John Gilmore's crusade v internal passports

The Post Gazette has a profile of John Gilmore's crusade against the US government and the airlines requirement to show a government approved form of ID before being allowed to board an internal flight.

"John Gilmore's splendid isolation began July 4, 2002, when, with defiance aforethought, he strolled to the Southwest Airlines counter at Oakland Airport and presented his ticket.

The gate agent asked for his ID.

Gilmore asked her why.

It is the law, she said.

Gilmore asked to see the law.

Nobody could produce a copy. To date, nobody has. The regulation that mandates ID at airports is "Sensitive Security Information." The law, as it turns out, is unavailable for inspection.

What started out as a weekend trip to Washington became a crawl through the courts in search of an answer to Gilmore's question: Why...

At the heart of Gilmore's stubbornness is the worry about the thin line between safety and tyranny.

"Are they just basically saying we just can't travel without identity papers? If that's true, then I'd rather see us go through a real debate that says we want to introduce required identity papers in our society rather than trying to legislate it through the back door through regulations that say there's not any other way to get around," Gilmore said. "

Gilmore's lawyer, Jim Harrison, describes the case:

"It's about the ability of the citizens of this country to be able to move about the country, to move about freely, without being subject to laws they can't see."

Gilmore can be abraisive and no doubt his adversaries find him difficult but he's making an important stand on the importance of transparency to free societies.

Meanwhile on this side of the pond, the UK government are today rushing through legislation to respond to their comprehensive defeat in the House of Lords case before Christmas, which extends the Home Secretary's powers to detain terrorist suspects without trial to UK citizens. The ability to move about freely without being subject to charges they can't see? That's sounds familiar. Once thing is certain, though. Laws rushed through without due consideration always have unintended consequences. Some of these have already been pointed out by critics of the proposals and dismissed by the government. For the rest, we'll just have to wait and see and deal with the consequences. The government would be far better off if they were to pump the billions of pounds they propose investing in a national ID card into better trained and better resourced security, customs, policing and intelligence personnel. But there's no Daily Mail "Government move rapidly to avert terror threat" headlines in that.