Flying commercial can be a terrible hassle these days, but not
for Steven Washburn. The people in charge of airport security have
decided to spare him all the inconveniences. No taking off his
shoes and belt, no putting his liquids in a plastic bag, no
enduring a naked body scan. Oh, and one more thing: no flying.
Washburn is on the government's no-fly list. He doesn't know
why, and the government won't tell him. Nor will it take him off.
He's much like Franz Kafka's Gregor Samsa, who wakes up to find he
has turned into a bug. There is no accounting for it and no escape.
He may go to the grave without ever flying again — or learning the
reason.
He's just one of the many people tabbed as potential terrorists
who must be kept off the nation's airliners, including, at one
point, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. An estimated 21,000 people now
populate the no-fly list.
That number alone should raise serious questions about its
accuracy. Since Sept. 11, 2001, there is no known instance of the
Transportation Security Administration catching a terrorist trying
to board a plane.
Remember all those sleeper cells of al-Qaida operatives, waiting
for the right moment to strike? They never turned up either. Since
9/11, the number of terrorist attacks in the United States amounts
to 127. If you believe there are 21,000 fanatics itching to blow up
a regional jet, I have some Mitt Romney inauguration tickets to
sell you.
But none of this is any comfort if you're one of the
unfortunates who are not free to move about the country — ;or
out of it. So the American Civil Liberties Union has gone to court
on behalf of 13 people (including four military veterans) who had
flown for years only to show up at the airport and find themselves
persona non grata. Each petitioned the Department of Homeland
Security to be removed from the no-fly list — and each was rebuffed
without explanation.
The ACLU is not dreaming big here. It doesn't ask that the
government take these individuals off the list. It doesn't insist
that they be exempt from monitoring. The only request is that they
be told why they are deemed so dangerous and have the chance to
show why they really aren't.
Being on the no-fly list is not a trivial matter. It prevents
Washburn from seeing his wife, a Spanish citizen who lives in
Ireland. Some people never fly. But for anyone who does so even
occasionally, it is a serious burden to be told: You can drive, or
you can stay home.
The "right to travel" is not just a pleasant notion; it's a
constitutional guarantee. Although it's not mentioned in the text,
the Supreme Court has long treated it as thunderously obvious. In
1900, it said that "the right to remove from one place to another
according to inclination is an attribute of personal liberty"
firmly "secured by the Fourteenth Amendment and by other provisions
of the Constitution."
The document also guarantees the right of due process, which
those on the no-fly list can only dream about. The decision is made
in secret by unseen officials who provide no reasons, entertain no
disputes and allow no independent review. You could get a fairer
hearing from a crowd toting tar and feathers.
This is only one of the defects in the system. A bigger one is
why the list is needed at all. Since the 9/11 hijackings, various
steps have been taken to prevent a repetition —reinforcing cockpit
doors, putting thousands of armed marshals on flights, screening
liquids and patting down travelers. Passengers, meanwhile, will no
longer sit quietly if someone becomes a problem.
The Transportation Security Administration feels so confident
about its ability to defuse genuine risks that it's decided to
allow small knives on board aircraft. But if the government can
keep troublemakers from employing the weapons they need, the
troublemakers will have only pitifully ineffectual options
— ;which means they aren't likely to fly in the first
place.
The nice thing about these other security measures is that they
work not only against anyone who is deemed dangerous but also
anyone who is not. And they impede the guilty without inflicting
serious harm on the innocent.
Maybe the people who compile the no-fly list can say the same
thing. But I don't really want to take their word for it. If Ted
Kennedy were around, he wouldn't either. … Read More
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