Airlines Have to Ask Permission to Fly 72 Hours Early

twitter wrote to mention that the TSA (Transport Security Administration) has released a new set of proposed rules that is raising quite a stir among groups ranging from the ACLU to the American Society of Travel Agents. Under the new rules airlines would be required to submit a passenger manifest (including full name, sex, date of birth, and redress number) for all flights departing, arriving, or flying over the United States at least 72 hours prior to departure. Boarding passes will only be issued to those passengers that have been cleared. "Hasbrouck submitted that requiring clearance in order to travel violates the US First Amendment right of assembly, the central claim in John Gilmore's case against the US government over the requirement to show photo ID for domestic travel. [...] ACLU's Barry Steinhardt quoted press reports of 500,000 to 750,000 people on the watch list (of which the no-fly list is a subset). 'If there are that many terrorists in the US, we'd all be dead.' TSA representative Kip Hawley noted that the list has been carefully investigated and halved over the last year. 'Half of grossly bloated is still bloated,' Steinhardt replied."

Load of fear-mongering crap

[amcdiarmid]

The Government in general, and specifically this administration, seems to want to be Orwellian in what it knows about everyone.

I remember in the 90's when the Secret Service first started closing off traffic near the White House. The easy North/South move on the West side got bogged down from the traffic problems: Penn Ave N of the White House is shut down; E Street S. of the White House is shut down. There is now an area of eight blocks where you can't go West without going North, or South. Under Clinton, the street got opened - for about a week until some bombing far away.

It's not that I object to security. It's just I object to security that pushes attacks onto innocents & away from those who "incited" the attacks in the first place.

I also remember being able to get onto planes without any time consuming security screening. Now we have to wait for everything to be checked forever. The screening does not make us any more secure*, it just takes longer.

Go big propaganda fear-mongering! we didn't need the free time to get to anywhere anyhow. If we did, we'd all be rich enough to have our own planes.

*: The airline screening does not really make us more secure, as there are still ways to get shit on a plane: Metal Detectors test for guns sold in the US, not guns sold outside the US with lower metal content. Or Ceramic guns. Or Knives without metal (say those nice expensive Kyoceria ceramic knives).

If you like: 2/3rds of a passenger planes cargo is other than passengers and their baggage: It's Air Freight packages. Those packages could easily hold a bomb. Or a passenger could check a bomb with a wireless control that can be carried in the cabin.

the only thing that has been done in the name of security that makes planes more secure was making real security doors on the Pilot's compartment.

Faster to drive

[devnullkac]

If you can keep up the pace, you can drive by car between any 2 points in the continental US in 72 hours: 60mph * 72h = 4320 miles. If you've got an emergency, you're better off driving, no matter how far.

FUD - can transmit data up to 30 min before flight

[SuperKendall]

From the PDF for the PROPOSED rule changes (not even final yet, still in public comment phase!):

"Additionally, for reservations made within 72 hours of scheduled flight departure time, covered aircraft operators would be required to transmit Secure Flight Passenger Data as soon as possible."

The TSA is just asking airlines to send what they have 72 hours prior to the flight, so they can correct false alarms earlier and do a better job of identifying problems.

RTFPDF.

Sounds good to me.

Re:Urgency

[Taeolas]

Canadian Travel and Airline groups are pissed about those proposals too ( http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/10/12/airtravel-us.html [www.cbc.ca] ). Notice that the regulations also specify flights "Flying Over" US Airspace? So flights from Toronto to Cuba (or any other southern non-US destination) would also fall under those criteria. Guess Halifax and Moncton Airports better get cracking on expanding their capacity; all those Southern flights may have to fly from the Maritimes to keep out of US airspace. (That or we'll see more Montreal->Moncton->Caribbean flights so they can use the 'just skirting around the edges' clause of the proposals).

Requirement is 30 min before flight

[SuperKendall]

If you read the actual PDF, the requirement is 30 minutes before the flight for the TSA to clear. They just want the airline to send what they have 72 hours before, and require a full name (and only a full name) to make a reservation.

Hardly the ball-buster everyone is making it out to be.

Re:500,000 to 750,000 Terrorists in The US?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Lots of people with no business on the watch list ended up on it without clear guidelines for getting yourself removed. Lots of vocal opponents of the Bush administration like Senator Ted Kennedy, a real terrorist name if ever I heard one ;( and Randi Rhodes, the screaming liberal radio host. Of course, if you complain then not only are you a terrorist sympathizer, you must hate freedom too. Reading conservative blogs, you see how funny they seem to think this is.

Re:Welcome to Amerika

[Ziest]

Where we have our very own Iron Curtain (it just goes the other way).
Here's the progression:
No, we don't let you in.
You can leave, but not with your money.
You can leave, just give us 72 hours to make sure you're not on our list of Bad People (anyone we don't like).

As a Jew who grew up with great aunts and uncles who survived nazi germany and was told the their story many times, this sounds exactly how things went after the nazi came to power in 1933. Any one old enough to remember the cold war, this is exactly the sort of shit we used to get down on the soviets about. Look up "Enabling Act of 1933" and "Reichstag fire" on wikipedia. Wake up, the downward spiral of this country has begun.

