So in other words it's as good as a law, but without any safeguards and consequently no value to the public.
If you'd like to create a society in which every enforceable rule must pass through multiple bodies for approval, feel free to try it.
Oh, of course he has no rights - they informed him of it. Well then, who could argue?
He was informed of the requirement, and of an alternate process which would not require him to present ID. The comment I was responding to apparently meant to imply that this was a law of which the public was unaware, and that violators would only be informed of what they had done after the fact.
And while I dislike the TSA and "post-9/11" "security" measures as much as the next person, I don't believe that enforcing a simple security measure equates to total loss of rights. But then...
Almost total corruption being used to enforce secret laws. Check.
Wild hyperbole. Check.
How does age-related restrictions on alcohol relate to ID requirements for flying?
I cannot purchase alcohol without presenting ID. I cannot fly without either presenting ID or going through a screening process.
Interestingly, both involve reasoning based on public safety, and in neither case is there a law passed by Congress which directly enacts the requirement.
>> So in other words it's as good as a law, but without any safeguards and consequently no value to the public.
> If you'd like to create a society in which every enforceable rule must pass through multiple bodies for approval, feel free to try it.
Actually, yes. You'd have to be crazy to suggest otherwise. Think of it, "Enforceable rule". Not just something in this circumstance, but a rule, and enforceable. That's exactly what oversight is for.
But I was talking about safeguards. Any rule is worthless without knowing when to stop applying it. Who's watching for it to go wrong? Nobody of course because it doesn't really exist.
>> Oh, of course he has no rights - they informed him of it. Well then, who could argue?
> He was informed of the requirement, and of an alternate process which would not require him to present ID. The comment I was responding to apparently meant to imply that this was a law of which the public was unaware, and that violators would only be informed of what they had done after the fact.
It is a requirement the public is (mostly) unaware of. And because it's unspoken policy instead of a law it'll likely stay that way.
> And while I dislike the TSA and "post-9/11" "security" measures as much as the next person, I don't believe that enforcing a simple security measure equates to total loss of rights. But then...
It's not a security measure because it doesn't help security at all. Enforcing useless rules is a loss of your rights.
>> Almost total corruption being used to enforce secret laws. Check.
> Wild hyperbole. Check.
Not at all. Using undisclosed governmental powers to secretly kill someone's business because they won't enact useless and counterproductive policies is a textbook example of systemic corruption.
>> How does age-related restrictions on alcohol relate to ID requirements for flying?
> I cannot purchase alcohol without presenting ID. I cannot fly without either presenting ID or going through a screening process.
Yes, that much is a given. Thanks.
But one is because minors have shown to have (even more) problems with booze and it's been proven to kill, etc. On the other hand showing ID is absolutely worthless for finding weapons, in practice and in theory.
> Interestingly, both involve reasoning based on public safety, and in neither case is there a law passed by Congress which directly enacts the requirement.
But in the case of alcohol there is a law. We aren't a society of just-take-the-hint and why-won't-you-read-between-the-lines, we're a society of laws.
Why are you so dead set on spinning this as business as usual? Who cares? It's broken.
I'm not "spinning" anything, simply posting some comments because there are a few points a lot of people are overlooking in their knee-jerk rush.
One is that the court case hinged on the claim that the policy was secret. The court's response was that the ID requirement was clearly posted for everyone to see, and that when Gilmore asked about it, he was told how he could fly without presenting ID. Legally, this is entirely correct.
Another is that secrets are not automatically the end of the world. Secret rules aren't even illegal, much less unconstitutional; if that were the case, many defense-related regulations, which do have the force of law, would have to go out the window, and effective national defense would be essentially impossible.
A third is a lurking suspicion that if we remove the bogeyman g-word ("government") from the picture, the stock responses on HN would be wildly different.
If instead we had a cabal of airline executives who'd formed a cartel of sufficient clout to quash all competition, and they agreed amongst themselves to implement contracts requiring all passengers to present ID but refused to make public the details of their agreement, I'm almost certain there would be people here loudly defending it. It would be a noble triumph of free-market capitalism. The passengers would obviously be negotiating away their "rights" through a free and fair exchange protected by the holy sanctity of contract. But of course, in that case it would just be a shadowy cabal of possibly unknown people who aren't bound by any rules anywhere (we must never interfere in the free market), rather than a cabal of publicly-identifiable people who are accountable to the Constitution and to elections.
Knee jerk reaction? I've been fighting the Patriot Act for 7 years and you're sitting here defending the practice of rushing legislation through the bodies that are meant to serve as a vetting process for the laws that allow the government to effectively (and illegally) suspend our Constitutional rights in the name of terrorism, which is bad enough if we didn't already know it was being abused.
I think you and wnight, in your haste to characterize ubernostrum as a secret law lover and prove him wrong, did a poor job of identifying what he's defending and what he's not defending.
He makes three distinct points and each are wholesale defenses of secrets, and the second two combine to ignore the fact that it's a government entity making the secrets and dismiss the lack of transparency as important, again, especially given the laws we're discussing. I don't know how I have possibly mischaracterized what's occurred here.
What am I missing here? They've boiled this down to completely trivial examples that ignore the gross violations in Constitutional rights via gagged court orders, NSLs, FISA warrants and courts, warrantless wiretapping, etc, etc. They're debating the need for having IDs to buy alcohol as a defense of secret government laws that are meant for protection.
This is the quint-essential "security vs liberty" and "governmental security through obscurity". It's old, I've been debating it for years. Frankly, it's intellectually weak.
You seem to be taking an absolutist position against secrecy. Personally, I'd argue that such a position is completely untenable if you want a country that survives its first conflict, but that's not really relevant.
What is relevant is the following:
* Moving the discussion away from "secrecy is always evil" and toward discussing specific instances.
* Acknowledging that a court ruling can be legally correct even if you personally would disagree with the results of that ruling.
* Learning to avoid reflex reactions and instead actually digging to see what happened and evaluating arguments.
For the record, to illustrate an example of mischaracterization, when he wrote "One is that the court case hinged on the claim that the policy was secret. The court's response was that the ID requirement was clearly posted for everyone to see...", I would not classify that paragraph as a "wholesale defense of secrets". But if that's how you see it, that's how you see it.
If you'd like to create a society in which every enforceable rule must pass through multiple bodies for approval, feel free to try it.
Oh, of course he has no rights - they informed him of it. Well then, who could argue?
He was informed of the requirement, and of an alternate process which would not require him to present ID. The comment I was responding to apparently meant to imply that this was a law of which the public was unaware, and that violators would only be informed of what they had done after the fact.
And while I dislike the TSA and "post-9/11" "security" measures as much as the next person, I don't believe that enforcing a simple security measure equates to total loss of rights. But then...
Almost total corruption being used to enforce secret laws. Check.
Wild hyperbole. Check.
How does age-related restrictions on alcohol relate to ID requirements for flying?
I cannot purchase alcohol without presenting ID. I cannot fly without either presenting ID or going through a screening process.
Interestingly, both involve reasoning based on public safety, and in neither case is there a law passed by Congress which directly enacts the requirement.