halls120

Indeed. The fundamental premise behind the creation of TSA is itself a huge lie.

Boggie Dog

If I'm not mistaken a person on the No Fly List won't be able to get a boarding pass and would not be able to enter the screening area.

The rest of the things you list requires TSA stooping to using extralegal acts to prevent a person from gaining access to the sterile side of the airport. Not surprised!

catocony

Guys, while there are corner cases, the fundamental argument that flying is a privilege and not a right has been debunked. Yeah, you can run into a TSA clerk who will make your life difficult. Yeah, you could end up on the no-fly list. None of these things detract from the fact that everyone, by default, has the right to buy an airline ticket and get on a plane. You don't have to have a license, an administrative body does not have to approve the transaction.

cbn42

If they use their correct name when booking the ticket, then yes.

If they don't, then the ID checker is supposed to detect the mismatch between boarding pass and ID, and reject them because their real name hasn't been checked against the no-fly list.


We may have different ideas of what constitutes a right, but to me, a right is something that is absolute and cannot be infringed. If the government can have a list of people who are not allowed to fly, without any notice or effective recourse, then it's hard to call flying a right.

If the government prepared a list of people who are not allowed to publish books, or practice religion, or participate in protests, then those things would not be seen as rights either.

They do have to approve the transaction. The government has to approve your entry to the secure area. Just because they don't hand you a license stating that you have approval, doesn't mean that no approval is needed.

I suppose you could make an argument that flying is a right to the extent that you fly on aircraft that are not regulated by TSA, such as charters or very small commerical aircraft in certain airports. The government will have no way of knowing, or stopping you, if you take such a flight.

catocony

The US government does not approve whether you can take a commercial flight or not. Just because a few bad actors occasionally go way beyond their job duties to screw with someone doesn't mean that right doesn't exist. It's pretty rare that people are stopped by TSA and not allowed to proceed. As a percentage of people who go to the airport every day, it's next to nothing.

Again, if you guys want to hammer on the corner cases, feel free. But again, IT'S NOT A PRIVILEGE TO BE ABLE TO BOOK AN AIRLINE TICKET AND FLY IN THE UNITED STATES. Which is my freaking point. TSA violates that right for a microscopic percentage of people on a small number of occasions, but the violation doesn't mean the right is relinquished. It just means that more people should defend their rights, as I always do.

WillCAD

Your logic reminds me of Nixon: "If the president does it, then it's not illegal."

Just because TSA (or any other government agency or actor) violates your rights and gets away with it, doesn't mean they're not violating your rights. It just means that they haven't been challenged in court and held accountable for their illegal or un-Constitutional actions.

The no-fly list, as it stands today, is blatantly un-Constitutional. Just because it hasn't yet been struck down as such by the Supreme Court doesn't mean it's okie-dokey hunkie-dory. Being denied your right to travel without any notice or effective recourse, is a wholesale denial not only of the right to travel, but also of the right to due process, the right to a redress of grievances, and the presumption of innocence, and is an infringement on a whole set of other rights and freedoms that depend greatly on the right to travel.

Freedom of movement is a right. Many other rights and freedoms depend wholly or heavily on freedom of movement - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, etc. Without the right to go places, your rights to do things are either heavily infringed or completely denied. You can't assemble if you're not free to go to the assembly. The press isn't free to write about events if they are not free to go to the events. People whose faiths demand community gatherings cannot worship freely if they are not free to go to places of worship.

Travel by common carrier is a right. If the government can restrict you from being a passenger on a plane, that sets a dangerous precedent - they could also restrict you from being a passenger on a train, a bus, in a taxi or ride-share, or in a private vehicle. And once that's in place, you're effectively denied the right to travel anywhere you can't get to by foot.

Honestly, all of this is Freedom 101, and it's a cryin' shame that many Americans are so completely ignorant of how their rights and freedoms actually work, and how dependent they all are on one another, that they're willing to not only deny rights and freedoms to others, but to willingly surrender their own.

Collierkr

While you make some great points in your post, there are a few things I want to address.

First, it is your opinion that rights are being violated and parts of what the TSA does is unconstitutional. No court has ruled directly in these cases.

Second, with regard to "freedom of movement", while this is true in many aspects, it is not all encompassing. You do not have the right to move into restricted spaces or private property if posted. In this case the secure zone is a "restricted space" and thus subject to reasonable controls to ensure the safety and security of all within it or passing through it.