You don't need a fargin' Gulfstream...

[Anonymous Coward]

...all you need is a little $30-40K Piper Cherokee or Cessna 172 and go fly yerself practically anywhere in the USA you damn well please. Instead of driving a brand new car every year and living in some yuppie condo/townhouse, I drive an 10 year old car, live in an older house and bought my own small plane and became a private pilot instead. I can fly three or four hundred mile trips in literally half the time it takes to drive, and roughly about the same net end-to-end amount of total time it takes to fly commercially, or sometimes even quicker than driving or commercial airlines since I can get into smaller airports much closer to my final destinations.

Drawbacks are: Sometimes obtaining ground transportation from a small Hickville airport is a bitch, and bad weather can keep you from flying a small plane like mine at all unless you've got a deathwish.

Benefits are: I can generally just hop into my own plane and go on my own schedule. Nothing feels better than flying over a traffic-jammed freeway and looking down at all the cars, except maybe flying over a highway patrol trooper that's got some poor schmuck pulled over on the side of the highway with his foot propped up on the car bumper and scribbling on a ticketbook while I glance over at my GPS groundspeed showing me cruising along at over 130 MPH :-)

Every Slashdotter who ever had any thought at all about learning to fly should get over to their nearest small airport that has a Learn to Fly Here [aopa.org] program and at least take an introductory flying lesson [beapilot.com] for $99 or less.

Stop Dreaming. Start Flying.

Well color me red.

[zeashan]

Two things of note. The Secure Flight rule does NOT state that if you are not booked 3 days before that you cannot fly. In fact, the rule summary includes the following:

Although approximately 99% of passenger travel reservations would be finalized within 24 hours of the departure of any flight, 24 hours would not provide TSA with sufficient time to adequately screen 2.4 million passengers and, when necessary, coordinate operational responses in the event of identification...

All the rule really does is give government agencies ample time to respond to a watch list match that they were running anyways. The only privacy you give up is the time frame in which Uncle Sam knows of your itinerary. If the government was really interested in you, they would track your flight purchase from your credit card and know the instant you bought them. This doesn't really affect any of us unless we happen to be one of those 500,000 to 750,000 people who managed to find themselves on the watch list. Obviously this is a bullshit attention grabbing rule. What terrorist in his or her right mind would knowingly book their suicide tickets in advance now? Granted this assumes that terrorists have 'right minds'...

Re:forget about back in the day...

[Dzimas]

TFA seems to be a slashdot reading comprehension test. Sadly, you fail. The TSA is not requiring you to book a flight more than 72 hours prior to departure, nor does anyone with half a brain think that would be a clever idea. They are simply proposing that airlines must provide certain information about confirmed passengers 72 hours prior to the flight. They expect that 90 to 93% of travel reservations will be finalized by that point. The other 7-10% are last minute flights or reschedules that will have to be reviewed separately. The whole idea is to give themselves enough time to review the passenger manifest and flag persons of interest well in advance of takeoff to avoid awkward mid-air diversions.

Re:Back in the day when I was the young guy

[viksit]

Hmm, what would be interesting is to see numbers of people in *other* years dying of the same causes. Here's a link to the NSC [http://www.nsc.org/lrs/statinfo/odds.htm] on the number of deaths for the year 2006 from most of the above causes.

Re:Back in the day when I was the young guy

[dgatwood]

The 1993 attack did significant damage and exposed the many - many - problems in combating a high-rise fire, but it did not threaten the structural integrity of the building.

Only because they didn't place it very well.

To quote from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3069653/ [msn.com]: On February 26, 1993, the World Trade Center merely shook but did not collapse. But it was a close call. Later, the WTC's architect would tell jurors that if the van had been left closer to the poured concrete foundations, they would have succeeded. The tower would have fallen.

It's not just Americans...

[dottyslashdottydot]

This was all over the Canadian news [www.ctv.ca] last night, as they also want the passenger lists of any flights merely flying over American airspace, for example, Montreal to Mexico City. They were originally going to have this rule apply to domestic flights that happen to cross American airspace (which is common with a flight like Toronto to Vancouver), but have thankfully backed down. Oh yeah, and people now have 10 days to comment about these new rules.

Re:say goodbuy

[GlL]

From the Kent v. Dulles case in 1957, around the McCarthy era, at the Supreme Court, Justice William O. Douglas' wrote for the court:
"The right to travel is a part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment. If that "liberty" is to be regulated, it must be pursuant to the law-making functions of the Congress. . . . . Freedom of movement across frontiers in either direction, and inside frontiers as well, was a part of our heritage. Travel abroad, like travel within the country, . . . may be as close to the heart of the individual as the choice of what he eats, or wears, or reads. Freedom of movement is basic in our scheme of values."
If we cannot see the "watch lists", then there is no way for us to challenge our presence on such a list. That in my opinion is taking away someone's right to travel without due process.

Re:You don't need a fargin' Gulfstream...

