I have the pleasure of serving with John Gilmore on EFF’s board. While there are many things we disagree about, we share many values, and this one in particular: At a time of terror, we should demand reasonableness of those with authority � even more strongly than in times of peace. I view BA’s behavior here to be unreasonable. I don’t doubt they have the “right” to do what they did — such is the nature of law in a time of terror. That’s not, in my view, the point. They have the responsibility to behave reasonably in the face of possible threats. Gilmore’s behavior was not a threat. If it was a threat, removing the button would not have eliminated the threat. Demanding he remove the button as a condition of flying therefore serves no good end, except the end of showing who’s in charge. Reason, not power, should be in charge always, but especially now.
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Meta
“Eppur si muove” (But still, it moves).
Wearing a “Suspected Terrorist” button has a foreseeable chance of causing fear and potential panic among passengers. Removing the button eliminated the threat. It was thus reasonable. It’s that simple.
I dissent.
Troll…
Gilmore wore the button in order to provoke a reaction, and then whined and cried like a little girl when he succeeded.
His is not the behavior of a serious, rational person.
There’s the nub of it–the flight crew didn’t act reasonably. Wearing a button which makes a political statement is not the same thing as a threat of terrrorism. No one has given any reason why it should be considered as such, other than that the flight crew may not be able to tell the difference.
Look at the language used in the earlier comment thread:
‘falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.’ “
I haven’t identified the individual contributors to this compost heap–I just want people to get the stench of it.
Hi, Richard,
You say, “cried like a little girl when he succeeded”.
My reply: “Did you learn that insult in second grade, or third?”
Scratch a right-winger, find someone who uses ‘little girl’ as an insult,
John A
This discussion is really a bit circular. On one side John Gilmore says that BA should be able to figure out he’s not a threat because he’s on the cover of a magazine. He’s asking them to wait until something happens that shows him to be a threat. That’s reasonable.
On the other hand, BA is asking him to remove a button so that they feel more comfortable. It might seem petty, and it probably is, but it’s not _that_ unreasonable.
By making a big deal about the button, John has set the cabin crew to thinking. What is this guy going to do when we bring out sandwiches instead of a hot meal? Is he going to argue with other passengers? Is he going to piss and moan about returning his seat and tray table to an upright position?
While I disagree with John’s refusal to take of the button, I do applaud his stand on personal freedom. I can think of lots of places where things like surveillance cameras are a good thing, but folks like John get us thinking early about places where they are not OK.
Our loss of freedom is a slippery slope, and it’s people like John that will show us where the edge starts.
But I still think he should have taken the button off.
My reply: �Did you learn that insult in second grade, or third?�
I learned it from one of my daughters, who uses it to great ironic effect. Look up “irony” in the dictionary (the thick book with the small print that’s probably propping up your monitor).
I still maintain this is all an issue of illiteracy. His button said absolutely nothing about himself, merely how he was being viewed by others. A simple thought would make one realize that a person with real intent to harm would never, ever wear something that had the word ‘terrorism’ in it. Therefore BA jumped to the conclusion that passengers would not know how to correctly interpret the button — illiteracy.
In fact, no one else had reacted negatively to the button, despite his already having boarded and found his seat. The time for reaction is when he was still walking around, boarding, and so on. No one said a thing. No one felt panic. Thus BA further insulted their passengers by their actions.
As Prof. Lessig points out, the BA solution was to remove the button. An absurd position to take. If John was a threat, removing the button would have zero effect. If John was no threat, removing the button would have zero effect. Once again we see an airline security action designed in such a way that it would do absolutely no good at stopping a real terrorist, but does hassle the innocent.
In other words, a policy that wasn’t thought out. As usual. Thank you, John, for being willing to endure the catcalls of the sheep who don’t want the status quo disturbed, regardless of how restrictive the status quo becomes.
If John was a threat, removing the button would have zero effect.
*Sigh*. If the threat was that wearing such a button might create panic, removing the button would have eliminated the threat.
…to endure the catcalls of the sheep…
Surely you must mean the sheepcalls?
…regardless of how restrictive the status quo becomes
Help! Help! I’m being opressed!
Ralph’s got it exactly right. I saw a kid get tossed off a flight not because he didn’t ultimately cooperate with the cabin crew, but because he was such a hard-core jerk about it that the captain came out of the cockpit to talk to the kid to see if he was a safety risk. Mind you, by the time the captain came back, the passenger had already cooperated (he had an overly heavy — and dense — metal briefcase which if it fell out could have knocked someone cold) and the cabin was secure for depature, but the captain simply didn’t like this guy’s attitude and booted him off the plane.
* * *
More’s the point, our fellow traveller talks focuses on item 7 on BA’s list of conditions, but ignores #2:
“2) If carrying you or your baggage may affect the comfort of any person in the aircraft. “
And since “any person” clearly includes the cabin crew, I’d say BA was clearly within his rights.
“*Sigh*. If the threat was that wearing such a button might create panic, removing the button would have eliminated the threat.”
Not to those who could think. Either John is dangerous or he is not. If he is not, no sense getting into a panic about the guy, regardless of how he is dressed, how long his hair is, what color his skin in, or whether he is wearing a button you wish to misunderstand.
No person desiring to do damage on board an airplane would ever try to draw attention to themselves ahead of time. A moment’s thought would clear that up for anyone on the plane. John lost a right to express a political thought because BA evidently felt their other passengers were too dimwitted to make this connection. The BA crew talked to John, saw he was no threat, but acted with exaggerated paternalism toward the other passengers. Shallow thinking designed to protect other shallow thinkers.
This is not a slam against BA, just that particular crew. As John said, he flew other lines and crews without problem. Not everyone is a shallow thinker, and he proved that by his later actions.
I’m going to have to agree that we’ve got a broader (more broad?) problem here. Authority in general responds differently whether or not you are behaving calm and rationally or refusing to do something tiny at the request of the pilot of the vehicle. Mr. Gilmore, if we were on a road trip and you were wearing something that made the trip less comortable to me and my passengers, I would ask you to take it off or get off the bus. And, in a sense, flying has become more of a cooperative adventure recently… if you wouldn’t have done something as small as taking off the button, how can I be sure that you will obey instructions given by the crew?
Another interesting thing is to think about the spectrum of content that Gilmore could have had on his button. “Suspect” would have been interesting… I bet it’s the word “terrorist” that got them… that is, a button with the single word “suspect” wouldn’t have gotten him kicked off but one with “terrorist” would. What about a button that said, “bush 2004″… what about a button that said, “fire!” or “I have a bomb”. What about “George Bush is a Terrorist.” That would be interesting…
Oh, I like it!
<sarcasm>If that color of puce the passenger is wearing makes me uncomfortable, I can get them kicked off the plane. And when that child starts crying and making it uncomfortable to sleep I can get them kicked off the plane. And you know the Book of the Mormons makes me uncomfortable so I will get anyone reading it kicked off the plane.</sarcasm>
Give me a break. Wearing a button is not an action. The button was not being worn to provoke an action in others. There was no reason to assume an action would be taken by BA. As John pointed out, he has worn the button on other airlines with no reaction, so he had no reason to expect any in this case. Any passenger panicked by a 1″ button should probably not be traveling, since there is a foreseeable chance that they may be mentally unbalanced and a risk to their fellow passengers.
Why doesn’t it surprise me that bubbadude is still just as knee-jerk and absurd as he was on the Well?
FUZZY STATES:”Give me a break. Wearing a button is not an action. The button was not being worn to provoke an action in others. There was no reason to assume an action would be taken by BA. As John pointed out, he has worn the button on other airlines with no reaction, so he had no reason to expect any in this case.”
I agree that wearing a button is not an action. But that’s about as far as it goes. Anybody who knows John knows that HIS JOB (and he is self-employed) is to provoke actions in others. That’s been mainly what he’s been up to for decades. He’s an important part of the “Question Authority” ecosystem.
Perhaps he has worn the button on other airlines with no reaction. But that’s beside the point. John’s not just fresh out of the potato patch when it comes to this stuff.
He knew he’d get a reaction one of these days. And he did.
I’ve been following this thread with interest but remaining outside the fray. I agree that wearing the button was meant (or at least could reasonably be expected) to incite a reaction and that the refusal to remove the button was a political statement rather than a rational act. The civil liberties issues, however, are real.
In particular, the idea that the fact that some of the passengers might be alarmed by the button (despite the stated fact that none of them actually were) is a reason to remove a passenger from a plane has slippery slope written all over it. If several men of arab descent had boarded the plane, that would likely cause substantially more alarm among passengers and crew than Gilmore’s button, but I don’t think anyone on this board would argue that that would constitute a reason to remove them from the plane. There’s an obvious difference given that Gilmore can remove the button whereas my hypothetical arab men cannot change their appearance, but many people have already raised the question of where exactly the line between acceptable and restricted expression might lie. Placing the power to make those distinctions in the hands of the flight crew without any legal test or guidelines seems absurd. We’ve all read (and Gilmore in his reponse cited) about some of the results of that approach. What about passengers who haven’t bathed recently, passengers wearing clothing with racially offensive slogans, or who have visible deformities? All of these are likely to make fellow passengers uncomfortable. Should they be removed from planes at the discretion of the flight crew without question?
Although his methods may have been too aggressive for some, Gilmore (by wearing the button) was simply trying to make a political statement. Even when that statement is about terrorism, that’s not grounds to restrict his movement or refuse him access to travel. It seems to me that the argument that BA was right to remove Gilmore from the plane cannot fail to devolve into a right for airlines to discriminate, on any grounds they see fit, with regard to which passengers they will transport.
I have been inspired and informed by the writings of Gillmore, Finkelstein and Lessig. It is easy to see how empathy for the passengers, crew or Gillmore could lead one to support or condemn Gillmore and his protest.
