Fighting Against the GWOT
Keith_Indy on Jan 09 2007 at 5:47 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Keith's Page
Richard Miniter has a good point with regards to a House member who wants to hold hearings regarding the checking of arriving overseas airline passengers against government check lists.
Rep. Thompson does not like the fact that it checks both U.S. citizens and visiting foreigners and is concerned that the database of names might be shared with other law enforcement agencies. Finally, he considers the screening system a “warrantless search.â€
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The privacy argument is a laugh; the information comes directly from the passengers, who freely give it to their airlines and travel agents when they buy a ticket. Then they show that ticket and boarding to several people before they go through the metal detector and sometimes after as well. So where are all of these people who are buying anonymous tickets? Or who think they are? Why it perfectly okay to share one’s name and address with an airline, travel agent and credit card outfit, but a Orwellian nightmare for the airline to pass on the information to the government? Oh wait, didn’t you, monsieur, give that very same information to the U.S. government yourself, when you applied for a visa? So why it is a terrible rights violation for the U.S. government to receive something indirectly (from the airlines) that it has already received directly (from you)?
If it is a violation of privacy for airlines to submit information to the government, then wouldn’t it also be a violation of privacy for employers to provide any information to the government.
Then how would the government know how much income we make, or how much tax they should take.
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I think I like where this argument is going…
Before I crawled in a deep dark hole for a few weeks of minimal posting and debilitating illness I have been pounding this point over and over. This selective desire for privacy when it comes to things like this and the huge desire to give massive amounts of information to government agencies as a routine matter of running the state shows a huge disconnect.
I am for a large reinvigoration of our right to deprive the government of information about us. measures such as these where their is a demonstrable threat to our country comes nowhere near the top of my list. How about information on medical procedures or treatments where the primary victim is myself? How about the 1040, employment information and numerous other points where the government compels us to turn over what in a criminal case would require a warrant.
What is the difference? While one set merely represent an attempt to protect us from terrorists, the other represents the ability of those who wish to intervene and direct the state and our society. Without such information the modern welfare and regulatory state cannot exist in its present form. The first set is theoretically a bipartisan rationale for giving up our privacy (but of course is fought in partisan manner anyway) the second set and its implications for privacy are denied because it is quite ideological and political in its implications. Therefore if I ask for your social security number in regards to your employment I am violating your “economic liberties” while if I ask for your SS# for National Security reasons I am violating a “civil liberty” which is for some reason more valuable. Yet in each instance I am giving up the same information and for the express purpose of tracking me.
The only difference I can see is that protecting me from terrorists is undoubtedly a core state function regardless of ideology. These may not be the right way to do it, but if in any area we should be required to give up privacy it would seem National Security would be the most compelling case. What kind of fat is in my food or whether I have breast implants or any of thousands of other areas seem far more a matter of a particular view of the states role and should therefore be given more scrutiny, not less. Instead we do just the opposite.
To play devil’s advocate here, I think there is a difference in the way the information is gathered and used between the airlines/credit card companies and the government. Freely giving your personal information to the private businesses in exchange for specific service is one thing. You have a cause of action against those businesses if they do something with your information that you have not agreed to.
But having the government coerce those companies into turning over the info, and then doing who-knows-what with it, is a different animal altogether. You have no recourse in that situation, and it’s been done against your free will (if such in fact exists).
Michael,
I agree, though that doesn’t address this:
nor alter Keith’s point:
Lance:
Glad to see you back among the land of the living ;^)
I think what I posited did answer that question. The difference is giving something in a free exchange and in having something taken from you.
My comment did not address this point, however. I think the distinction here is subtler. I’ll address later when I have more time.
Actually I am barely alive. I have spent most of the last two days in bed. I was so out of it yesterday that my wife came and had to ask if I was going to watch OSU vs. Florida. I had forgotten all about it. I actually went to sleep at halftime, though it seems Ohio State did as well.
Anyway, the key word is bolded:
The government in the case covered in this quote has already been given the information directly (in this case merely the name of the traveler to be checked against a database.)I can see a difference but I can’t see it as important. Now, I haven’t given that information, so I can say your distinction does apply to me but not to monsieur in the example.
Looking forward to it, but I think there are lots of distinctions. The question is why we acknowledge these distinctions if it suits us but not when it doesn’t? Think of all the things we have to submit to or provide for our government which would lead to our imprisonment if we refused to cooperate, and how much of that requires no warrant or that the very act of refusing to provide or submit is cause for a warrant to be issued. That is the heart of the matter.