Let's assume I have no drivers license; that takes away the "road". Amtrak will NOT sell you a ticket without showing ID, so "train" is out. There is no boat service between, say, Salt Lake City and Boston that I know of, so "boat" is out. What's left is "bus" and checking the Greyhound's website, it looks like if you pay cash, you can get a ticket without ID, but it would be interesting to know for sure.

I have yet to see the truth here Halls, at least what you may believe is truth. But I honestly look forward to your attempt. Give it a shot sir, lets converse on the subject.

LOL! A bit of perspective for you sir. ALL new laws operate under this condition, at least until such time as they are vetted by a court because of action taken by a citizen. So, while I can understand your statement, its not the earth (or TSA) shattering conclusion that you assume.

More drivel IMO. I prefer facts, so please bring some next time.

And this is exactly the type of challenge I spoke of above. Until this happens, the laws operate under the assumption that they are constitutional.

ROFL. �strewardship of our civil liberties� (sic). Get real. I am not charged with the stewardship of anything but the safety of those who pass through our checkpoint. YOU are the steward of your own civil liberties, and if you don�t do a good job then you get what you deserve.

Once you step over the edge into needing papers to fly, what keeps us from slipping down the slope into the rest of that et cetera? I.e., your constitutional right to travel isn't infringed as long as you crawl.

The same way many travel in less fortunate countries, the number 11 bus (the two appendages below the waist). Slower? Yes, but still doable.

Only as a driver, not as a passenger. I'm sure you could hire someone to drive you to where you wanted to go. (Yes, it'd be prohibitively expensive, but still possible.)

Sorry, but while you are right, you are also completely wrong on this point. Sure, you can indeed operate waiting for a court to tell you when you've crossed the line in how you carry out your statutory duties. However, when it comes to making sure that you are operating within the letter AND the spirit of the law, you can indeed adopt internal policy to ensure that your interepretation of your own law is conservative, not expansive.

This kind of internal analysis goes on frequently in Departments and Agencies that are well-managed. Then, of course, there is DHS.....

Gee, sorry that I don't have internal transcripts of interagency meetings. I'll see what I can do about that.

The difference is, of course, is that DOJ actually submits proposed law to a strict internal review, whereas your Department doesn't. For example, I'm currently reviewing a DHS POS that was never even submitted to their own lawyers for review. Imagine their surprise when I sent them a copy of a document they had never seen.

LOL, when all else fails, become the spelling police. Good for you Ron. I see you've really accomplished something in life!

TSO Ron, Please tell me how I may travel intersland in Hawaii other than flying.

I'm not Ron, but in light of the two answers to my post above (walk or take a cab across country) you can always by a little boat and row

At great risk to shattering a fairly quiet Friday afternoon, I will try to clarify:

Most new laws, back when they are bills in Congress, receive substantial legal review from lawyers working for congressional staffs and from the DOJ when requested by Congress. The REAL issue (generally) is not the law itself -- it's the implementing federal regulations (i.e.: from the CFRs down to the sacred TSA SSI SOPs) that receive varying degrees, including none, of judicial review. There was very little judicial review of the CFRs that the TSA uses to conduct its operations.

We often speak fondly of the TSA General Counsel. She is Francine Kerner, known in some circles as Francine the Goolging Attorney. Read some of her legal opinions of TSA practices and procedures on the Propaganda Village. I've never taken a law course (except for the International Law of Armed Conflict in War College), but I find Francine's legal justifications simply mind-boggling. Do a search (yes, a Google search!) of Francine Kerner and you will learn about some other highlights of her professional legal career.

I participate in yearly national level "command post" exercises involving various elements of DHS. A certain component of DHS was in charge of developing the scenario for the exercises. The three in which I played were utterly ridiculous. In each event, the exercises combine terrorism with some sort of natural disaster. In last year's exercise, the natural disaster was so poorly scripted that it could not possibly have happened on Planet Earth in the location and at the time during the year in which the script called for it to happen. Assuming that it had happened, the DHS was more concerned with setting up roadblocks looking for terrorists coming INTO the affected area rather than ensuring there was adequate evacuation ability for the affected region's citizens. That's all I can say because most of this is way beyond SSI.