But we should remember two things:
1) common carrier transportation is not a suitable venue for protest of any kind
2) what one perceives as protest could also be interpreted as an expression of identity
So while I believe BA would have been justified to eject Mr. Gillmore if there was evidence he would not shut up if any passenger took offense or contention at his self-expression, commanding that he remove a pin (which is really a form of self-expression) was an affront to decency and reason.
Do we want to sustain a system that has lead to racist abuses as listed by Gillmore? Further, anyone should see how this could lead to further abuse and conceivably, to tragedy. If such behavior is allowed, how should other cases of self-expression be handled:
A) the Japanese person whose garment contains an American obscenity as a design element
B) persons in favor of gay marriage wearing t-shirts or buttons with symbols of Gay Pride
C) supporters of Bush/Cheney wearing pins revealing their allegiance
The problem is obvious, whoever claims popular, political self-expression legitimate and untouchable, but who hesitates on other forms of self-expression is inconsistent and hypocritical.
A person should be able to wear a swastika/manji (as long as it is legal in the point of origin and departure) and turban at the same time and be left to themselves. This is, of course, a black-and-white delineation. Anyone who claims such an argument is poisoned by liberalism, and could be used to dismantle liberal ideas such as affirmative action is (ironically) correct.
The difference is stark, however. Affirmative action should be dismantled as a matter of evolution, when an American color-blind society is sustainable. Common carrier transport, however, must be governed by different standards–those must be black-and-white and clearly documented.
We should not and cannot accept a system where the bigotry of a crew or passengers is allowed to disrupt the conveyance of anyone, whether that person be a troll, pampered intellectual or vile hate-monger. Anyone willing to behave during travel, must be allowed to be themselves.
The only exception to this I can think of is not allowing a person to read sexually explicit material during travel. If someone wants to read Reason, Treason, Mein Kampf, Steal This Book, or anything else, they should not be confronted/accosted, no matter how uncomfortable other passengers may be.
Any gray possible? Sure, asking the person to conceal controversial garments or media should be permissible. But if concealment is refused, the crew should thank the passenger in question and apologize for the inconvenience. Every adult must be required be behave as such.
For common carrier transport, tolerance cannot be a luxury, it must be a requirement.
It would be quite interesting if the button said: “you are a suspected terrorist” Brings the point home much more, doesn’t it.
Seth your comments illustrate the inexorable logic of a security obsessed culture.
Your use of wishy-washy language ” foreseeable chance” and “potential panic” to justify the much more forceful “eliminated the threat” underscores the absurd mismatch between the response and the provocation. Nearly anything has the potential to become a threat of some kind. It is part of this frame of mind to conflate potential with actual and to view any unease as a sign of impending anarchy.
Comparisons to yelling fire in a theater are fatuous. Yelling fire has the intention of provoking an immediate instinctual response to flee in everyone there. I don’t believe, for one instant, that anyone here thinks mass hysteria would or could ensue from the button.
We don’t base rules upon the odd responses of hysterics. We base them upon the likely response of the majority of well adjusted individuals. The fact that someone somewhere could possibly feel fear is not a sound basis for describing something as a threat.
Any deviation becomes intolerable in a mind fixated with maintaining perfect order.
Very well stated, Steven. It is a fallacy to think we can become “secure.” Those who promise this are trying to gain votes, not telling us the truth. There will always be a way for those who wish to cause harm to do so. Has any nation on earth figured out how to prevent this utterly? No, not even the most draconian totalitarian regime.
There is a balance between prudent steps to help increase the level of security and on the other end the sort of solutions we have seen at the nation’s airports. The reason I have been upset at the way people have reacted to this button situation, admitedly a situation designed to provoke a reaction and perhaps something I would not choose to do in that way myself, is because I see people not thinking through to the conclusion in so many of these security proposals. Any proposal for security should answer the fundamental question, ‘Would taking this step have prevented the previous harm from occurring?’ If not, why take that step? Snatching nail files from grannies is nonsensical. As we saw on that 4th plane on September 11th, no one will ever again be able to take over a plane without a major revolt on the part of the passengers. Those hijacking days are over. People will no longer sit back and let it happen. So why on earth are they taking knitting needles away from grannies? Such a weapon would never stand up to the revolt that would ensue from any attempt to use them. Let alone airline marshals.
This button incident struck me the same way as being nonsensical. The guy was already on the plane and in his seat with no reaction from those around him. Taking off the button, the airline crew’s propsal, does not pass the test: How would take make the slightest difference? What, people might panic? No, people would not panic, and they did not panic when John was originally moving around.
I’m all for taking sensible steps toward airport security. I willingly submit to a presumption of guilt as I step through the metal detector, even though I am aware of my constitutional rights otherwise, because I have seen in my lifetime a sharp reduction in hijacking incidents as a result of the steps that have been taken. I do not see this button incident in the same way.
I think Seth has now passed the state of California in Whine production
An issue that I’ve been thinking about lately is the difference between privatization and monopolization. I don’t mind if (other) people pay hundreds of dollars to a company like MicroSoft in order to create and email some document but I don’t want to to be forced to pay MicroSoft in order to do that (ie. the document is only accepted in MSWord format). Or, I don’t mind if (other) people pay a lot for fancy bottled water but I don’t want to be forced to pay a lot for fancy bottled water.
Along those lines, I don’t mind if British Air caters to people who prefer security over freedom but I wouldn’t want that to be the only option. Maybe there should even be a new airline for people who prefer freedom over security. They could completely dispense with all the ID’s and metal detectors and x-rays and just have the pilots separated from the passengers with bank vault style door. It could be called something like “‘Live Free or Die’ Air”.
It’s currently considered reasonable to force sex offenders to post signs on their yards saying that they’re a danger to others (http://www.sexcriminals.com/news/12855/). While many certainly may disagree with this, a simple web search for the judge’s name “J. Manuel Banales” brings up very few references to people objecting to this on a personal basis. While this test of society’s reasonableness is certainly simplistic, I think it reflects the amount of outrage against the action. (incidentally, Googlefighting Banales against Hilary Rosen has Rosen winning 30,900 to 2,250)
By similar logic, if you fit a similar profile to a 9-11 hijacker via your national/educational/religious background, family upbringing, Amazon.com purchases, Tivo viewing habits, etc. it’s reasonable that you will one day need to wear a ‘Suspected Terrorist’ brand of some sort. If you’ve ever caused a public disturbance, made prank phone calls, left beer cans on a neighbors lawn, etc. then you might be branded a “convicted terrorist” for creating FUD within your society.
Would Gilmore then be guilty of impersonating a terrorist? The same way con artists run around parading as someone from the gas company or cops?
Here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to evaluate the facts without any regard to Richard Bennett’s “irony”, John Gilmore’s personality, or how ‘rich and idle” Professor Lessig may or may not be. Call me crazy, I know, but I’m going to pretend for a minute that none of those things have anything to do with the real topic here.
I’m going to take this comment to now summarize some of the things I have learned on this topic:
British Airways “Condition of Carriage” make it such that while they cannot refuse passage to anyone, for any reason, they *can* refuse passage to people who refuse the orders of crew relating to safety or security.
I don’t think anyone is (or should be) arguing that airline crews and pilot don’t have the right to keep their aircraft secure and safe. But at the same time, this well-given right to keep such aircraft secure is based on *judgements* made by the crew. Now, while there probably isn’t some “better” way of doing this, it DOES present some potential for differences of opinions as to what constitutes a threat.
So basically, BA thought it Gilmore wearing the button was a threat, and Virgin did not. Does anyone here think that Virgin Atlantic was not respectful to their other passengers for not booting Gilmore like BA did ? Did they shirk their responsibility to safety and security ? Richard ? Seth ?
More importantly…about the judgements of the flight attendants on both the BA and Virgin flights….if they were allowed to present the logic supporting their decisions to question (in the case of BA) or to not question (on Virgin) Gilmore’s wearing of the button, how would anyone defend either of their decisions ? (and if we could get those flight attendants to debate their decisions on TV, would you buy a pay-per-view ticket from me ?)
For those who might argue that it is right that those judgements should lie completely with the crew at hand, and like hypotheticals….Richard…would you mind if a flight attendant (who does weekend volunteering for Howard Dean) asked you to remove a button that said “Recall Davis” because he thought it might cause heated arguments or violence on the plane ?
What bothers me most about this is the apparently arbitrary idea that flight crews are (and are expected to possess the skills for) psychically predicting the emotional state of mind of the plane’s passengers.
Sorry, it feels quite gray to me.
Well, “j”, I agree the issue is gray, in the sense that it’s not clear whether this Gilmore character is a straight-up criminal or merely a pathetic nutbag. The fact that BA’s cabin crew has to exercise judgment with respect to predicting the behavior of an apparently disturbed first class passenger doesn’t bother me. In fact, if we’re going to insist that the government doesn’t have any business digging into the details of the personal lives of air passengers in advance of boarding, we’re tacitly consenting to just this sort of exercise of judgment on the part of airline cabin crews. You can’t have it both ways, safety is their paramount concern.
BA is, with good reason, more sensitive to terrorists than most other national flag carriers. Britain, as you may have heard, has been the target of numerous acts of terrorism from the IRA for many years now, and San Francisco is a hotbed of IRA support and fundraising. Local politicians such as Terence Hallinan, Willie Brown, and Jerry Brown have all raised money for them, and Oakland even has a street named after IRA leader Gerry Adams, murderer of English schoolchildren.
So when a fellow named Gilmore boards a BA plane in Frisco wearing a button proclaiming that he considers himself a terrorist of any kind, BA rightly takes him at his word and acts appropriately. In Gilmore’s world, a place centered about his navel and in which he’s universally famous, this is outrageous, but in the world of British subjects with a long and very sad experience with Irish left wing terrorism, it’s not a joke. Is it funny to make jokes about the murder of English school children? Gilmore says yes, it’s hilarious, and BA says no, not on our airline you won’t, not even in first class.
