Or legal. I would not be surprised if many places in the US were unreachable on foot without breaking the law.

IMO any right must have an implied practicality part to it. The right to free speech is meaningless if it can only be exercised in designated zones in state capital cities. The right to travel [without ID] is meaningless if you can only exercise that right by increasing your costs (time and/or money) by a factor of 10.

Good discussion!
 

AFAIK, the Supreme Court has not, as yet, ruled on these issues, at least post-TSA. I think the 9th circuit was the highest court to rule and use implied consent to justify the security circus.

All right, here's an example, not yet mentioned in this thread that is widespread, and, IMHO, easily rises to the level of constitutional violation: GATE SCREENING.

Present yourself for screening at the airport check-point, pass that challenge, and then a few hundred feet further, be forced to go through a more intrusive screening all over again. If that isn't an unreasonable search, (see #4 on the amendment list) then the US Constitution words merely have the effect of those in the constitutions of 3rd world dictatorships, simple hollow chatter.

I don't think the TSA skirts the constitution so much as blithely ignores it, despite the efforts of the best Google citing counsel available :rolleyes:.
Perhaps the delay of their shenanigans reaching SCOTUS may be a blessing. We might actually get an objective ruling on how the US Constitution was intended to protect us from overeaching governmental paranoia.

If I remember correctly there are areas in Alaska which are only reachable by air.

Regardless, the conveyance argument is a strawman. The government is not allowed to restrict newspapers because television exists. Civil liberties are not dispensatory.

Well ... not exactly. It's well-established law, for example, that the Government may restrict speech, but only in narrowly defined ways, and where the Government has a compelling interest in doing so. (Insert usual "shouting 'FIRE' in a crowded theater strawman here.)

Now, whether or not TSA policies are construed narrowly enough to still permit freedom of travel while addressing the Government's compelling interest in maintaining public safety is ... well, a matter for reasonable people to debate.

If you can't (or won't) drive, it's just about foot travel left for you. Amtrak requires ID to get a ticket, and I believe the bus lines do that too. So without ID, you can no longer travel in the USA.

private contracts and government regulations are very different
 

Good Guy responded:
In one case, you have something involving a mutual agreement between two private parties. In the other, you have something forced upon you by your government. Those are very different circumstances to those of us who are focused on loss of liberty rather than on inconvenience.

The situations differ in significant ways. See above.

9/11 commissioners say their report was incomplete & flawed, that they were deceived
 

This borders on being off-topic, but I feel it's vitally important, so I'll bring it up.

We don't know what happened on 9/11. After much foot-dragging on the part of the Bush White House, some investigation was eventually performed, but it was largely a white-wash.

As reported by Peter Tatchel of The Guardian on September 12 2007, chair and vice chair of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, have since stated that they were "set up to fail" and were starved of funds to do a proper investigation. They also confirm that they were denied access to the truth and misled by senior officials in the Pentagon and the federal aviation authority; and that this obstruction and deception led them to contemplate slapping officials with criminal charges. Also note that despite the many public statements by 9/11 commissioners and staff members acknowledging they were repeatedly lied to, not a single person has ever been charged, tried, or even reprimanded, for lying to the 9/11 Commission.

The final report did not examine key evidence, and neglected serious anomalies in the various accounts of what happened. The commissioners admit their report was incomplete and flawed, and that many questions about the disaster remain unanswered. Despite these unanswered questions, the 9/11 Commission was closed down on August 21, 2004.

The crimes of 9/11 have played a significant part in the justification of radical changes to our domestic and foreign policy. We deserve a thorough, impartial investigation.

I think there is a difference. As Lynn points out in today's entry in the TSA Blog, if a federal screener discovers evidence of an unrelated crime, such as possession of illegal drugs, the federal screener is obligated by law to report it. It's not clear to me that a private security firm, employed only by the airline or the airport, would have the same requirements.

Hence, the complaint that the TSA checkpoint essentially becomes a dragnet for all sorts of search activities that wouldn't have had probable cause for a search otherwise.

Only to drive on our public roads. And the identification is less significant than the licensing. We're required to receive a license in order to operate motor vehicles on public roads. Similarly, we're required to receive a license in order to operate an airplane in our public airways.

No license is required to ride as a passenger in a motor vehicle or an airplane.

In this case, "required" and "near impossible" are at odds. Semantics aside, you have provided two examples of private agreements in which one party would reasonably expect to confirm the identity of the other party as part of the agreement. It's reasonable for a lender to demand identification of someone to whom it lends money as a condition of the agreement between it and that person. It's not reasonable for our government to monitor our movements or to require us to request and receive permission to move about our country.

Hoshman responded:
I disagree. The ID check also facilitates TSA's policy of restricting people's freedom of movement using blacklists. I believe this is TSA's only interest in determining the identities of passengers.

Can you please explain how the TSO at the disconnected, isolated podium is accomplishing this? Do all BP and ID checking TSO's have all the > 100,000 SSSS warranting names memorized so they can check the pax' usually home-printed boarding pass and potentially faked ID against that memorized list? I've noticed many of the TSO's seem distracted... maybe that's why. :rolleyes:

Or is your word "facilitates" meant to imply that eventually the hook up to the data trove will come, and the boarding passes and REAL ID's will be scanned to look for matches against that impossibly large list?

2 things:

Isn't that a potential Constitutional abuse?

Secondly - the ID check does not help TSA use blacklists, because there's no validation against a list at the checkpoint. Unless the screener has all the names memorized, as long as you have a valid looking ID with a picture that looks like you and a name that matches your valid looking boarding pass - you're fine. So it really doesn't help them accomplish that nefarious task.

TSA ID check mainly affects the honest people, not criminals
 

NY-FLA and Hoshman: Regardless of when they check a passenger's name for matches with those on their blacklists, DHS is using the identification of people at airport checkpoints to facilitate their restriction of people's freedom of movement using blacklists. This is reportedly done at some time prior to the issuance of a passenger's boarding pass.

That the use of fraudulent documentation allows people to circumvent the policy is one example of why the policy is so absurd. Note that TSA is working on improvements, including the inclusion of encrypted, bar-coded, data on boarding passes in order to make forgery more difficult.

TSA's identification policy mainly affects honest people. Paraphrasing the words of The Identity Project on their "What's Wrong with Showing ID" page:

No matter how sophisticated the security embedded into an I.D., a well-funded criminal will be able to falsify it. Honest people, however, go to Pro-Life rallies. Honest people go to Pro-Choice rallies, too. Honest people attend gun shows. Honest people protest the actions of the President of the United States. Honest people fly to political conventions. What if those with the power to put people on a 'no fly' list decided that they didn't like the reason for which you wanted to travel? The honest people wouldn't be going anywhere.

Very true.

However, you drive on roads, not through the nation's airspace. Any country on Earth will want to regulate what passes and doesn't pass in it's airspace. It's too vulnerable.

Military strategy 101 is control the airspace. There's a reason for that.

Gosh darn law dawg, I forgot to check my passengers' ID the last time I had a trip to make. Is that something I should have done according to your theory of military strategy 101?

Better come up with something better. And by the way I don't seem to need an ID on when I'm on a vessel either.

Did you file a flight plan? Are you registered with the FAA/TSA/whoever and certified? That would seem to satisfy any ID desire on behalf of the G. :)