For every reasonable national emergency scenario short of a strategic nuclear lay-down, relief and recovery planning for the natural disaster is orders of magnitude greater than for a terrorism situation. But, the only thing the DHS ever worries about is terrorism. They have to keep inventing threats or they won't sustain their budget.

Halls -- It sounds like we have similar experiences with DHS. In addition to my exercise experiences, my former boss was hired into a management position in the Directorate of Science and Technology a few years ago. He lasted less than a year.

A couple of points: If you and your colleagues cared as much about stewardship of civil liberties half as much as you care about finding contraband cash, we wouldn't be having this conversation

Point #2: The FAA inspectors and the skill of the flight and maintenance crews provide stewardship of our "safety."

I'd like to engage in a small amount of nitpicking here.

In actual fact the government does not deny a person the ability to ride in a plane without ID. If a passenger shows up and claims to have lost his ID he will be allowed to ride, after other attempts to verify his identity and the possibility of additional screening.

The government will only deny a passenger the ability to ride in a plane if he refuses to present an ID.

I could pack my identification in my checked baggage, show up at the ID station and claim I lost it and still fly. If I just showed up and refused to present ID I would not be allowed to fly. The only difference would be that in the second case I would be contesting TSA's authority to require me to present an ID.

This may seem to be a small difference, but it only serves to undercut any claim that the ID requirement has anything to do with security and has everything to do with exerting government control.

That day he was sworn in when TSORon swore to "protect and defend the constitution of the United States"? He was just kidding.

I'm wondering if any TSA employees on this thread can clear up some confusion for me.

I travel by air roughly every other week and my experience is usually something like this:
1. I approach the ID checker station and hand over my BP and passport.
2. The document checker looks at both.
3. The document checker scribbles on my BP.
4. The document checker hands both back to me.
5. I proceed to the screening lanes.

Where in the above is the step "The document checker conducts a watch list matching operation to ensure I'm not on a watch list"?

If TSA wants to compare my ID to a watch list it would seem that there is some support for that as quoted above. However; if TSA wants my ID for a charade, that is a different thing entirely.

I'm not a TSA employee, but I can give the neutral answer you're seeking ...

Your airline compares your name against the watch list, and will only issue your boarding pass if it's not on a watch list. (Or if it's on the "selectee" list, you can get a SSSS pass, but only if you pick it up at the airport.)

So, assuming that your boarding pass is genuine, when the document checker validates your ID and compares it against the boarding pass, which has itself been checked against the watch lists, the document checker is in effect checking your ID against the watch list.

The flaw in the above argument, of course, is that the document checker cannot determine with certainty that your boarding pass is genuine. Sure, there's at least a cursory examination to make sure that the boarding pass doesn't look like a crayon drawing, but it's not that hard to create something that looks an awful lot like a boarding pass. And until boarding passes are authenticated by the document checker, it's still relatively easy to circumvent the watch list.

Exactly my point. Since anyone with a modicum of smarts can create a fake boarding pass that is indistinguishable from the real thing, the whole ID check exercise is nothing but a charade.

TSA is assuming: 1) that the boarding pass has not been altered or "generated", and 2) that a ticket corresponding to the boarding pass was actually purchased, thus causing a watch match to actually happen, and 3) assuming a ticket was actually purchased, that the passenger's real name was used, and 4) that the passenger is presenting his actual, valid identification. This is the opposite of Kippy's "layers of security". A would-be terrorist only has to invalidate any one of those assumptions and he is home free.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't comment competently on the law; but it seems to me that, as a matter of fact, there is no "watch list matching" that is worthy or the name, happening at all.

Yes, you do; this has been covered thoroughly (cites and precedents) on this forum more than once. I'm not going to repeat or provide links as I'm sure you can use the Search as well as I can.

Bottom line, it is an encumbered right. Most of the arguments address (or should) whether the encumbrances are constitutional and/or reasonable.