Friday, October 29, 2004
May I See Your ID Please?
One of the better David and Goliath stories right now is the case of John Gilmore v. John Ashcroft. Gilmore, a private American citizen, went to the airport on the fourth of July 2002. When he was asked for identification to get on his flight, Gilmore refused, wanting to know what law required him to do so. He was told the law was secret and noone knew the answer!
Needless to say, Gilmore missed his flight that day (and hasn't flown since in fact). But he isn't finished. The whole thing has escalated into a case filed this past August in which Gilmore claims that the ID rule infringes on a citizen's right to travel freely.
As part of the trial, more information on that "secret law" is now coming out. Although they have tried to hide it, the only justification that the government can come up with for requiring ID at airports is an unnoticed maritime rule published in May 2004.
A quick bit of grade school math tells us that this law was NOT in effect on July 4th, 2002. And if that's the best the government can offer, chances are very good that NO law requiring ID was in effect in 2002. Indeed, it's entirely likely that we have all been shoving pictures in the faces of security guards for the past two and half years without any law saying we had to! Last I checked, one government agency couldn't simply decide that we all had to do something without authorization from somewhere. Good on citizen Gilmore for questioning the system...
Needless to say, Gilmore missed his flight that day (and hasn't flown since in fact). But he isn't finished. The whole thing has escalated into a case filed this past August in which Gilmore claims that the ID rule infringes on a citizen's right to travel freely.
As part of the trial, more information on that "secret law" is now coming out. Although they have tried to hide it, the only justification that the government can come up with for requiring ID at airports is an unnoticed maritime rule published in May 2004.
A quick bit of grade school math tells us that this law was NOT in effect on July 4th, 2002. And if that's the best the government can offer, chances are very good that NO law requiring ID was in effect in 2002. Indeed, it's entirely likely that we have all been shoving pictures in the faces of security guards for the past two and half years without any law saying we had to! Last I checked, one government agency couldn't simply decide that we all had to do something without authorization from somewhere. Good on citizen Gilmore for questioning the system...
# posted by AmandaWelsh @ 2:44 PM 
