Police State

Not content to violate your 4th amendment rights and treat you as a suspected terrorist everytime you get on an airplane, the TSA is now asking the airlines to provide the passenger name records (PNR) of every passenger who flew in the US in June in order to make their “No Fly List” more robust. This comes on the heals of the determining that the TSA violated federal privacy law after 9/11 by having the airlines give them this exact same data in 2002. The really fun part about this is that the “No Fly List” has stopped exactly 0 terrorists from flying. However it has (probably illegally and certainly unconstitutionally) stopped hundreds or thousands of innocent US citizens from flying, including at least 2 US congressmen. I think Bruce Schneier says it best when he says ” Imagine a list of suspected terrorists so dangerous that we can’t ever let them fly, yet so innocent that we can’t arrest them – even under the draconian provisions of the Patriot Act.” That pretty much sums up the “No Fly List”. Government punishment of the innocent with no oversight and no appeal is at the very minimum unfair, and almost undoubtedly unconstitutional as well. Welcome to the police state brought to you by George Bush, John Ashcroft and the TSA.