your village voice

Babies Banned From US Planes

It seems that now toddlers pose a threat to US national security. According to the AP (via BBC News), there are at least two reported cases where young children were among the supposed thousands of names on the US "no-fly" list. This again proves the adage that "zero tolerance" really means "zero intelligence."

Ingrid Sanden, after having her one-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix last November, told this to the AP:

I completely understand the war on terrorism, and I completely understand people wanting to be safe when they fly. But focusing the target a little bit is probably a better use of resources.

That is the sort of common sense the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other privacy advocacy organizations hope the US government will begin to adopt. It is one thing to create reasonable criteria for a "no-fly" list and quite another to simply add names out of ignorance or absence of tangible evidence. Hopefully, once Americans realize that the line the government walks between terrorist suspect and the average citizen is fuzzy at best, they will demand the return of their freedoms.

But until that day, fear will continue to overwhelm the larger role of personal liberty. Until the freedoms are lost to the government, people will continue to trade their privacy and integrity for safety and security. Of course, they will fail to blame themselves for letting them go. It was the terrorists' fault we lost freedom, right?!

posted by the prisoner @ 2:37:00 PM