Virgin blew their responsibility to their passengers, and I won’t be flying with them.
Now what do you suppose would happen to Gilmore if he tried his idle rich stunt on El Al? Lufthansa? Air India? Singapore Air? Garuda? Air Lanka? My guess is it would not have been appreciated, and I believe that Mr. Gilmore, if he were sincere, should go duplicate his experiment on all of those carriers and report the results.
It’s not like he has anything better to do.
Let me toss this out: Gilmore doesn’t distinguish symbolic reality from concrete reality, which he proves by insisting that speech is as important as action in the day-to-day conduct of EFF advocacy, regardless of his weaseling that the button was “only speech” and therefore not important. If he didn’t think it was important, why did he wear it?
Therefore, wearing the “terrorist” button on board the plane was a symbolic hijacking. Is it responsible to hijack airplanes in order to make political statements, symbolically or concretely? Is it funny? Is it sane? Does it advance the cause of civil liberties? Does it get Gilmore’s name in the papers?
So what’s the actual motivation?
“Reason, not power, should be in charge always.”
On a ship, the captain is in command. Refusing to follow actions (within of course reasonable bounds, and concealing a visible political statement during passage is reasonable, as may be concealing a yellow tie if the captain had a nightmare about it the day before) makes you a troublemaker. Not a possible troublemaker, you have already caused trouble and may cause more.
Sorry. If this were on a public street, fine. But it wasn’t. Thus action hurts the cause of free speech by equating speech with trouble.
btw, had to add that wearing the button was not the issue, it’s an admirable statment. it’s the argumentativeness when requested to conceal it which is the issue.
Now what do you suppose would happen to Gilmore if he tried his idle rich stunt on El Al? Lufthansa? Air India? Singapore Air? Garuda? Air Lanka? My guess is it would not have been appreciated, and I believe that Mr. Gilmore, if he were sincere, should go duplicate his experiment on all of those carriers and report the results.
Well put. “I support Shining Path” is clearly a political statement, but I’d be very surprised indeed if American Airlines would let you fly to Lima wearing a button like that — and I’d be damned sure not to get off the plane next to a guy who was.
Some small points…Virgin Atlantic I am quite sure is influenced by terrorism just as much as BA, and I highly doubt that San Francisco’s financial support for the IRA was on the mind of the flight attendant when she asked Gilmore to remove the button.
Indeed safety is their primary concern. I don’t think anyone (including Gilmore) is arguing that safety (and security) should not be a concern.
But I challenge you (I suspect you’ll fail that challenge) to restrain your obvious contempt of Gilmore for 1 second, and take a closer look at some other parts of this issue.
You said that you won’t be flying Virgin because they allowed Gilmore to fly. They apparently did not see his button as threating enough to induce panic in the passengers, thereby producing a safety situation, which is why BA asked him to remove his button.
So logically following, can one passenger’s concern for a fellow passenger’s dress trump the flight attendant’s judgement call ? If YOU were on that Virgin flight, and (let’s say it wasn’t Gilmore but someone who you didn’t know) disagreed with the flight attendant with his/her judgement call on a similar button-wearing person…would you (or could you expect to) stop the flight by telling the flight attendant you’re bothered by it and could potentially panic ?
Do you (or will you) carefully consider your dress when you board an airplane ?
Anyone wearing a “Suspected Terrorist” on a plane might be a loon, but welcome to America. Again…no one here is arguing that flight crews should not keep their flight safe. It would appear that you are under the impression that Gilmore is arguing that people be allowed to express in any way, shape, or form, their views. He’s not. He’s not complaining that he couldn’t blast Jim Hightower NPR pieces from a boombox, or sing “Number of the Beast” (Iron Maiden) before the flight, or play “pull my finger” with the other passengers. He’s complaining that he was requested to remove his button, *before* any potential “trouble” starts . It’s British Airways’ new Pre-Emptive Panic Prediction Program (PEPPP) in the flesh.
should we now expect (and maybe in your view, require, to earn our business) flight attendants to predict the emotions of passengers with regards to how people dress on a plane ? Like I have said before, many punkrock t-shirts have a LOT worse text and/or images than Gilmore’s small button.
I don’t care about John Gilmore. I DO care about having my chances of air travel in the hands of a fresh out of college paranoid flight attendant, upset by my bringing onboard a copy of “2600” magazine.
I say to airline policy makers: If you want to restrict the dress of what people wear on planes because you possess some psychic ability to predict panic, then come up with Allowed Vocabulary/Fashion/Colors Manuals, train your flight attendants, and be consistent. That way I can plan accordingly, or go to the “liberal” airlines.
The last thing I need is a bitter flight attendant, fresh from reading this blog’s comments in the airport’s StarBucks, refusing me a flight because he’s out to prove a point. Because with this as a precedent, he can do that exact thing.
should we now expect (and maybe in your view, require, to earn our business) flight attendants to predict the emotions of passengers with regards to how people dress on a plane ?
Under certain circumstances, yes we should. If a passenger gets on an airplane wearing KKK robes, and the flight is headed for Alabama, and the passenger starts burning little crosses on his tray table, I’d expect the flight crew to kick that passenger off the plane. Gilmore’s “I support the terrorists” button is very much in that vein.
The shortsightedness of this silly protest amazes me. Terrorists hijack airplanes, so the government and the airlines tighten up safety measures, using every clue at their disposal to protect against the threat of hijacking, some of these clues having better predictive value than others. This tightening-up necessarily abridges certain liberties, and we’re all pissed off about the loss of these liberties.
But the question is who’s to blame, the terrorists or the adults responsible for the public safety? Gilmore’s button puts the blame on the adults, and that’s just plain stupid.
Let’s play with a scenario: a guy gets on a plane wearing a “suspected terrorist” button and nobody says anything. He then hijacks the plane. What’s the public reaction to the button and the flight crew’s inaction at that point?
Exactly.
Richard,
“So when a fellow named Gilmore boards a BA plane in Frisco wearing a button proclaiming that he considers himself a terrorist of any kind”
He didn’t wear any such button.
“Gilmore�s �I support the terrorists� button is very much in that vein.”
He didn’t wear any such button.
Argue with facts, please.
“What�s the public reaction to the button and the flight crew�s inaction at that point?”
I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that the *VAST* majority of the public want to know how he could have hijacked a plane:
–with what tiny amount of ‘equipment’ you’re allowed to bring on the plane
–why, in this post 9/11 day, every other passenger didn’t beat him to death
Gilmore is not placing any blame on safety officials for terrorism. Take off your AngryGuy glasses, and you’ll see that. (You have failed my challenge, btw)
about your (as usual) unsuitable analogy: burning little crosses on the tray table SHOULD get you kicked off a plane.
wearing white robes should not.
He was not wearing a button supporting terrorism. He was wearing a button which was, if anything, expressing oppposition to handing terrorists free victories through excessive measures employed under the color of security claims. His removal from the aircraft was one of those excessive claims under the guise of security concerns.
Every security measure, even those which are essential, is a victory for terrorists, for they infringe on the rights of all of the people who are’t terrorists. Keeping the measures to the absolute minimum level required to do the job and applying good judgement in applying those measures is the duty of everyone concerned with opposing terrorism.
The BA crew failed and handed the terrorists a free victory which they could have denied them.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.
I think Ben Franklin said that in reference to giving up liberty to the government, not the captain of a jetliner.
plus �a change.
When I was 15 I made a statement at a prayer meeting that we should have more freedom at our church service. That maybe a little less structure would be a good thing.
An older gentlemen said, “Oh that’s a great idea! The next thing you’ll be suggesting is swinging from the chandeliers!”
It made an interesting name for our youth group:
“Swinging Chandliers.” (Chandelier Swingers was bit too risque for church in the 70’s)
More power to all of us who are willing to “swing from the chandeliers.”
plus �a change. — with a link to the Abrams case.
What a laughably inadequate comparison.
I mean, sheesh.
there are many things I am “laughably inadequate” about, but this comparison — if you read the case — is not one. Note the parallel in arguments, on both sides.
I have been converted!
Another atrocity in post-Constitutional America! It’s a terrible 9/11 loss of freedom, when a man can’t even wear a “Suspected Terrorist” button on an airplane. A button’s part of who you are, just like being Middle-Eastern or Muslim. How can an airline dare infringe on making political statements about being a suspected terrorist, in the name of “safety” and “security”? We must shout to the world about the grave Ashcroftian injustice here!
As far as I’m concerned, Seth, it’s not the point. I don’t care about Gilmore being ejected. Refusing orders on a plane is serious. Declaring the ability to predict emotions of other humans (without any expression of said emotions from the other humans) is ludicrous. Believe me when I tell you I have tried to argue that with a couple’s therapist before….it just don’t work.
What problem I DO have is how the flight attendant came to the conclusion to request the removal of it in the first place. They received no complaints from other passengers, only imagined potential future complaints as a basis for the request. Virgin Atlantic saw no threat of panic, and went on with their duties, looking for “real” and present threats.
I once watched “Behind Enemy Lines” on a plane, complete with terrorists and planes being shot down.
When the pre-requisite for stopping a flight is a judgement of how other passengers might “freak-out” on a plane, then it sure would help me if they published a list of books, magazines, movies, software, fashion, and tattoos that are not allowed. It would make my getting ready for a flight go much easier.
When someone uses “safety” and “security” as reasons for doing something, I am reminded of this quote from Ben Franklin.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Also, when I hear the same arguement over and over again. I think of this quote also by Ben Franklin.
Silence is not always a Sign of Wisdom, but Babbling is ever a folly.
