“Federal law …” isn’t one
Wednesday, August 14th, 2002Disputed Air ID Law May Not Exist, Wired News
I feel the way a lot of people do: I take the threat of terrorism seriously, and am proactive about trying to prevent another 9/11. After all, my wife and close friends would have been on Flight 93 on a different day.
But every tin-badged bully and bumbling bureaucrat seems to be using Osama bin Laden as an excuse to yank us around whenever we need to fly now. Even George McGovern decried “the terrifying police-state bureaucracy that has now seized our airports” in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial.
Sure, I’ll show my photo ID at the United counter. But it’s telling that neither the airlines nor the federal agencies to which they send reporters can produce the supposed federal law that requires citizens of the US to produce a government ID in order to fly within its borders.
Nor would any of them explain how asking for an ID increases security - I didn’t even get a cursory “that’s confidential.” I got buck-passing and unreturned calls instead. The perfectly nice guy at the TSA answered some of my questions, but not that one.
As the Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security and Technology noted in its final report this year, a requirement to ID and screen all passengers based on identity would face constitutional challenges. It’s effectively an internal passport, and could be challenged under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments.
The workaround: Federal regulations require airlines to ask for an ID, but don’t specify what happens if the passenger doesn’t show one.
Neat hack, eh? But still no explanation of how asking for an ID stops hijackers and suicide bombers. I think we’ve already been shown that it doesn’t.
