Yesterday, John Gilmore and a companion got on a British Airways flight from San Francisco to London, as he recounts in an email to Declan McCullagh’s Politech mailing list. Having cleared security (Gilmore won’t fly in the United States because citizens are required to present an “internal passport” on all domestic flights) and being seated, the plane began to taxi onto the runway.
Before takeoff, a flight attendant demanded that Gilmore remove a one-inch button reading “Suspected Terrorist” from his lapel. Gilmore, being after all, well, Gilmore… refused, stating that the button was a political statement.
The captain of the flight demanded Gilmore remove the button, saying that Gilmore would “endanger the aircraft and commit a federal crime” if he didn’t take the button off. Gilmore again refused, the captain turned the plane around, returned to the gate, and had Gilmore and his companion removed from the plane.
Back at the gate, Gilmore asked the British Airways station manager if a similar button reading “Hooray for Tony Blair” would be acceptable. The station manager replied that she thought such a button would be okay. Gilmore was told that he would be free to take the next (and last) flight if he removed the button, packed it in his checked baggage, and agreed to have his carry-on bags searched “to make sure that we didn’t carry any more of these terrorist buttons onto the flight and put them on, endangering the mental states of the passengers and crew.” And that was that, the station manager told Gilmore; British Airways “has discretion to fly anyone.”
Gilmore went home and filed a lawsuit against John Ashcroft, two airlines, and a handful of U.S. government agencies. What makes this case especially interesting is Gilmore’s claim in his complaint that “no security threat is as important as the threat to American society caused by erosion of the right to travel, the right to be free from unreasonable searches, and the right to exercise First Amendment rights anonymously (emphasis added).” Anonymous is the interesting bit here.
If this weren’t so serious it would be funnier than any Monty Python bit.
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