Terrible? Perhaps. It’s _A_ loss of freedom, which achieved no useful security or safety purpose, unless you’d care to suggest that Virgin Atlantic, another British airline, was negligent of the safety and security of its passengers, crew and aircraft?
Hand the terrorists a free victory every time any degree of freedom is needlessly taken away under a security claim.
Before doing anything which compromises rights, have a look a the things which can be done with no civil rights losses. Things like arming pilots in some way, reinforcing the cockpit doors, air mrshalls and self defence training for airline employees compromise no part of the liberty of any passenger but do a lot to reduce the chance of a successful terrorist attack originating from the passenger cabin. It’s only if those measures can’t do the job that there’s need to start restricting liberties to try to stop more terrorist attacks.
I agree with Mr. Gillmore’s right to protest the current posture of our government. I wish he had not chosen one of the very few venues that would be a likely platform for real terrorism.
I happen to be a devout Christian. Let’s say I happened to believe that we Christians are being unfairly stereotyped and harassed because of our beliefs.
There is an abortion clinic near where I live in Boston – next to the Star Market I shop in on Commonwealth Avenue. I often walk by the Planned Parenthood that is right next door. Sometimes I wait there for a ride.
Let’s say I decided to wait in front of that clinic with a T-Shirt that said, “Suspected Christian Fanatic Abortion Doctor Sniper” and I just hung out there for a few hours after buying my grocieries.
The front of an abortion clinic has been a tense place a lot longer than airline cabins. I would think that the doctors there and young women seeking abortions would be quite uncomfortable and I would think they would ask me to leave – despite that I was peaceful and not armed – and not a wacko Christian Fundamentalist who believes in killing abortion doctors or throwing bloody animal fetuses at women seeking abortions.
There are plenty of other venues to fight anti-Christian bigotry – and it wouldn’t be… considerate… of me to start with the people who work at abortion clinics – who, of course, have been scared into fearing die-hard Christians – some of whom have caused them a lot of grief in the past.
Ed
The value of Gilmore doing this on a plan, admitedly an aggresive place to try it? Precisely the level of discussion about free speech and security measure that resulted. Had he chosen a more mild stand, or a less heated venue, the lesson would have been lost.
For that reason, I am glad he did what he did. Maybe if more people start thinking about what does and what does not work at an airport to increase security, the less likely we would be to have to put up with some of the absurd rules they have developed to no discernable benefit.
“doing this on a plan” should, of course, have read “doing this on a plane,” as I hope is now made plain…
Nick said
“No person desiring to do damage on board an airplane would ever try to draw attention to themselves ahead of time. A moment�s thought would clear that up for anyone on the plane.”
That was a reasonable supposition in an age where our understanding of terrorists came from, say, the movie Die Hard. It is after 9/11, and we have seen the behavior of Islamic terrorists. One gets the impression that the most important training of terrorist recruits is that which prevents them from screaming “I will smite you in the name of Allah!” at any particular moment.
“It is after 9/11, and we have seen the behavior of Islamic terrorists. One gets the impression that the most important training of terrorist recruits is that which prevents them from screaming �I will smite you in the name of Allah!� at any particular moment.”
I couldn’t disagree more. The 9/11 hijackers blended in with society for years.
Only a fool would try to draw attention to themselves if they had the intent to do harm at an airport. That would be counterproductive, self-defeating. They would be stopped early and often in today’s environment. We all know this, having been taught the importance of not saying the word ‘bomb’ at an airport. Terrorists know this too.
I have to say, my first instinct was to support John Gilmore, but upon reading Seth Finkelstein’s well-reasoned arguments, I changed my view. It’s a hard call, but I think it was appropriate to eject John Gilmore from the flight.
A question for all those who support Gilmore’s action — do you disregard the possibility that some people (yes, they’re idiots, but idiots fly on airplanes too) might have seen the button and thought that there was something official about this button. Yes, it’s preposterous, and I am laughing even as I entertain this idea, but frankly, we live in such insane times that it’s impossible to rule out a situation in which the Feds would begin to make people wear stickers or buttons identifying them as “Suspected Terrorists.” You know, for those people who were on a “watch list,” but the inspectors couldn’t find anything in their bags and had to let them board the plane — “Sir, as someone on the watch list, you are required to wear this button for the duration of the flight.”
Seriously, folks — in the age of Total Information Awareness and Terror Futures gambling underwritten by the Department of Defense, can you really rule out a regulation that requires people to wear a “Suspected Terrorist” identifying tag when they fly?
And if you cannot rule it out, then you must accept that some people aboard that flight MIGHT have supposed that he really was a Suspected Terrorist. Yes, go ahead, chuckle all you want, but it’s possible. You must admit it.
You can’t say, “Read his message! He says nobody was disturbed by it!” It was an eleven hour flight — somebody as attention-hungry as him would be likely to move about the cabin; and at the very least, he would get up to go to the bathroom. So it’s likely that people would see it, and start whispering, and folks who are not the liberal, sardonic net-heads that you and I are might suppose the worst — that the button was “official,” and might “freak out.” So just because nobody was bothered by it at the moment, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have been bothered later.
Doesn’t that possibility, as preposterous as it is — that the button would be perceived as official, and that somebody might “freak out” — support the actions of BA?
Why do we have to live in an age of “Total Information Awareness”? I am a law abiding citizen, why do I need to be watched and tracked 24x7x365.3?
Well, it does matter that BA is a corporation and not a government entity. Businesses have to make decisions all the time according to the mindset of their customers. If they think that someone’s attire is going to disturb other people on the plane, they should have some leeway to act on that. (Yes, I realize that the “customer preference” argument was used during the desegration cases by hotels and restaurants in the ’60s – but that doesn’t mean that businesses should have no discretion at all.)
I have no problem with a corporation saying that Mr. Gillmore’s right to wear what he wants is not as important as the other passenger’s rights to feel comfortable. Naturally, we can come up with more difficult choices – such as people required to wear religious-related attire that might scare other passengers. But telling Mr. Gillmore to remove his button seems an easy choice.
Besides – Mr. Gillmore claims his beef is really with the government and not with private corporations. (I understand they cooperate at airports)
I might be more sympathetic if his protest hit his target more squarely (he ended up facing off against a private corporation’s policy and not government scrutiny). Maybe if he wore such a button and confronted government employees trying to enter the Washington Monument – and did not inconvenience many other innocent travelers – I would be more supportive of this particular form of protest.
Ed
by the same logic, James, what level of being “bothered” by a button or a t-shirt, is it acceptable to request the removal of it ?
My aunt is quite bothered by my “Circle Jerks” punk-rock t-shirt. My friend Bryan is “annoyed”, but not “bothered” by my baseball hat, and my elderly next door neighbor is “shocked” when she saw the cover of my Prince CD I had for sale, “LoveSexy”.
if flight attendants are to be cautious/sensitive/prude-ish when it comes to evaluating what is appropriate for the mind-state of the rest of the passengers, what level of prude-ish are we talking about ? Catholic Nun prude-ish, San Francisco prude-ish, or British sitcom prude-ish ?
what level of sensitivity should one go with, when your job is to predict the emotions of other passengers — the sensitivity of Trent Lott, Milton Berle, or Maureen Dowd ?
and finally– how cautious should one be when trying to figure out what Mary in seat 5F will be upset when seeing ? Army Ranger cautious, Jery Garcia cautious, or the cautiousness shown in the smiling face of a flight attendant portrayed in an ad for British Airways ?
when ‘reasonable request’ is based on not reality, but perceived paranoia, there’s not a lot of black and white going on.
James,
No, I can’t rule out the possibility that somebody will someday make people wear a button indicating they are on the watch list. Stupider things have happened.
But that wouldn’t change anything. Why would someone on the plane find this disquieting? If a person was on the watch list, examined at the airport, passed, but told to wear a button anyway, that would tell me that airport security had so thoroughly inspected this guy that they got him to put a button on. Furthermore the guy is cooperating to the point of leaving the button on even after he is out of sight of the authorities. Clearly this guy is no threat, despite his name appearing on some list.
Once again, no threat.
Sigh… so many hysterical lemmings…
People who are arguing that John Gilmore should have shut up and done as he was told — you ever thought about the meaning of the word “freedom”?
Yes, I see your points — about flight attendant prudishness and the fact that he would seem to have been fully inspected and therefore pose no threat.
Still, I think Gilmore’s stunt was a bit of massively inconsiderate showmanship and I suspect that Gilmore anticipated, and even secretly hoped, that something like this would happen. We’ve all been taught not to provoke people on airlines with talk of guns and bombs and terrorists, and indeed this need to toe the line has become all the more imperative since 9/11. It’s a simple fact — most flight attendants, airline pilots, and law enforcement folks are not Ivy League smart. They’re not as comfortable with hypotheticals and abstract political theorizing as many of Gilmore’s defenders seem to be.
The insistence that it is somehow a terrible trampling of his rights, to make him take off the “Suspected Terrorist” button, seems to reflect the academic isolation of many of the people who read this page. You’re highly educated and you’re idealistic. Unfortunately, your asumptions about the way things SHOULD be do not really stand up in the face of today’s world — the un-intellectual reality of flight attendants, security forces, and pilots who deal with hundreds of people every day in a setting of heightened security.
This appears to be a situation in which a lot of intellectuals are indignant that the world is unyielding in the face of their nice little hypothetical.
> A question for all those who support Gilmore�s action � do you disregard
> the possibility that some people might have seen the button and thought
> that there was something official about this button.
Do we ignore the possibility? No.
Do we feel that it would be a general source of panic? No.
Do we ignore the possibility that one person (in 6 billion) might panic? No.
Do we feel that the rights of the general public should be restricted based on the possible panic of a single individual? No.