One thing is fore sure, we all have very differing views and interpretations of our rights and the law. While I believe that the TSA and how they oeprate could be improved, I am thankful for what they do and the security they provide. At least they haven't shot any innocent people in the back ;-)

petaluma1

That's because they are not armed, thankfully. Arm them and things could change really fast - they'd either be shooting passengers or each other.

TWA884

We realize that there is a fine line between arguing about travel and border security and political debates.

That being said, discussions of the United States Supreme Court's authority to interpret the Constitution belong in OMNI/PR (access to OMNI is limited to members who have been on FlyerTalk for 180 days and posted 180 contributive messages).

Several posts have been deleted.

Please feel free to start a new thread in OMNI/PR on that subject.

TWA884
Travel Safety/Security co-moderator

84fiero

Pick any right and there are permissible exceptions or limitations to it (the classic "can't falsely shout 'fire' in a crowded theater," exception to the right to free speech, for example) - doesn't make it any less of a right.

JamesBigglesworth

That's ..... a very odd way of looking at things.


You're right: no right is unilateral or, as you put it, "all encompassing". All rights carry responsibilities and obligations, and such things are inherently a restriction of one sort or another on an otherwise unfettered right. But that point is trivially true in the context of discussion here: we all know and understand it.


TSA does nothing positive for security or the US. They endanger the travelling public with their practices, policies, and actions. As for shooting people in the back (or at all) that is simple function of the lack of guns among TSA. They can't be trusted with guns. Moreover, TSA is simply one part of the cancer that is DHS. Just like the FAM programme is....

As for the law, I know for a fact that there is US law about air travel that states it is a *right*. It's been discussed here before and the law quoted. If I could find it I'd re-quote it, but alas, my FTgoogle-fu skills are not up to making the search function here cough it up.

TWA884

I found three threads.

cbn42

They aren't violating any legal rights until a court rules that those rights exist. Only a court can rule on this, the rest of us can have opinions on rights but our opinions are legally irrelevant. Until a court rules that there is a right, the government cannot violate that right.

I'm referring to legal rights here, not moral or human rights, which are beyond the scope of this discussion.

I agree with your opinions. But once again, until a court agrees, this is just the opinion of random people on the internet. It may be crystal clear in your mind, but that means nothing from a legal perspective.

You are confusing the right to do something with the consequences of doing it.

If you falsely yell fire in a crowded theater, you aren't breaking any law. There is no law saying you can't falsely shout 'fire' in a crowded theater, nor do you need any government authorization to do so. However, if your action has consequences for others, you may be responsible for those consequences.

Contrast this to flying, where the government can stop you from performing the action in the first place.

A right is something that you cannot be stopped from doing, and having a right does not immunize you from the consequences of exercising it.

All of those threads refer to 49 U.S.C. 40103(a)(2), which is a law concerning access for the disabled. So if you use it to try and establish a general right to fly, you are completely pulling it out of context.

But let's ignore the context for a second. It says "right of transit through the navigable airspace". That right, read literally, could be fulfilled by allowing you to fly your own plane through the navigable airspace. It does not say that this right has to be exercised on a commercial carrier.

ethernal

The few rulings on this have been generally unfavorable to the US government - and unsurprisingly so. For US citizens, the no fly list is clearly unconstitutional. You are right that it is an opinion, but it would be extremely difficult for the Supreme Court to contort a ruling that maintains the core of the no fly list. An active case is still pending appeal in the ninth circuit - and the US government's primary tactic has been trying to make it difficult for the court to rule by hiding evidence under national security exceptions or by taking people off the list once they file a lawsuit.

The entire no fly list is a farce to the rule of law. It's basically secretive bureaucrats making decisions to put people on a list that takes away a basic right (freedom of movement) based on information that they refuse to disclose to people. Imagine this in another context - imagine being on a secret list and told when you went to get a driver's license (which, while still a right, closer to being a privilege than a right) that you couldn't get one despite having no criminal record or sentence against you. This is the same, except even worse!

ethernal

That law is irrelevant - at least outside of the context that it establishes clear rights for commercial air travel to exist. The fundamental right I have is that I should be able to freely contract with a private company to arrange transportation (assuming that both I and that company are complying with the rules and regulations that apply to all equally to all people and market participants).

The government is interfering with my right to freely contract and freely associate with airlines - this is irrespective of whether traveling in and of itself is a "right" (even though all interpretations to date have led to freedom of movement is a right - even if it requires following regulations to make that movement safe and efficient).

It is no different than if a government told my local supermarket that I should not be allowed to shop there (with force of law) with no justifiable cause.