Yes, you need ID at U.S. airports. Why? It’s a secret!
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The Supreme Court has refused to consider a challenge by the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s John Gilmore to the unpublished regulation that requires passengers to show identification at airport checkpoints.
Gilmore wanted the secret law to be made public.
Unless the regulations are made public, air travelers have no way to determine if the regulations call for impermissible searches, Gilmore said in court papers. The Justice Department has said that demanding ID protects passengers’ safety.
Frankly, Gilmore’s complaint makes intuitive sense to me, regardless of your views on whether showing identification aids in safety or not. In a democracy, laws should be published, not hidden. How can you argue against that?
By refusing to hear the case.
Related:
- PapersPlease.org: Gilmore v. Gonzales
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January 9th, 2007 at 9:11 am |
I have no problem showing ID as a precondition for air travel. Then again, quite honestly, the cursory inspection of my drivers license at TSA security lines don’t really seem to add much in terms of security, as it really appear to be meant a match between the name on a piece of paper that might be a boarding pass (or a random printout), and not much more.
I do have major problems with having to comply with laws that I can’t read.
It’s a sad day for this democracy when the supreme court essentially said “You don’t need to know the law… just comply”.
January 9th, 2007 at 5:15 pm |
Oliver: That pretty much sums up my position, too.
January 9th, 2007 at 7:13 pm |
It’s not clear to me how having the regulation unpublished makes it less obvious as to why you need to show ID.
Of course, if they’ve done something as stupid as writing the regulation badly so that every half cocked big-L libertarian would be able to show up with a Ronald McDonald fan club card as ID then that would explain a log….