Basically, a general member of the public might be confused. The staff of the airline should be trained well enough that it would not be confused. The staff of the airline should be able to explain that the button is not official to members of the general public. The staff of an airline should be prepared to deal with passengers who have worries about terrorists.
Look at it from the government point of view. They want heightened surveillance of everyone. The fact that other passengers will pay extra attention to a “suspected terrorist” is a good thing in their view. The government would appear to want everyone to be watched by the eagle-eyed busy-body sitting across the aisle and any negative behavior reported (remember Operation TIPS), so they should be overjoyed if someone misinterprets John’s button as an official pin.
There are also people who think anyone who looks “Arabic” is a potential terrorist and feel uncomfortable flying with them. The solution is not to prevent such a person from flying but to help the public feel comfortable and to give reasonable steps to allay fears to those passengers who need them.
Brian asked:
You don’t. Or rather, while knowing what you were doing every waking moment would be the ultimate way to prevent terrorism, our society would deem that overly invasive (although in the opinion of one felonious ex-Admiral it is apparently eminently sensible).
The difference here of course is that you aren’t on an airplane with 200 other people 24x7x365.3, and you aren’t liable to be turning that plane into a weapon of mass destruction by flying it into a building 24x7x365.3. That distinction seems lost on those on the other side, who are insisting that airport security is constituting an unreasonable search which should cease forthwith. Gilmore’s reason for wearing the button was to point out that all airline passengers are suspected terrorists; you can’t be a suspected terrorist unless you are being searched and researched, that’s what “suspected” means last time I looked. Gilmore and his supporters object to the information gathering and searching.
The alternative is to not do the information gathering and searching. That means you don’t catch any real terrorists that might be present in the population. You let them do whatever they’re going to do, and rationalize it as acceptable losses in the cause of freedom, liberty, or “not letting the terrorists win.” I disagree with this attitude.
Prof. Lessig brought up the Abrams case (very interesting read) and said this was a similar thing. If Gilmore had been arrested and thrown in jail for wearing the button I might agree, but this wasn’t the case. Gilmore was denied service by a private corporation, not even a domestic corporation unless British Airways is incorporated in the US, but in any case it was not a violation of his civil rights. Gilmore is free to wear his button in public places. An airliner is not a public place, it is private property of the airline. I have the right to not wear shoes or a shirt while I walk down the street, and McDonalds has the right to refuse me service if I walk into their establishment (un)dressed in that fashion.
Prof. Lessig,
IANAL, and yet:
there are many things I am ?laughably inadequate? about, but this comparison ? if you read the case ? is not one. Note the parallel in arguments, on both sides.
In Abrams, the government’s argument was that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to seditious libel [as established by Schenk v. US], and therefore the Espionage Act is perfectly constitutional. It didn’t matter where exactly the offending speech was promulgated; what mattered was that the speech itself appeared to urge workers to stop producing ammunition for the war.
In Gilmore’s case, noone, noone is saying that wearing the button on the street, on a rally, on a cover of the Reason magazine, is in any way objectionable. The only objections are to wearing it on a plane, a place where freedom of speech as at least as restricted as in a theater. Wearing a button might not be the equivalent of shouting fire, yet it is not inconceivable that it might create a panic among some of the more impressionable and gullible passengers. In any case, noone denies that Gilmore’s button is an example of political speech enjoying full First Amendment protection — it’s the claim that such protection applies on an airplane that is under dispute. That is one reason why your analogy appears to be very poor to me, though there are others as well (such as the obvious fact that Gilmore was not accused of breaking any law).
“most flight attendants, airline pilots, and law enforcement folks are not Ivy League smart. They�re not as comfortable with hypotheticals”
they don’t need to be Ivy League smart to do their job, and they had better be comfortable with hypotheticals, since I can’t imagine an effective Flight Attendant training course without such things.
To date, since being involved in this discussion, I have learned a great many things. The cost of my learning these things are probably found in the high blood pressure of Seth and Richard Bennett, and probably the missed connections and frustrations of the passengers aboard the plane with Gilmore.
Probably the most important thing I have learned is *NOT* that being involved in any way with the word ‘terrorism’ on a plane can get you in trouble, but that flight attendants CAN, and will, without any known consistency at all, stop you from flying, for any reason they see fit, whether or not that reason has any basis in reality on Earth.
They can do that, because they alone have the ability to define what is “a reasonable request”, even if each new definition of “reasonable” has no precedent, or mention in airline policy. Carte Blanche.
Getting used to that fact doesn’t mean I am happy about it.
“I couldn�t disagree more. The 9/11 hijackers blended in with society for years.”
You mean like when Mohammed Atta tried to get a government loan official to lend him money for a cropduster, and when she refused, threatened to cut her throat, stared at an aerial photo of Washington D.C., and asked about security at various landmarks?
“Only a fool would try to draw attention to themselves if they had the intent to do harm at an airport. That would be counterproductive, self-defeating.”
These are people who blow themselves up in the hope of going to paradise and collecting six dozen virgins. Trying to predict their behavior by analogy with how you or I might behave is pointless.
Sigh? so many hysterical lemmings?
*Sigh*… so many silly trolls.
People who are arguing that John Gilmore should have shut up and done as he was told ? you ever thought about the meaning of the word ?freedom??
Yep. You nailed it. They never have. No sirree.
They couldn’t find the word “freedom” in a dictionary if their life depended on it.
You managed to see through the clutter of irrelevant details and discovered the heart of the case.
Now pat yourself on the back and go find another debate that needs your piercing insight and your unique fog-clearing ability.
At some point, each side in a confrontation needs to decide when to back down. John decided that it was worth forcing the plane to turn around (probably causing some fellow passengers to miss their connections) instead of backing down and taking off the button for the duration of the flight so that he could make a political protest. He is responsible for that decision.
British Air also made a decision for which they are responsible. Given that fewer than 0.001% of British Air’s customers care about John’s political views on free speech (or are outright antagonistic to his views when those views are purposely meant to inconvenience other customers), and that quite frankly only a small number of us care about John’s views any more than we care about the views of Pat Robertson, British Air acted pretty safely.
Saying “you could be next” is only appropriate when doing something that more than a small number of people would want to do even if they could. Few of us want to cause other people on an airplane to have to wait for us to be punished for making minor political statements.
“He is responsible for that decision.”
and the flight attendant making the judgement call is responsible for initially making the removal request. On Virgin Atlantic, it wasn’t a “political statement”, it was just some guy with a button, and apparently not worth it to them to deal with.
Is Virgin guilty of neglecting a potential security issue ? Or did they properly evaluate the situation as dismissable in light of other, more important “threats” ?
I think BA’s decision to eject Gilmore from the flight is based on a desire not to get into slippery slope issues as to what is acceptable and what isn’t. Since you Gilmore supporters love hypotheticals, try this one on: the arguments made here in favor of Gilmore would seem to support the right-to-fly of a passenger who boards the flight wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words, “I’m gonna bomb this flight … Just kidding!” Or a t-shirt that says, “I love bombs.” Why shouldn’t people be allowed to wear these garments on an international flight? They’ve been searched and their bags contain nothing objectionable. And after all, on the jacket he says he’s just kidding; and as to the t-shirt, well, bombs are used in just wars and certainly were useful in defeating Hitler and Saddam, so why shouldn’t he be able to say he loves them?
The decision to eject such people from the flight may indeed be repugnant to those of you who would defend Gilmore. But I think there’s something more here — a feeling that to allow him to fly is to open up the skies to wackos with strange agendas, and to open the door to other things that might pose a more real risk. The suggestion has been made above that the button itself is a sign that the person is unstable (as would be the hypothetical jacket or the t-shirt). I think that is right on the money.
Exactly, James. And if you need a middle point between “Suspected terrorist” and “I?m gonna bomb this flight ? Just kidding!?, try “The government suspects I’m gonna bomb this flight.”
“the arguments made here in favor of Gilmore would seem to support the right-to-fly of a passenger who boards the flight wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words, �I�m gonna bomb this flight � Just kidding!� Or a t-shirt that says, �I love bombs.�
This keeps coming up, and I keep returning to the idea that people are taking the words “Suspected terrorist” and putting the wrong meaning there. Your examples, James, refer to someone describing himself. “I” will bomb, “I” love bombs. That’s entirely different, and would make you worry about the sanity or convictions of the person wearing such a shirt.
What Gilmore wore was nothing of the kind. Nobody “suspects” anything of his or herself. Suspicion comes externally. Internally, we know. So anyone seeing that shirt would see that Gilmore wasn’t saying anything about himself, just how he was being viewed by others.
Yes, yes, I know, thanks to functional illiteracy, there will always be someone who sees the word “terrorist” and thinks “there’s a terrorist!” while missing the context and meaning.
I don’t want to go in circles on this, and I appreciate the reasoned words from folks on all sides. But if could stamp one thing out of these arguments it is the incorrect reading of Gilmore’s statement. He wasn’t saying anything about his own intentions or thoughts. There was no “I” there.
“BA�s decision to eject Gilmore from the flight is based on a desire not to get into slippery slope issues as to what is acceptable and what isn�t”
No, it’s not. It’s based on their �Conditions of Carriage� policy. His ejection technically has nothing to do with the content of his button. He was ejected because he refused an order from the crew relating to security. They could ask him to stop humming “Eye of the Tiger” and if he refused, they can . If they ‘order’ him to do something related to safety or security (in their opinion)…that is all that is required to boot him.
Again, to be clear: he did *not* get booted from the plane for wearing the button. Please don’t mistakenly think it was. He got booted because he didn’t comply with their request to take it off, which I actually agree with. It’s in the rules, right there.
What is NOT in the rules is a consistent policy on what is or is not is a “reasonable request”. That policy can apparently change as quickly as wind speed.
