds. And indeed, I believe that several state governments flat out said they wouldn’t comply with Real ID based on certain constitutional arguments (I may be all confused about this as I am going on memory).
Point is that the privacy arguments (and federalism arguments) against many of these regulations and proposed regulations cannot be segregated into a binary world of “policy” objections vs. “constitutional” objections. The “policy” objections are rooted in constitutional arguments and constitutional language, even if you and I agree that those constitutional arguments would not ultimately win in court.
Frankly, I’m not willing to give up essential liberty for temporary safety. The price of liberty is not having complete control over the possible actions of everyone.
After his conversion he severely disappointed me, a Cat Stevens fan, by supporting the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death.
This claim is a bit of a distortion. Granted, I would have preferred him to come out against it forcefully, but he says he only pointed out that there is savagery in other religions to get people off their high horses. Were Christian singers routinely asked about massacres of Muslims at the hands of Serbs during the civil war in Bosnia? He may have just grown tired of being asked about it at some point.
Professor Kerr doesn’t see a 4A issue — now there’s a shocker in gloomtown! Not! 4a is, or at least should be, highly instructive as far as what “process” is “due.” It is probably the single most instructive source on this point. Conventional wisdom aside, 9/11 did not change everything.
Personally, I would have a lot less problem with lists so long as one could access and correct one’s own info with ease, reasonable quickness and without necessary recourse a specialized lawyer. However, that possibility never gets seriously considered. Short of a database where I can know/correct my own info, I would rather just have a plane go down every ten years or so, and just resign myself to that as a fact of life, the same way I am resigned to the possibility of accidental death on the freeway or a heart attack.
Anyways, AQ will probably give up on the planes soon enough and go to freeway sniping. Hasan and John Alan seemed to be able to deliver what Reid and this Allutab guy could not. Are terrorists considered as “well-regulated militias” for purposes of 2A? I think that is where we are headed. IOW, the folks around here will become “privacy activists” in due course, when the databases shift in focus and become firearm-o-centric. They probably won’t call themselves that, tho.
The fact of the matter is that any item can be hidden in such a manner as not to be revealed by non-destructive testing, which when transporting humans means destroying the passengers. Similarly, identities can be forged.
People like Mr. Baker obviously have no respect for human dignity. As such, they are far more destructive than the terrorists they proport to be concerned about.
David Sucher: I just read (which doesn’t make it true) that “Abdulmutallab attempted to board the plane without a passport. He paid cash for a one way ticket…”
Not only that but he claimed to be a Somali refugee but the airlines had checked his Nigerian visa.
It seems there are some obvious ways to screen for that and that requiring airlines to be a little more vigilant against such inconsistencies would be a very good start.
Also given that passports generally have to be entered on tickets, why don’t we require them prior to check-in? It would then be possible to check if the passport data matches what was previously submitted. Refugees could be given a different process, but it would mean you couldn’t just apply for a visa in one country and then pretend to be a refugee from another.
Buddy Hinton: Professor Kerr doesn’t see a 4A issue — now there’s a shocker in gloomtown! Not! 4a is, or at least should be, highly instructive as far as what “process” is “due.” It is probably the single most instructive source on this point. Conventional wisdom aside, 9/11 did not change everything.Personally, I would have a lot less problem with lists so long as one could access and correct one’s own info with ease, reasonable quickness and without necessary recourse a specialized lawyer. However, that possibility never gets seriously considered. Short of a database where I can know/correct my own info, I would rather just have a plane go down every ten years or so, and just resign myself to that as a fact of life, the same way I am resigned to the possibility of accidental death on the freeway or a heart attack.Anyways, AQ will probably give up on the planes soon enough and go to freeway sniping. Hasan and John Alan seemed to be able to deliver what Reid and this Allutab guy could not. Are terrorists considered as “well-regulated militias” for purposes of 2A? I think that is where we are headed. IOW, the folks around here will become “privacy activists” in due course, when the databases shift in focus and become firearm-o-centric. They probably won’t call themselves that, tho.
I would think softer targets like malls in medium-sized towns across America.
Maybe, but the things with freeway snipers is: (i) they don’t get caught (unless they stay in one area too long); and (ii) AQ will probably find that spreading things about geographically actually enhances the terror aspect.
Imagine 10 simultaneous victims each month in ten random cities across the USA. People would go nutty with fear even before the jihadis got up to their first thousand victims. 2A would become very burned toast, along with the vestiges of 4a.
Chris Travers says:
Stewart’s answers presuppose that having a government which knows enough about which citizens are flying to make a reasonable identity-based security system work would be acceptable to Americans or that it would not cause major problems elsewhere.
I recently bought my father “Three Felonies a Day” by Harvey Silverglate. I think that the questions of prosecution for overly vague and broad laws would be made far worse if central databases tracking each individual in detail were implemented and meant to be shared with law enforcement.
December 28, 2009, 9:01 pmTatil says:
If there is a way for innocent people who somehow end up on a list to clear themselves without being elected to US Senate, I’d say yeah, let’s draw up long lists of suspects that we subject to extra screening. However, that does not seem to be the system at the moment.
Mr. Baker blames the privacy activists for the long delays. As far as I remember the original plans was going to look into a lot more than birth dates. It seems to be a rewriting of history to suggest that all the government wanted was a lousy birth date.
December 28, 2009, 9:32 pmChris Travers says:
Tatil, that’s the point. I am sure there are those who think that Senator Kennedy and Cat Stevens are exactly the sorts of threats we need to be concerned about….
December 28, 2009, 9:55 pmCrazyTrain says:
Mr. Baker blames the privacy activists for the long delays.
Those damn privacy activists who put the fourth amendment in the constitution are ruining everything.
