Posted on 03/03/2005 12:23:51 PM PST by tomball
SAN FRANCISCO - John Gilmore's splendid isolation began July 4, 2002, when, with defiance aforethought, he strolled to the Southwest Airlines counter at Oakland Airport and presented his ticket. The gate agent asked for his ID. Gilmore asked her why. It is the law, she said. Gilmore asked to see the law. Nobody could produce a copy. To date, nobody has. The regulation that mandates ID at airports is "Sensitive Security Information." The law, as it turns out, is unavailable for inspection. What started out as a weekend trip to Washington became a crawl through the courts in search of an answer to Gilmore's question: Why? In post 9/11 America, asking "Why?" when someone from an airline asks for identification can start some interesting arguments. Gilmore, who learned to argue on the debate team in his hometown of Bradford, Pa., has started an argument that, should it reach its intended target, the U.S. Supreme Court, would turn the rules of national security on end, reach deep into the tug-of-war between private rights and public safety, and play havoc with the Department of Homeland Security. At the heart of Gilmore's stubbornness is the worry about the thin line between safety and tyranny. "Are they just basically saying we just can't travel without identity papers? If that's true, then I'd rather see us go through a real debate that says we want to introduce required identity papers in our society rather than trying to legislate it through the back door through regulations that say there's not any other way to get around," Gilmore said. "Basically what they want is a show of obedience." As happens to the disobedient, Gilmore is grounded. He is rich - he estimates his net worth at $30 million - and cannot fly inside the United States. Nor can he ride Amtrak, rent a room at most major hotels, or easily clear security in the courthouses where his case, Gilmore v. Ashcroft, is to be heard. In a time when more and more people and places demand some form of government-issued identification, John Gilmore offers only his 49-year-old face: a study in stringy hair, high forehead, wire-rimmed glasses, Ho Chi Minh beard and the contrariness for which the dot.com culture is renowned. "I think of myself as being under regional arrest," he said. Even with $30 million in the bank, regional arrest can be hard. He takes the bus to and from events at which he is applauded by less well-heeled computer techies who flew in from around the country after showing a boarding pass and one form of government-issued photo ID and arrived in rental cars that required a valid driver's license and one major credit card. He was employee No. 5 at Sun Microsystems, which made Unix, the free software of the Web, the world standard. He japed the government by cracking its premier security code. He campaigned to keep the software that runs the Internet free of charge. After he left Sun, Gilmore started his own firm, sold it for more money than he seems to have bothered to count and has since devoted his time to giving it away to favored causes: drug law reform, a campaign to standardize computer voting machines and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, something of an ACLU for the Information Age. To some, Gilmore's argument is redolent of the conspiracy theories from the black helicopter crowd. "That's the problem. How it sounds," Gilmore said. He waved his hands like some Cassandra: "They have all these secret laws! The UFOs are coming! They have guards at every airport!" Yes, he said, there is a certain odd flavor to the notion that someone shouldn't have to show ID to board a plane, but with magnetometers at the gates, guards with security wands, fortified cockpit doors and sky marshals abounding, Gilmore is asking just how much citizens are giving up when they hand their driver's licenses to a third party, in this case an airline, where it is put into a database they cannot see, to meet a law that, as it turns out, they are not allowed to read. Gilmore will show ID for an international flight because he doesn't expect to set the rules for other nations. "I will show a passport to travel internationally. I'm not willing to show a passport to travel in my own country," Gilmore said. "I used to laugh at countries that had internal passports. And it's happened here and people don't even seem to know about it." Rosa Parks did not ride that bus in Montgomery by accident. Several strategy meetings preceded the famous ride in which the founding mother of the civil rights movement boarded a bus and declined to sit in the back. Gilmore's famous visit to two airline ticket counters in the Bay Area was charted out. He checked in with his lawyer. He kept notes. He booked a flight from Oakland, with its slightly cheaper fares, to Washington, D.C., where he planned to drop in on the offices of his member of Congress, Nancy Pelosi, to convey his growing concern about the