James, I know one person who has a tatoo that is clearly visible that reads “Death from above”. Strangely enough they have not been asked to cover it (or to remove a layer of their epidermis). I know a number of people who wear t-shirts that read Kill ’em all,let God sort ’em out[they are gamers]. Strangely enough, they have never been forced to have the disrobe (or have the plane turn around).
But I guess those are just good politics instead of bad ones.
> He was ejected because he refused an order from the crew relating to security.
Uhmm.. one of the points is that the order was not relating to security.
If it was then the plane would be safer after the order was carried out.
The plane would not have been safer, so it was not security related, so
the order was not valid and violated BA’s terms of service.
“one of the points is that the order was not relating to security.”
one would think that, huh ? what boggles the mind is that they would argue that it *is* related to security, because the potential source of ‘panic’ would be removed, and then passengers wouldn’t panic, because they couldn’t read the button. A state of panic, in their opinion, constitutes a security situation.
the problem with that of course, is that no state of panic happened. Such a state of panic was imagined and predicted by the Infinite Wisdom of the flight attendant so a Pre-Emptive Reasonable Request(tm) was made.
A Pre-Emptive Reasonable move could also be to not serve alcoholic drinks on flights using the same logic, but that doesn’t happen, ever.
Nick writes:
> I still maintain this is all an issue of illiteracy. His button said absolutely
> nothing about himself, merely how he was being viewed by others.
Lack of comfort with irony, perhaps, but not illiteracy. The button (IMHO poorly worded) is intentionally ambiguous and multilayered in meaning. You may know in advance what particular meaning is advocated by the this particular wearer in this particular setting, but this is based on a lot of outside knowledge besides just the words on the button. A security screener might rightly try out other meanings to see how well they fit.
Nick continues:
> A simple thought would make one realize that a person with real intent to
> harm would never, ever wear something that had the word �terrorism� in
> it.
Simple, yes; true, maybe. If true, why the prohibition against making jokes with the security personnel security issues? This strikes me as a good rule to have, since I think it probably improves security. Not all terrorists will behave according to ideal rules of logic, and a person making nervous jokes about bombing the plane deserves greater scrutiny.
Jianying Ji writes:
> It would be quite interesting if the button said: �you are a suspected
> terrorist� Brings the point home much more, doesn�t it.
Yes, that strikes me as a clearer and more effective button, particularly if one’s goal is education on the issues of affecting airline travel instead of shock effect. Probably too long to put on a button, though.
J writes:
> Again, to be clear: he did *not* get booted from the plane for wearing
> the button. Please don�t mistakenly think it was. He got booted because
> he didn�t comply with their request to take it off, which I actually agree
I agree too. And likely, the manner in which the request was rejected influenced the judgement of the flight attendant. A polite rational explanation of what the button meant and why he was wearing it might well have won the flight attendant over to his side and raised her consciousness of the issues. I’m guessing this was not the tone or nature of his response, and that the response given raised rather than lowered her suspicions.
Fuzzy writes:
> Uhmm.. one of the points is that the order was not relating to security.
> If it was then the plane would be safer after the order was carried out.
> The plane would not have been safer, so it was not security related, so
> the order was not valid and violated BA�s terms of service.
But it was related to security, at least in the eye of the flight attendant who did not feel comfortable having this person on her plane. And removing him did make the plane safer, at least so far as the (nervous, jittery) flight crew didn’t have to waste their attention watching his every move, and could concentrate on more potentially more serious issues.
Anatoly writes:
> Exactly, James. And if you need a middle point between �Suspected
> terrorist� and �I?m gonna bomb this flight ? Just kidding!?, try �The
> government suspects I�m gonna bomb this flight.�
Does anyone have a good answer to this hypothetical T-shirt? To me, the message sounds pretty similar to Gilmore’s button. Mind you, I like the discussion, and I generally like Gilmore; I just happen to think that BA acted appropriately. The questions of what the limits are and how these limits are related to actual airline security are great.
James,
Mr Gilmore wrote that he “zero expectation that my refusal to doff a button would result in the captain returning the plane to the gate”.
That deosn’t sound like a preconceived plan or secret hope. It does sound like the captain neglecting to inform the passenger how the captain was taking the issue, which denied the passenger the option of taking off the buttton to avoid inconveniencing the other passengers
By wearing the “”Suspected Terrorist” button John Gilmore could have caused the passengers a panic. Removing the button would not solve the problem. Mr Gilmore could still have caused the passengers to panic simply by uttering the phrase “I am a suspected terrorist.” Clearly Mr Gilmore would have to be gagged to ensure the safety of the aircraft.
I don’t know about you but sitting next to a gagged man, that was not restrained, on an airplane would very likely cause me to panic. Clearly Mr Gilmore would have to be gagged and handcuffed to his seat to to ensure the saftey of the aircraft. At this point the Hannibal Lecter like appearance of Mr Gilmore could very well cause people to panic. I know I would feel very uncomfortable sitting next to him.
Might it not be easier to ban Mr Gilmore from flying for the rest of his life? Unfortunatley that wont work. Sure we could ban Mr Gilmore and other identified terrorists but what about that guy in seat 34E. Is he a terrorist or not? No one can say for sure.
The solution is to restrain all the passengers. (Some people might suggest sedating all the passengers. Due to allegies, etc this is not such a good idea.) Even if the passengers panic it no longer matters. They can no longer harm themselves or others.
Clearly all passengers have to be restrained to ensure the safety of the aircraft.
Clearly most of congress should be sedated and restrained for fear of hurting themselves or better yet, hurting us. Ahh the insanity of it all….
Perhaps mr gilmore’s button should have read:
Suspected Terrorist
Disclaimer: The views represented on this button do not represent the views of the airline or any of it’s representatives. Viewer discretion is advised.
Hi, Nate,
First, I want to thank you for making your points on a basis of whether or not John Gilmore is a rotten human being. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but many–perhaps most, but I haven’t counted—of the postings which took positions similar to yours took a different tack, and I guess that’s sad.
Second, I wanted to agree with you that the phrasing of the ‘Suspected Terrorist’ button isn’t the best. If it were mine, that button would have said ‘You Are A Suspected Terrorist’. Keep in mind, though, that’s awfully hard to put on a button one inch in diameter. I think it’d have to go up to one and a half, minimum, especially since you’d want the word ‘You’ both bold and larger in font. A nice big–two-plus inches–button could use the letters A S T (Are A Suspected Terrorist) in a mirror image of the TSA logo and colors. Very efffective.
I still think the BA drastically overreacted, but the poor wording of the button didn’t help. I’d do it diffferently, if I were planning to do it–but there’s the thing. I’m still bitter over a twenty-year old first amendment battle lost because the wrong person held the permit and, once he was ticketed, did things which ruined any possibility of winning our case locally. Worse, another but very similar incident went to the Supreme Court. Ours was the perfect test case. The other was not, and the case was decided wrongly (in my opinion).
The point? Contingency and fortune play a major role in the day-to-day exercise of the first amendment. We planned our events to be legally defensible, knowing we were on fresh ground. What happened? Chance, and not knowing that day was the day, defeated us.
If Gilmore had this to do over, perhaps he might’ve planned it. In my opinion, he did not show any signs of having planned.
He might’ve picked a different button. He might’ve had the copy of Reason on his lap. If he’d boarded the plane earlier, there might’ve been more time for calm talk. If a different attendant had first spotted the button, the conversation might’ve taken a different turn.
I also appreciate that (again, unlike other posters) you say Gilmore might not have made “a polite rational explanation of what the button meant and why he was wearing it [which] might well have won the flight attendant over to his side and raised her consciousness of the issues. I�m guessing this was not the tone or nature of his response, and that the response given raised rather than lowered her suspicions.”
What you say sounds reasonable, but it doesn’t fit practice as I know it. As my boss at my last job used to say, “You can put Johnnie in front of any customer.” The customer in front of which I proved this fact over and over is one of the largest and most demanding IT organizations in the world, people known for humiliating vendors by stripping them of their vendor badges and publicly walking them out the building. It happened to people in our group, people better in most ways than myself–but not to me. I can keep my cool–especially verbally–in tense situations.
And yet every time I hear or read an account of something I’ve done in regard to free speech, I read about someone I do not recognize. More to the point, claims like aggressive rudeness are made about everyone who ever steps out of line. To someone sufficiently convinced of the rightness of his or her actions, words such as “I’m sorry, officer, but I don’t believe that’s a legal request,” no matter how sincere the smile and how open the body language, are percieved (and often written up!) as “Screw you, pig,” with one fist clenched and the other flipping the bird.
There’s a very real tendency these days–exemplified by the passion with which some posters here on this topic are debating whether to Medvedev Gilmore, or just Solzhenitsyn him–to make every disagreement with policy literally a federal case, the most egregious example being Ann Coulter’s Treason, wherein most every Democrat of our time is lined up for the gallows (why am I unsurprised to discover in the Salon interview that Coulter is a Deadhead?), but there are many more, and this thread is just one of them.
That’s why this discussion has generated such heat. It’s not about Gilmore and the button. There’s a new style of America being cranked up right now, and those who live in the old, weird, eccentric America–an America free in more than word alone–well, we ain’t altogether welcome.
Odd that it took right-radicalism to expose both my conservatism and my patriotism–I suspect there’s more oddness in store for us all.
Anyway, Nate, thanks for elevating the discussion. I still disagree with your conclusions, but you know what? You’ve presented your thoughts in a way that makes it possible to discuss and disagree rather than simply spit back insults. I appreciate that more than you may know.
All the best,
John A
In the first sentence above, that should read “for not making your points”.
My apologies!
I am probably way behind the argument here, but these points came to mind about whether or not actually wearing the button is a threat.
1. Not everyone is a Harvard law professor – is it really that unlikely that people would not understand the “point” and would think that this was some kind of label, perhaps applied by airport authorities to indicate someone whos was to be “watched” (in essence, a small step from one issue Gilmore higlights, that certain peope are tagged by authorities for closer inspection because of the “label” of their swarthy complexion)?