December 28, 2009, 10:42 pmLeo Marvin says:
Have you heard “Morning Has Broken?”
December 28, 2009, 11:54 pmChris Travers says:
Yep. It’s a real threat to national security, that….
December 29, 2009, 12:03 amFederal Farmer says:
Cat Stevens, or Yusaf Islam or whatever he is calling himself now wrote that song before his conversion to Islam. After his conversion he severely disappointed me, a Cat Stevens fan, by supporting the fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie’s death. I wonder why he might be considered a threat.
December 29, 2009, 12:20 amOrin Kerr says:
CrazyTrain writes:
None of the activists’ objections are about the Constitution, as far as I know: The objections are being made solely as a matter of policy.
December 29, 2009, 1:07 amCrazyTrain says:
Orin — my comment was in jest, but since you raised the issue, it is my undestanding that many on the right (eg, the Cato types) objected to RealID on constitutional grounds. Now, on my understanding of the case law (which ain’t bad, but is not as good as you obviously), those constitutional arguments (both 10th amendment and 4th amendment) are not likely to win in court. Nevertheless, there are clearly serious constitutional objections to Real ID in the same sense that Randy Barnett’s constitutional arguments are serious — ie, they may not have a lot of play in the case law, but they have root in history (real or perceived), etc., that thus play well with certain constituencies which then pressure representatives to object to the act on constitutional grounds. And indeed, I believe that several state governments flat out said they wouldn’t comply with Real ID based on certain constitutional arguments (I may be all confused about this as I am going on memory).
Point is that the privacy arguments (and federalism arguments) against many of these regulations and proposed regulations cannot be segregated into a binary world of “policy” objections vs. “constitutional” objections. The “policy” objections are rooted in constitutional arguments and constitutional language, even if you and I agree that those constitutional arguments would not ultimately win in court.
December 29, 2009, 1:18 amFederal Farmer says:
Frankly, I’m not willing to give up essential liberty for temporary safety. The price of liberty is not having complete control over the possible actions of everyone.
December 29, 2009, 1:29 amTatil says:
This claim is a bit of a distortion. Granted, I would have preferred him to come out against it forcefully, but he says he only pointed out that there is savagery in other religions to get people off their high horses. Were Christian singers routinely asked about massacres of Muslims at the hands of Serbs during the civil war in Bosnia? He may have just grown tired of being asked about it at some point.
December 29, 2009, 1:40 amBuddy Hinton says:
Professor Kerr doesn’t see a 4A issue — now there’s a shocker in gloomtown! Not! 4a is, or at least should be, highly instructive as far as what “process” is “due.” It is probably the single most instructive source on this point. Conventional wisdom aside, 9/11 did not change everything.
Personally, I would have a lot less problem with lists so long as one could access and correct one’s own info with ease, reasonable quickness and without necessary recourse a specialized lawyer. However, that possibility never gets seriously considered. Short of a database where I can know/correct my own info, I would rather just have a plane go down every ten years or so, and just resign myself to that as a fact of life, the same way I am resigned to the possibility of accidental death on the freeway or a heart attack.
Anyways, AQ will probably give up on the planes soon enough and go to freeway sniping. Hasan and John Alan seemed to be able to deliver what Reid and this Allutab guy could not. Are terrorists considered as “well-regulated militias” for purposes of 2A? I think that is where we are headed. IOW, the folks around here will become “privacy activists” in due course, when the databases shift in focus and become firearm-o-centric. They probably won’t call themselves that, tho.
December 29, 2009, 7:33 amDavid Sucher says:
I just read (which doesn’t make it true) that “Abdulmutallab attempted to board the plane without a passport. He paid cash for a one way ticket…”
http://www.examiner.com/x-26060-Oakland-County-Republican-Examiner~y2009m12d29-The-system-worked-The-system-failed
If true, the right-wing cliches of “privacy concerns” and of “political correctness” would be irrelevant.
Are the Republicans lying to us? (see link above)
December 29, 2009, 11:06 amDesiderius says:
“Have you heard “Morning Has Broken?””
If we’d just stuck to trains, we wouldn’t have this problem…
December 29, 2009, 12:22 pmLibertyCowboy says:
The fact of the matter is that any item can be hidden in such a manner as not to be revealed by non-destructive testing, which when transporting humans means destroying the passengers. Similarly, identities can be forged.
People like Mr. Baker obviously have no respect for human dignity. As such, they are far more destructive than the terrorists they proport to be concerned about.
December 29, 2009, 12:46 pmChris Travers says:
Not only that but he claimed to be a Somali refugee but the airlines had checked his Nigerian visa.
It seems there are some obvious ways to screen for that and that requiring airlines to be a little more vigilant against such inconsistencies would be a very good start.
Also given that passports generally have to be entered on tickets, why don’t we require them prior to check-in? It would then be possible to check if the passport data matches what was previously submitted. Refugees could be given a different process, but it would mean you couldn’t just apply for a visa in one country and then pretend to be a refugee from another.
December 29, 2009, 1:01 pmFederal Farmer says:
I would think softer targets like malls in medium-sized towns across America.
December 29, 2009, 2:06 pmBuddy Hinton says:
Maybe, but the things with freeway snipers is: (i) they don’t get caught (unless they stay in one area too long); and (ii) AQ will probably find that spreading things about geographically actually enhances the terror aspect.
Imagine 10 simultaneous victims each month in ten random cities across the USA. People would go nutty with fear even before the jihadis got up to their first thousand victims. 2A would become very burned toast, along with the vestiges of 4a.
December 29, 2009, 5:25 pmLeo Marvin says:
;)
December 29, 2009, 5:35 pm