Not so Friendly Skies

As I mentioned last week in Super Fly, our family vacation this year is in Atlanta, Georgia. So under the new world order, I had the pleasure of surrendering all rights to privacy in order to fly here. What a joy. And, of course, right before our trip I see this Common Dreams article, Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota, to add to my anxiety about having to deal with airport security:

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal. These unknowing passengers who are doing nothing wrong are landing in a secret government document called a Surveillance Detection Report, or SDR. Air marshals told 7NEWS that managers in Las Vegas created and continue to maintain this potentially dangerous quota system.

Edward Hasbrouck's travel blog, The Practical Nomad, also has the latest update (see above post for other references to his story) about his airport security ordeal at Dulles, at Why was I detained by police at Dulles Airport? His efforts to probe FBI records for the basis for detaining him at Dulles airport have -- surprise, surprise -- shown that no reason exists.

Tags: Civil Liberties, TSA, Homeland Security