2. Would a foreign traveller with a poor (or no) command of English be more likely to take the button as a literal label? What if that person was from a country in which such physical labeling is still used?
3. I have flown on a flight that was transporting a prisoner. The prisoner was in clearly marked clothing and accompanied by a marshall. Tensions ran a little higher on that flight.
In the end, I am simply saying that labels can be taken literally and perhaps, in light of a more (less?) open view of the comprehension level of some passengers, the actions of the airline are not unreasonable. Do the people who are not hip, smart and cool enough to “get” Gilmore’s statement not deserve to feel safe?
A point no one has commented on:
Up above in this thread, Sean Broderick said that “common carrier transportation is not a suitable venue for protest of any kind”.
Students of recent American history may wonder, “Did the racist mob tell that to the Freedom Riders before or after they were dragged off the bus and beaten? Or was it while the bus was being burned?” Fortunately, the issue was decided some few years later by one Rosa Parks.
As events proved, there was a real danger of violence if the Freedom Riders proceeded. It’s also worth noting that the Freedom Riders were warned by the bus driver, whose orders they disobeyed–and that the bus driver (or station personnel) may well have colluded with the mob.
I think the blanket argument Sean advances must be abandoned.
If an airline captain decides that he doesn’t like a passenger on his plane and ejects him, in a manner inconsistent with federal law or general common carrier law, he — and the airline — can no doubt be sued for damages. The airline may decide that that pilot’s bad for business and fire him, union grieveance procedures or not.
But is there any question that he should not be enjoined from doing so no matter how arbitrary the reason? He’s the captain, for Pete’s sake.
When I was on a DC-10 out of San Francisco that nearly blew up — some smoke in the cabin, a wicked shimmy and a series of extremely large bangs (a problem similar, though less severe than the one that took down UA232 in Souix City), I appreciated the fact that there was dictatorial authority on that plane, thank you very much.
He ought to go ahead and sue — and maybe he’s right — but I’ll side with the captain’s discretion ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
And by the same token, maybe the inconvenienced passengers will sue Mr. Gilmore, who knows?
Shame on you Rosa! You should have known better than to wear that “Suspected Negro” button on a bus. You knew all too well that racial tensions were high and your actions would only inflame passions and do nothing to promote your cause. What about the other passengers on the bus? Did you think of them? There was a real possibility that the dimmer-witted among them would have panicked and caused an onboard mutiny. There was a distinct possibility that riots could have broken out all over town and real lives would be lost. All for a silly little button.
Sure, there were probably some sympathizers on the bus with you, but they were only looking for a ride home; they weren’t looking to make a political statement. And why didn’t you listen to the driver? He is merely trying to do his job. Do you know how hard it is to concentrate on driving when you have passengers who don’t cooperate? Surely you agree that the driver is soverign on his bus. His duty is to provide for the saftey and comfort of all passengers. You knew that and disobeyed an order anyway. Make no mistake, you were arrested for not complying with a direct request from the driver. The problem was *not* caused by segregation laws.
And it’s not like if would have been much of an inconvience. All you had to do is remove the button and head to the back of the bus. A good faith effort to comply with the law after your initial protest would surely have been more effective in winning over your
adversaries.
It’s time to stop the charade and quit your grandstanding. We don’t buy that “I was too tired to move to the back of the bus” business. You knew full well that your action would cause a ruckus. In fact we know that was you plan before you even got on the bus. Who are *you* to try and challenge the lawful authority? What gall! No one was forcing you to take the bus. Why don’t you walk if you disagree with busing regulations? Egotistical celebrity seekers like you are exactly what’s wrong with this country. Look what problems you cause. I hope you are happy.
As we know, buses require 20 minutes and 10,000 feet of perfectly level asphalt to come to a stop. Moreover, if you kick the window out of a bus, the explosive decompression which follows can be wicked.
Finally, of course, when a bus crashes everyone, invariably, dies.
Greg – Are you seriously comparing Gilmore to Rosa Parks? Grab the reigns and slow down.
Bus – public transportation
Airplane – private
Rosa – legally segregated as a result of the color of her skin
Gilmore – kicked off a plane at discretion of pilot because he wore a button
Rosa – risked life and limb doing what she did
Gilmore – risked showing up late for a speech and losing his $5000 fee.
Is every kid who wears a “F#*@ Authority” t-shirt to middle school equivalent to Rosa Parks?
The past couple of years have reinforced my belief that your constitutional rights are like your muscles – if you don’t exercise them, they will eventually go away.
Freedom of speech is often inconvenient, especially to authoritarian types such as attorneys general, cabinet officers, presidents and premiers.
Gilmore’s button may contain a disturbing message, but all that is required to prevent individual consternation or fear is to read the message and think about what it means. No one who does so would have further reason to be afraid, if in fact anyone would be afraid in the first place.
In the “incident,” it’s apparent no one was afraid; the thing was sparked by a flight attendant who refused to think, or who perhaps *disagreed with what Gilmore had to say.*
I maintain that the appropriate response in such case would be to summarize one’s opposing viewpoint, rather than to attempt to harm the person with whom one disagrees.
Yeah, a population endowed with First Amendment rights requires accommodation and allowances. Sometimes we can be an inconvenience.
That beats the hell out of acting like a bunch of sheep, condemned to sit down, shut up and thank God for our miserable lives, perhaps in the Church of the Arc of Ashcroft.
Re: “acting like a bunch of sheep”, let me just point out that the surest way to lose a right is to abuse it. The Supreme Court ruled this session that the KKK doesn’t have a first amendment right to burn crosses, as this action by now conveys a simple intent to intimidate, and nobody’s fooled any more (except the ACLU).
Passengers wearing buttons on airplanes bearing ambiguous messages intended to intimidate flight crews falls somewhere very close to cross-burning territory, of course.
If you don’t like John Ashcroft, or you don’t like airline safety, or you don’t like America, or capitalism, or women’s rights, or Christianity, or whatever, there are lots of ways to convey your opinion without threatening or inconveniencing others, so the responsible thing is to use those methods.
Gilmore should get a blog and leave airline passengers going places for a reason alone. They didn’t ask to be part of his jihad, and protests like this do more harm to the cause of civil liberties than good.
“They didn�t ask to be part of his jihad, and protests like this do more harm to the cause of civil liberties than good.”
Not arguing here, but what do you mean by that ? Because of Gilmore, they’ll start sweeping for political buttons in the airport parking lot, not just the airplane ?
At the very least, it has brought more people to the topic of civil liberties in evaluating whether or not Gilmore’s choice was a good one or not.
By your admission that civil liberties do have importance, can you give an example of a case that you think IS important to civil liberties ?
http://www.iraqwar.ru/iraq-read_article.php?articleId=14555&lang=en
… work for a small pacifist magazine called War Times …
… strip-searched repeatedly when travelling through US airports …
… 71-year-old nun from Milwaukee who was prevented from flying to Washington…
I think John has the better of this.
How about not being allowed to fly because of a book you’re reading, which can be bought on Amazon:
http://www.citypaper.net/articles/101801/news.godfrey.shtml
the book has a picture of a hand holding dynamite, and they refused to allow him to fly. He didn’t make it even to the plane.
I’m not defending Gilmore, but by these standards, any Time or Newsweek with a “disturbing” (according to a flight attendant’s sole judgement) cover should not be allowed on the plane, either, forget about having them available for free. Consistency, people….it’s not too much to ask.
Richard —
Virgin Atlantic’s flight crew must be a little bit thicker-skinned, then ?
Look, all I’m saying is that it’s not too hard to ban certain materials from getting onto a plane…it happens already with explosives, etc.
One thing the airlines should learn from this: add “political buttons” (or whatever) to that restricted list (along with whatever other ‘expressions’), and get flight attendents out of the soothsaying business. They have enough to do already with judging people’s _behaviour_ as troublesome, without having to predict a “possible” situation based on someone’s appearance.
And before anyone calls Gilmore wearing the button as “behaviour”…that behaviour would have been judged much more effectively if its content showed up on a ‘restricted’ list set down in the airline’s carriage rules and policies, and the “gray areas” would go away.
j, we’ve covered all of that already: speech, appearance, and behavior are clues to attitude, and that’s the clue to air rage, hijacking, crimes of violence, and all manner of problem behavior. Airline people are expert at reading these clues, and that’s part of what they’re paid for.
Gilmore is more a bell hooks (“A Killing Rage”) than a Rosa Parks, although Parks herself was an NAACP board member and not simply an ordinary maid tired after a hard day’s work – she was a plant, in other words, but a good one, not an amateur like Gilmore.
And on the general subject of civil liberties, there’s been much more erosion of privacy and due process in the name of child support, divorce, and domestic violence than in the name of keeping the Internet free of porn and the skies free of loonies. Don’t get me started.
I’m just curious. When exactly did the terrorist profile change from Arabic Islamists to aging long-haired hippies?
damn it….I get so close to agreeing with you, Richard, but there’s always some small, tiny thing that sticks out in your posts that I can’t help but reply to.
Here’s how I would say what you just said:
“speech and behavior are clues to air rage, hijacking, crimes of violence, and all manner of problem behavior.”
attitude is irrelevant, unless it’s expressed. (Can you tell what I’m thinking now ?)
appearance should be irrelevant, except for cases of being physically disturbing (a Carmen Miranda hat, crown of barbed wire, etc.) and if it is to be emotionally disturbing through interpretation, then put it on a damn “restricted” list. Saying the word “bomb” (or forms of it) at airport security is explicitly spelled out on a list, then why can’t written communication (worn or not) be restricted as well ?
