Challenge to Federal Government's Secret Law Requiring Airline Passengers to Show ID is Heading to the U.S. Supreme Court—A Blog on the Case is Announced
Posted by Thomas R. Burke
John Gilmore is taking a fascinating secrecy case to the United States Supreme Court. Gilmore, who sued the federal government several years ago to challenge what remains secret today—the requirement that passengers show ID before they travel on airplanes and other forms of transportation in America.
Although Gilmore lost his case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals he has not given up. Gilmore plans to file a cert. petition in the United States Supreme Court and has recently launched a blog that will track the petition's progress. Wired [The Great No-ID Airport Challenge] recently wrote about Gilmore's case and the confusion that exists about whether passengers can avoid showing ID at airports if they are willing to submit to a more extensive search—an alternative expressly recognized by the Ninth Circuit in its decision.
Although it is certainly no secret to airline passengers who travel in the United States—particularly after September 11th—that they will be asked to show government ID before they travel, Gilmore's case is drawing national attention for pointing out that this "requirement" is a government secret! And Gilmore's absolutely right about this key point—the public has no ability to read this supposed "requirement" because the federal government insists that the "requirement" is "sensitive security information" that cannot be publicly revealed. During oral argument in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the attorney for the government had to delicately dance around this issue.
Given the public's uproar over the federal government's online and telephone surveillance activities, Gilmore's focus on this secret law issue could not come at a more interesting time in this nation's history.