Grounded Millionaire Struggles To Make Point about Privacy
April 1, 2005

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Freedom to travel used to be a basic principle of American life, but that was changing even before Sept. 11, 2001, the date we now refer to as 9-11, or 9/11.

But after that date, travel, particularly air travel, started to get really hairy. So much so that I have met quite a few people who refuse to use the airlines at all and many who find even train travel more intrusive than ever before. Pretty much the same rules established by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the Homeland Security Department (HSD) apply, but the ones for trains weren’t put into force at the same time as for airline travel simply because there were not enough trained security screeners.

There are significant numbers of Americans who will only travel if they can drive to their destination and back in their own vehicles. Otherwise, they just don’t go.

This was highlighted in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Feb. 27 in a lengthy article by Dennis Roddy, about millionaire John Gilmore who stays close to home to make a point about privacy.

According to Roddy’s column datelined San Francisco, Gilmore is unable to travel because he refuses to present a government-approved ID.

According to Roddy’s column, Gilmore’s splendid isolation began July 4, 2002, when, with defiance aforethought, he strolled to the Southwest Airlines counter at Oakland, CA, Airport and presented his ticket.

The gate agent asked for his ID.

Gilmore asked her why.

It is the law, she said.

Gilmore asked to see the law.

Nobody could produce a copy. To date, nobody has. The regulation that mandates ID at airports is “Sensitive Security Information,” Roddy reported. The law, as it turns out, is unavailable for inspection.

The Law’s a Secret
What started out as a weekend trip to Washington became a crawl through the courts in search of an answer to Gilmore’s question: Why?

In post 9/11 America, asking “Why?” when someone from an airline asks for identification can start some interesting arguments. Gilmore, who learned to argue on the debate team in his hometown of Bradford, McKean County, PA, has started an argument that, should it reach its intended target, the US Supreme Court, would turn the rules of national security on end, reach deep into the tug-of-war between private rights and public safety, and play havoc with the Department of Homeland Security.

At the heart of Gilmore’s stubbornness is the worry about the thin line between safety and tyranny.

“Are they just basically saying we just can’t travel without identity papers? If that’s true, then I’d rather see us go through a real debate that says we want to introduce required identity papers in our society rather than trying to legislate it through the back door through regulations that say there’s not any other way to get around,” Gilmore said, according to The Post-Gazette. “Basically what they want is a show of obedience.”

“As happens to the disobedient, Gilmore is grounded,” Roddy reported. “He is rich—he estimates his net worth at $30 million—and cannot fly inside the United States. Nor can he ride Amtrak, rent room at most major hotels, or easily clear security in the courthouses where his case, Gilmore v. Ashcroft, is to be heard. In a time when more and more people and places demand some form of government-issued identification, Gilmore offers only his 49-year-old face: a study in stringy hair, high forehead, wire-rimmed glasses, Ho Chi Minh beard and the contrariness for which the dot.com culture is renowned,” Roddy reported.

“I think of myself as being under regional arrest,” he said. Even with $30 million in the bank, regional arrest can be hard. He takes the bus to and from events at which he is applauded by less well-heeled computer techies who flew in from around the country after showing a boarding pass and one form of government-issued photo ID and arrived in rental cars that required a valid driver’s license and one major credit card.

He was employee No. 5 at Sun Microsystems, which made Unix, the free software of the Web, the world standard. He japed the government by cracking its premier security code. He campaigned to keep the software that runs the Internet free of charge. After he left Sun, Gilmore started his own firm, sold it for more money than he seems to have bothered to count and has since devoted his time to giving it away to favored causes: drug law reform, a campaign to standardize computer voting machines and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, something of an ACLU for the Information Age.

To some, Gilmore’s argument is redolent of the conspiracy theories from the black helicopter crowd.

“That’s the problem. How it sounds,” Gilmore said, according to The Post-Gazette. “He waved his hands like some Cassandra: ‘They have all these secret laws! The UFOs are coming! They have guards at every airport!” Yes, he said, there is a certain odd flavor to the notion that someone shouldn’t have to show ID to board a plane, but with magnetometers at the gates, guards with security wands, fortified cockpit doors and sky marshals abounding, Gilmore is asking just how much citizens are giving up when they hand their driver’s licenses to a third party, in this case an airline, where it is put into a database they cannot see, to meet a law that, as it turns out, they are not allowed to read.’ ”

Gilmore will show ID for an international flight because he doesn’t expect to set the rules for other nations.

“I will show a passport to travel internationally. I’m not willing to show a passport to travel in my own country,” Gilmore said. “I used to laugh at countries that had internal passports. And it’s happened here and people don’t even seem to know about it.”

But John Gilmore, the principle in Roddy’s timely column, is not alone.

Worsening Proposals
And the situation threatens to get worse. The federal government is on the verge of forcing the states to issue drivers’ licenses in such a form that they will become virtual national ID cards, complete with some biometric information—not just photos and Social Security numbers.

In addition, Congress is getting ready to debate renewal of the Patriot Act, which allows secret investigations and searches of people the government suspects of terrorism, organized crime and gang activity.

Now, people like Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine (both D-NJ), with encouragement from other anti-gunners in and out of Congress, want to add the government’s “watch lists” to the National Instant Check System database. The problem with that, as with many other items in the HSD’s security schemes, is that the “watch list” isn’t just one list, isn’t managed by one agency (even though FBI has the authority to do) and, most important, isn’t very accurate but is very secret.

That means that when people like you and I or Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and family suffer the same fate as many other citizens in being deprived admittance to an airline or other travel because of a glitch in the “watch list,” there’s not much the aggrieved citizen can do. As far as anyone knows, there is no way to get your name off the list, or to clarify that you are not the same person about whom the “watch list” sounds alarms.

Yes, the anti-gunners will use the general fear of terrorism to promote more gun control, including bans on .50-caliber rifles, bans on the FN FiveSevenN pistol, renewal and expansion of the Clinton gun and standard magazine ban, and prohibit secondary sales of guns between private citizens at gun shows, matches and club events. But, while gunowners should be concerned about the anti-gunners’ agenda, they also need to be equally concerned about the creeping intrusions into privacy and the Fourth Amendment.
Return to Archive Index