Are you gay? No international travel for you!
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Categories: Equality / Civil Rights, Civil Liberties / Privacy, Foreign Policy & Security
Categories: Equality / Civil Rights, Civil Liberties / Privacy, Foreign Policy & Security
The Bush Administration recently demanded that air carriers collect broad personal information, including a traveler's sexual orientation, by threatening to turn planes away from Europe, and the European Union caved in.
That's right. Micheal Chertoff just said that the 9/11 hijackers were gay. Or at least that if we had known conclusively if they were gay or not, we would have been able to prevent 9/11. Or something.
The government will retain information on your sexual orientation for at least 15 years (but they leave the door open to keeping it forever):
The data is only supposed to be used for counter-terrorism and law enforcement. Which means that if the army of lawyers at Focus on the Family are successful in overturning Lawrence v. Texas, the government will have a huge forever database of gay people it can arrest en masse. One and only one protection exists to prevent the government from arresting and jailing gay people, and it is in the hands of the likes of John Roberts and Sam Alito.
Even if Lawrence is never challenged, Bush and Chertoff could right now black list gay people from traveling, because there is no federal law that protects gay people from profiling or discrimination.
If you think I'm being alarmist, ask yourself why the government would be collecting information about someone's sexual orientation if they had no intention of ever using it.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff praised the pact as an "essential screening tool for detecting potentially dangerous transatlantic travelers." If available at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Chertoff said, such information would have, "within a matter of moments, helped to identify many of the 19 hijackers by linking their methods of payment, phone numbers and seat assignments."
That's right. Micheal Chertoff just said that the 9/11 hijackers were gay. Or at least that if we had known conclusively if they were gay or not, we would have been able to prevent 9/11. Or something.
The government will retain information on your sexual orientation for at least 15 years (but they leave the door open to keeping it forever):
Although Homeland Security has said it will move passenger information to "dormant" status after seven years and "expects" to erase it after 15 years, it notified the E.U. that expiration of data will be subject to "further discussions."
The data is only supposed to be used for counter-terrorism and law enforcement. Which means that if the army of lawyers at Focus on the Family are successful in overturning Lawrence v. Texas, the government will have a huge forever database of gay people it can arrest en masse. One and only one protection exists to prevent the government from arresting and jailing gay people, and it is in the hands of the likes of John Roberts and Sam Alito.
Even if Lawrence is never challenged, Bush and Chertoff could right now black list gay people from traveling, because there is no federal law that protects gay people from profiling or discrimination.
If you think I'm being alarmist, ask yourself why the government would be collecting information about someone's sexual orientation if they had no intention of ever using it.
I agree that we are in a very dangerous time with the conservative Supreme Court. However, I think that it is worth noting that another protection exists through the legislative process and those candidates we elect to office. Let's elect progressive candidates. And then continue to tell them that we want this madness to cease. It wouldn't hurt, either, to elect a progressive Chief Executive. We need to restore the balance of power in this country.
With every day that passes with this adminstration, Canadian cirizenship becomes more attractive.
They have discredited the Federal Civil Service professional into a group that is less concerned with the rule of law, than in advancing the radical social agenda of American Talibangelists like Dobson. We'll need a stronger Democratic majority in both the US House and Senate, and the next Democratic President to weed out these subversives.
Also, I wouldn't object in any means to the ACLU slapping the Department of Homeland Security and TSA with a court injunction to block this program. It is amazing that the European Union is not retaliating.
Economically, America could benefit from ahuge counter-balance of European tourists. The Dollar:Euro exchange rate discourages US tourists to Europe, but the opposite could be very attrative. Except that the current occupant of the White House continues to allow disasterous policies that alienate the rest of the world.