[NewbieProgrammerMan]

You don't need a fargin' Gulfstream...all you need is a little $30-40K Piper Cherokee or Cessna 172 and go fly yerself practically anywhere in the USA you damn well please.

Yeah, for now. I agree that it's a great thing if you can work it into your budget, but how long do you think you'll have that "anywhere you damn well please (except the ADIZ)" freedom? There are people that would really like to restrict it, and AOPA and others won't be able to hold them off forever.

Re:Back in the day when I was the young guy

[adminstring]

Heart disease, cancer, and stroke are better defined as diseases associated with lifestyle choices and environment. For example, heart disease and stroke are very strongly linked to smoking, a lack of exercise, and a high-cholesterol diet. And while it may take a while for these factors to catch up with you, they aren't exactly "caused" by old age.

These causes of death are risks which can be easily reduced by changing our everyday behavior. A healthy diet, fresh air, and exercise will dramatically reduce your chance of dying from these causes, while also improving your life in other ways.

I think that GP is right - as a society, we have often failed miserably in managing the factors which really cause death and suffering: diet, exercise, and environmental quality. People are scared of terrorists because they've been trained by the government and the media to be scared of terrorists. Meanwhile the real killers of most Americans, the multinational agribusiness industry, are highly subsidized by the USDA.

Border patrol checkpoints

[Sloppy]

I get that on intrastate trips in New Mexico, just driving from Las Cruces to Albuquerque. It has been going on for decades.

Re:This is ridiculous and scary..

[baffled]

Yeah. Great. Are any of the candidates proposing to abolish the fucking TSA.

Yes. Ron Paul. No joke. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5ZXM3h4jig [youtube.com] 1min 10secs in. The airlines should be in charge of airline security, not the government.

Re:It's not about the number of people who died...

[onemorechip]

But that figure represents only a paper loss, right? Sure, some people sold off at a loss, but those who bought got bargains and subsequent gains, and those who held eventually recovered the value and then some. A few industries (airlines come to mind) never recovered fully, but that can't possibly amount to anything close to 1.2 terabucks. Probably the more lasting damage can be seen in loss of jobs (eventually gained back, but those unfortunate enough to be hit hard would see their nest egg depleted) and the totally optional increase in national debt.

Ok Richard Simmons...

[GuardianBob420]

Granted, we all have to die somehow - but you seem a little defensive! Allergic to bees, perhaps? Again, the math:

Your chances of getting killed by a terrorist (from here [foreignaffairs.org]):
But while keeping such potential dangers in mind, it is worth remembering that the total number of people killed since 9/11 by al Qaeda or al Qaedalike operatives outside of Afghanistan and Iraq is not much higher than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States in a single year, and that the lifetime chance of an American being killed by international terrorism is about one in 80,000 -- about the same chance of being killed by a comet or a meteor. Even if there were a 9/11-scale attack every three months for the next five years, the likelihood that an individual American would number among the dead would be two hundredths of a percent (or one in 5,000).

From here: [livescience.com]

All figures below are for U.S. residents.
Cause of Death Lifetime Odds

Heart Disease: 1-in-5
Cancer: 1-in-7
Stroke: 1-in-23
Accidental Injury: 1-in-36
Motor Vehicle Accident*: 1-in-100
Intentional Self-harm (suicide): 1-in-121
Falling Down: 1-in-246
Assault by Firearm: 1-in-325
Fire or Smoke: 1-in-1,116
Natural Forces (heat, cold, storms, quakes, etc.): 1-in-3,357
Electrocution*: 1-in-5,000
Drowning: 1-in-8,942
Air Travel Accident*: 1-in-20,000
Flood* (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-30,000
Legal Execution: 1-in-58,618
Tornado* (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-60,000
Lightning Strike (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-83,930
Snake, Bee or other Venomous Bite or Sting*: 1-in-100,000
Earthquake (included also in Natural Forces above): 1-in-131,890
Dog Attack: 1-in-147,717
Asteroid Impact*: 1-in-200,000**
Tsunami*: 1-in-500,000
Fireworks Discharge: 1-in-615,488

Re:This is ridiculous and scary..

[baffled]

I think ending medicare would help health prices decrease. Free markets work - government-subsidized price floors don't.

Does it sound drastic? The nation's chief accountability officer, the Comptroller General, has been preaching for years about financial doom if we don't fix medicare and social security.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/01/60minutes/main2528226.shtml [cbsnews.com]
http://www.gao.gov/cghome.htm [gao.gov]

Seems Ron Paul has a plan to save our economy. What's your candidate got?

Re:What useability - in fact, what security?

[cjsm]

Related to what you said is the fact that all of these thousands of restrictions, wiretaps, loss of freedoms, etc. by the U.S. government have nothing to do with why 9-11 happened. 9-11 happened because the people at the top ignored the warnings. Ashcroft himself was warned something was going on. Condi Rice was warned. All the info was there. It was the incompetent leaders at the top who ignored the warnings. It was their fuckup, and their response is to turn the U.S. into a fascist state.