amount of data the government is gathering from and about its citizens. His reason for travel, he would later say, was "to petition the government for redress." That added First Amendment issues to a constitutional exercise that would also turn on the amendments against unreasonable search and seizure and the right to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances. Everything went pretty much according to expectations. That is to say, everything went to hell in a hurry. As Gilmore tells it, he arrived at the gate two hours early, a paper ticket purchased through a travel agent in his hand. A Southwest agent asked for his ID. Gilmore, in turn, asked her if the ID requirement was an airline rule or a government rule. She didn't seem to know. Gilmore argued that if nobody could show him the law, he wasn't showing them an ID. They reached a strange agreement for an argument about personal privacy: In lieu of showing ID, Gilmore would consent to an extra-close search, putting up with a pat-down in order to keep his personal identity to himself. He was wanded, patted down and sent along. As Gilmore headed up the boarding ramp a security guard yanked him from line. According to court papers, a security agent named Reggie Wauls informed Gilmore he would not be flying that day. "He said, 'I didn't let you fly because you said you had an ID and wouldn't show it,' " Gilmore said. "I asked, 'Does that mean if I'd left it at home I'd be on the plane?' He said, 'I didn't say that.' " The Gilmore case is, if anything, about things unsaid. Gilmore - and millions of other people - are daily instructed to produce some manner of ID: a driver's license, a Social Security number, a phone number, date of birth. When Gilmore asked to see the rules explaining why his photo ID is necessary for airline security, his request was denied. The regulation under which the Transportation Safety Administration, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, instructs the airlines to collect such identification is classified as "Sensitive Security Information." That, says Gilmore's lawyer, Jim Harrison, is the enigma of the case: "It's about the ability of the citizens of this country to be able to move about the country, to move about freely, without being subject to laws they can't see."
According to his principles, he can commute between two US cities by taking two international flights. Might be competitive with the bus in terms of time.
I have mixed feelings about this. But I can tell you one thing, I know John Gilmore personally and he is an insufferable ass.
Nope. Unix is not free. Linux is. Sort of. Most of the time, unless you buy it from RedHat.
There's a lot wrong with that sentence.
But now this is the fedgov and the lowest level and they are as incompetent as at the highest level and failure to close the borders, but restrict travel in the us.
I don't fly so Mr gilmores problem doesn't affect me in that way.
But his other problems do.
Huh? I think they are confused.
Also, an airline doesn't need a LAW to require an ID.
9/11 just whipped over his pointy little head.
Wrong again, AT&T developed Unix and then let it go to Sun.
I'm sure he is. I don't know him but I know or have met several of his colleagues at Sun.
However, I am grateful to him for highlighting the Kafkaesque absurdity of this situation.
If it were THAT important to security that everyone identify themselves involuntarily before boarding a plane, surly it is important enough to make it a plain, understandable, constitutional law.
But hey, we don't have an unconstitutional "standing army" either, do we?
If it's that important, show him the law.
Can you justify the secrecy over this?
If my net worth was $30 million, I wouldn't fly commercial anyway. I'd charter a flight or buy my own aircraft.
While it is tempting to find some validity in his argument, what he proposes would allow anyone to purchase lots of tickets and hand them out to terrorists or other undesirables (like Ted Kennedy) and allow them free passage.
Then they shouldn't say "It's the law."
I think Gilmore's point is that there are a number of absurdities in our government, where it acts baldly against the Constitution or against laws, but nobody questions the matter.
If it is time to junk our Constitution, well, so be it. But we ought to have an open debate, not just a creeping police state and the bright shining lie of "freedom."
But now this is the fedgov and the lowest level and they are as incompetent as at the highest level and failure to close the borders, but restrict travel in the us.
It isn't that they don't have a copy of the relevant law that is at issue, but rather the refusal to provide the law (or even a citation thereto), because the law (or regulation) itself is considered "Sensitive Security Information." Mr. Gilmore seems like a self-important ass, but the approach of the TSA is pretty Kafakesque.
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