New Rules Under 'Secure Flight"

Government Permission Will Be Required to Travel
Posted By admin On August 19, 2009 @ 1:33 pm In Featured Stories |
Michael Ostrolenk, Robert E. Smith, Richard Sobel and Jan Towe
Campaign for Liberty
August 19, 2009

Starting this year, Americans will have to get government approval to travel
by air. As Privacy Journal revealed last fall, henceforth "Permission Now
Needed to Travel Within U.S." Getting a reservation and checking-in for air
travel will soon require Transportation Security Administration
authorization. That permission is by no means assured: For example, if your
name matches a "no-fly" list, even mistakenly, you can be denied the right
to a reserve a seat on a flight. If your name is on a "selectee" list, you
and your possessions will be searched more thoroughly before you can board.
What is going on here?

All travelers will need government OK in order to board a flight, or
take a cruise. What the government can allow one day, it can forbid the
next.

Protecting air safety is essential, but professional screening at airports
already provides for it. Giving the TSA as an official agency the additional
authority to decide who gets to go where reaches beyond safety into
overextended governmental power. This newly minted "Secure Flight" rule
fundamentally imbalances long-standing citizens' rights both to travel and
to be left alone. If your name appears among hundreds of thousands on
"watchlists," you assert that the government should not require ID to fly,
you don't want to reveal your date of birth for concern about identity
theft, or you don't choose to declare your gender, you can stay home.
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