polonius

Why do you think they are trying to keep the list secret? One of these days, a whistleblower will make it public and they'll get sued, and I hope for big money.

CPT Trips

Better yet,
Duchy of Grand Fenwick
*Conch Republic
*British Hounduras

* Passports available

bzbdewd

All of them were in the country legally and came from these countries according to wikipedia. See anything missing off of the "list" ? This whole thing is a horrible farce.

dgolding

That is my concern as well. I don't give a rat's behind about national origin discrimination - this is about security. However, I do care about profiling in an idiotic way. North Korea? Bad guys, but the number of folks traveling on NK passports is miniscule and they are master forgers. The lack of the countries you've listed above, especially SA, makes this sort of list a joke.

NY-FLA

A passport is one method of showing an ID that doesn't provide address info. It more frustrates the ID checker because most pax provide a DL at these internal border control checkpoints, and to most of these so valiant defenders of the aviation frontier, different is not good.

I personally, have experienced TSA supervision on a specific rant, (driven primarily by my lack of respect for their "authoritie") looking for an address, the need for which was included in the threat "you're going to get a letter", presumably from one of the kangaroo courts they are so fond of using to cow people into submission.

The overreaching fools asking destination, purpose of trip, etc. are likely to do that based on info from the boarding pass, not from any ID they spent several minutes perusing.

NY-FLA

He may think he can ,but surely TSA supervision can set him right, right?

Is this guy a CBP school wash-out or something? An internal border control is so clearly and despicably unconstitutional, this undersupervised, intellect deficient a$$wipe notwithstanding. To paraphrase the icon of middle America, "Dear Abby"; MYOFB

Or just refuse to answer anything. All they need should be on the papers you present to them, (hopefully you used the appropriate amount of genuflection before you faced the tyranny of this particular clerk. Can't interpret it? not my problem. Need more info? Maintenant, je ne parle pas Anglais. Je suis tres desole. Quelle domage!

Dovster

Psychocadet, what the heck do you do when you are in Israel???

You know that you can not board an international flight at TLV without showing your Israeli passport. To get on a domestic Israeli flight you have to show picture ID with your Israeli national identification number on it.

Even for the shortest flight within Israel (Rosh Pina - Tel Aviv) you are going to be asked all the standard security questions and if your answers don't satisfy them 100% you will be asked more until they are comfortable with you.

And yes, all foreign passports will get you more questioning than Israeli passports and some foreign passports (Egyptian or Jordanian come to mind) will result in even more questioning than European or American passports.

Despite all the moaning on this board about racist, tribalist, groupist, whateverist, profiling I actually think this is the best system. It makes a lot more sense to look for terrorists than it does to look for weapons.

NY-FLA

[QUOTE=Dovster;8611260


Despite all the moaning on this board about racist, tribalist, groupist, whateverist, profiling I actually think this is the best system. It makes a lot more sense to look for terrorists than it does to look for weapons.[/QUOTE]

Well, permit me another moan.
More sense for Israel? Possibly, I respect that you would probably know better than I. More sense for the US, a nation whose culture is steeped in a modicum of individual freedom and the right to unfettered travel? Probably not. The nexus between reviewing any of the myriad possible forms of ID here, against nothing of significance (no list, no database just a home printed piece of paper) resulting in effective identification of the terrorists is totally lost on me.

Dovster

Where did you ever get the idea that Americans have always been allowed the right to unfettered travel? They have not.

I don't know if this is still the case, but for many years California had agricultural inspection stations set up along its borders and every car entering the state was subject to examination to see if it contained any fruit or vegetables.

The federal government, for national security purposes, has also sharply curtailed the right to travel. During World War II, for example, long-distance travel was almost impossible for anyone who did not have a military priority.

Air transport was not very big in those days but there was no way you were going to get on a civilian flight without such a priority. (Yes, you could make your reservation but the odds were very big that some soldier, sailor, or government civilian employee would bump you off of your flight.)

You had a somewhat better chance of travelling on a train but there, too, you could be taken off if someone with a defense priority needed your seat.

You couldn't even travel any great distance in your own car. No, it was not illegal, but gas rationing made it impossible.

NY-FLA

Now I understand the "moaning" perception.

If you say so My "idea" that the right to unfetterred travel exists in the U.S. and other, if not all, Western democracies comes from the Magna Carta, and the US Constitution. A quick Wikipedia search gives: "The Privileges and Immunities Clause of the United States Constitution says, "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States." In the case of Paul v. Virginia, 75 U.S. 168 (1868), the U.S. Supreme Court said that this clause implies a "right of free ingress into other States, and egress from them."
Or how about SCOTUS justice William O. Douglas "The right to travel is a part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. . . . Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, . . . may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values.

And look who shows up next:
"The U.S. Supreme Court also dealt with the right to travel in the case of Saenz v. Roe, 526 U.S. 489 (1999). In that case, Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, held that the United States Constitution protected three separate aspects of the right to travel among the states: the right to enter one state and leave another, the right to be treated as a welcome visitor rather than a hostile stranger (protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause in Article IV, § 2), and for those who become permanent residents of a state, the right to be treated equally to native born citizens (this is protected by the 14th Amendment Citizenship Clause).

The issue of freedom of movement has received new attention in the United States as of 2004; in particular, concerning the methods and internal practices of the Transportation Security Administration"



I'll grant you that. The right to travel has not been extended to fruits and vegetables.

GUWonder

We are talking about the DHS/TSA in the US here. DHS/TSA can't even do close to a great job looking for weapons and DHS/TSA struggles even more with explosives. Until they get the basics down, it makes no sense to expand the scope of their responsibilities.

Dovster

And were civilians during World War II fruits and vegetables?

The citations you provided concerned entry/egress to states -- not to the ability to actually make the trip.

As I showed you, the government has historically put restrictions on transportation. Indeed, if I recall correctly, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the bridges and tunnels leading from Manhattan to New Jersey were closed -- and air travel throughout the United States was stopped.

MikeMpls

There weren't any airliners as we know them to fly on. The DC-4 and Constellation were under development before WWII but not completed until the war was underway. Only military versions (C-54 & C-69) were manufactured until the war ended. There were about a dozen Boeing 307 Stratoliners built before the war, and most or all were requisitioned by the military, as were the flying boats.

That left the civilian population with a few DC-3's, DC-2's, Boeing 247's and TriMotors, not that it mattered because most of the pilots were drafted or enlisted and the airlines themselves placed under contract with the military.

And good luck finding a seat on a train ... they were used to transport troops and supplies.

But you were still free to travel if you could beat your draft notice out of town.

GUWonder

.... and since they aren't good enough doing what they should be doing, their scope for doing things should be narrowed so they can focus on the basics. In other words, scrap ID checks for domestic travel -- it distracts them and ID is not security.

polonius

You are referring to a very short term exception to normally expected freedoms in time of war. America and any other place whose legal system is based on the Magna Carta does indeed have the guaranteed freedom of travel. Claiming that they do not on the basis of an exceptional, temporary circumstance is uninformed and misleading.