Let’s face it: a whole hell of a lot of headache, time, blood pressure, and money could be saved if there was just plain-old outright censorship on a plane, in the name of security. As we can see, it’ll happen anyway…just make it more efficient.
I’m not being sarcastic about the censorship. At least it would be consistent. Why wouldn’t just a list of ‘restricted’ words or topics work ?
Attitude – or “intent” if you’d rather have a legalism – is the only thing that matters for those charged with protecting the public safety pre-emptively, j. Lists of “banned words” are stridently superficial and overwhelmingly literal. We’re dealing with people here, not programs.
Richard, when you say “the surest way to lose a right is to abuse it” you are so near to the correct formulation, the one C. Wright Mills phrased all those years ago in The Power Elite. If I could find the book (still moving in), I’d quote it–as it is, you’ll have to accept the gist of it:
Actual freedom of speech exists in inverse proportion to the effectiveness of that speech.
Mills’ proposition was that civil rights were tolerated so long as they were ineffective in their exercise. For instance, wearing a button as one walks down the street is ineffective and thus tolerated; the same button in a crowd full of people who might be affected by its message is forbidden.
I’d also dispute your characterization of Rosa Parks as a ‘plant’, wonder why you seem to be using bell hooks as an insult (I mean, she knows the meaning of irony–do you?), and so on. As I started up on the first task by re-reading the first few pages of Garrow’s Bearing the Cross, I hit one of those passages that just jumped out of the page and spoke directly to me. It was a good moment, Richard, a very good moment, and somehow, getting engaged with these remarkable arguments of yours led me to it. So thanks.
Ironic yet sincere,
John A
I think for me, what it comes down to is a simple matter of decorum. Safe and orderly air travel in a time of fear and suspicion requires certain expectations of decorum to be respected — and an important part of this decorum is that you will not wear anything with the word “terrorist” on it.
No, I don’t think they initially regarded him as a real threat. But I think they considered his breach of decorum to be serious enough to warrant concern and investigation. And when he refused to comply with the request, it becomes another matter entirely — he’s refusing to obey orders of the pilot. Do you really want to be on a plane where the pilot, faced with an insolent passenger’s refusal to comply, says, “Oh, well, okay,” and just drops it? On a plane they are flying, pilots don’t lose arguments, and that’s how it should be.
It’s not about whether Gilmore himself is a threat. It’s about maintaining the decorum that is essential to the safety and peace of mind of passengers and crew while in flight. They drew a firm line — you don’t wear things with the word “terrorist” on them — and I’m glad they did.
yes….”intent” feels much better. Thanks.
You know, this entire time, I stopped caring about Gilmore and started caring about being able to predict whether or not I would be ‘charged’ with creating a potential panic on a plane because of something I’m reading or watching on my laptop.
I now know that as crazy as it sounds, there is absolutely NO way to predict what will be okay to watch or wear. While probably 99.999% of my books, clothes, and DVD movies would probably be acceptable to have on a plane, the fact that there is not even *vague* guidelines makes any of those chances moot.
What bothered me about the lack of (even a vague attempt) “rules” is that no matter how ‘crazy’ it might sound (“Excuse me, sir, would you please take off that GAP button-down shirt, because their sweatshop practices sometimes produce harsh emotional reaction and we don’t need a panic on this plane.”) there is nothing that can be done to prevent or disagree with those requests.
Would such a request happen ? I can probably say that without a doubt, no. But the fact that it could, unrestrained, just bothers me a little bit.
I’ll stop here, because I think I’ve made my point: I’m slightly bothered.
But I’ll get over it. 🙂
I’m curious how the airline would react if he boarded a flight from Toronto to London with a “I may have been exposed to SARS” button. It’s true, he may have been. It also might be a political statement, given the hysteria about SARS.
But it’s likely to make people on the plane mighty freaking uncomfortable if they’ve got to sit next to the fellow for six hours.
The SARS example would be different. Then he would be talking about himself, and how he could be a threat to others. The button he actually wore told us absolutely nothing about himself, or that he was a threat. Merely how others were viewing him. Thus no threat.
I hate the fact that people have been so intimidated by the current climate of fear that they are willing to just shut up and take whatever is asked of them, no questions asked regardless of the effectiveness of what is being asked. It is at times such as these when it is most important to question authority, or else authority will gobble up whatever they want. For that reason I am glad Gilmore did what he did so that this discussion resulted, and others too. Someone has to show the absurd behavior the airlines have been engaged in, all in the “name” of safety. I, for one, would not want to have the captain walk over to my seat and tell me that he didn’t like the political tone of my conversation with my friend, and to shut up because he’s the captain and on his plane his word is law. Breach of decorum, and all that.
I don’t want to live in a world of decorum, if decorum means shutting up and letting authority do whatever they want without even the possibility of objection.
I see a great deal of concern for the rights of one person who wore something that he knew (and even perhaps hoped) might cause a problem. I see no concern at all for the people who might have missed meetings, weddings, connecting flights or anything else. Is it worth his “First Ammendment Rights” for a *button* for *me* to have to sleep on three airport chairs for 5 hours? Not on your tintype. My gran would have asked him, “Were you raised in a barn?” Did he offer to compensate anyone for his actions? Did he even apologize to anyone else on the flight? This is about just plain old bad manners more than anything else. He just better be glad he won’t meet up with my Gran!
Your Gran would have been happy to note the inconvenience of the other passengers has been discussed. As Gilmore himself pointed out, it was BA that decided to turn the plane around and is responsible for inconveniencing the passengers. As as been discussed ad naseum here, Gilmore posed no threat to safety, and it was clear that he posed no threat to safety. So BA evidently violated their common carrier regulations by having the captain issue orders unrelated to safety and then turn the plane around when Gilmore objected.
Besides, yes, First Amendment rights are worth inconvenience, even had it been Gilmore’s choice to turn the plane around. Throughout history, it has been the people ‘raised in a barn’, metaphorically, that have helped win the rights we now cherish, and which some people seem willing to give away for the illusion of safety, or for the politeness of not bothering others. I would gladly have met up with your Gran and had a pleasant discussion with her about rights.
People keep forgetting that BA was completely within their rights to refuse Gilmore service. Where does it say that common carriers are required to carry anyone without regard to their refusal to obey directives of the flight crew? We can argue about whether the flight crew had a right to order the button removed in the first place (I happen to think they do), but the plane was not turned around and Gilmore was not denied service until he refused to comply with an order from the flight crew. It was a grandstanding power ploy on his part and he deserved to get chucked off the plane. He made his statement and now must accept the consequences.
I was amazed to see Rosa Parks brought into this discussion. Her situation (being denied the right to sit wherever she wished because of her race) has little if anything to do with Gilmore’s being denied the right to wear a stupid button. What harm to society if he has to take off the button? He could have put it on again after he got off the plane!
As far as the inconvenience to the other passengers, I doubt it was that serious. Flights are delayed all the time by weather or mechanical difficulties, and passengers seem to get to their destinations. Far better for passengers to be inconvenienced than allow a disruptive, disobedient passenger to remain on board.
I don’t know how we get from one guy being asked to take off a button to “letting authority do whatever they want without even the possibility of objection,” but that’s just too much of a leap for me to make.
“Where does it say that common carriers are required to carry anyone without regard to their refusal to obey directives of the flight crew?”
Re-read BA’s own rules on this to see that Gilmore violated none of those rules and yet they still refused to carry him. Remember, they spoke with him and saw he was no threat, yet still demanded he remove the button. Safety was not an issue, so the direct order does not apply. Unless you wish to take up the argument that the captain can order anyone to do anything, just because he says so.
“I don�t know how we get from one guy being asked to take off a button to �letting authority do whatever they want without even the possibility of objection,� but that�s just too much of a leap for me to make.”
That’s why you have to be vigilent about such things, for it’s not always obvious which way a society is headed, or where it may wind up, until it’s too late to do anything about it. As for the phrase in question, since it was mine, let me clarify. The captain made an order that violated BA’s own rules of carriage, about an issue that had nothing to do with safety or security, from the reports. So when an authority figure makes a demand that is nonsensical (at least in terms of increasing safety or security), and people here leap to his defense by saying, ‘Hey, it’s his plane, he can do whatever he wants,’ I get uncomfortable. I don’t believe in giving authorities unlimited power or control. If you ‘let authority do whatever they want’, and when we raise objections we are told, ‘hey, quit making such a fuss,’ it becomes what I am talking about.
Tom,
Thanks for the ‘old stuff’ chuckle. I appreciate your point–even if I wouldn’t make the same word choice–and your dropping a nice note on my weblog’s comments. My next post will be “Why I Stopped Weblogging, and Why I Started Up Again”–or maybe I’ll milk it for two posts.
The word ‘hero’ has gotten to be a hot button for me. People apply it to broad classes–“All policemen are heroes”–when common sense would tell them that policemen as a class, like all people, vary in their heroism. Some cops are creeps similar to but worse than the people they arrest.
(I have a particular case in mind, a small-town drug cop from back home in Arkansaw.
(I forget if he’s been convicted of rape and awaiting charges on selling Ecstasy or vice-versa, but they just dismissed charges against someone against whom he’d caused his drug dog to falsely signal–when he’d hit the side of the car with his hand, the dog would ‘find drugs’.
(That ex-cop is many things, but hero is not one of them.)
A good friend, recently deceased, was a Marine colonel who saw much fighting in both Korea and Vietnam. We were talking about similar matters, and he allowed as how he’d been acquainted with four Medal of Honor recipients–two of whom he felt were men of very poor character.
I’m not sure whether one would say that only two of those four men were heroes, or that all four were heroes but that being a hero isn’t everything–I think I’d take the second tack and class heroism as a morally neutral virtue, which can just as easily serve good as it can evil.
To the anonymous poster just above me:
I agree that much of what Richard says is repugnant, but I’m not sure it’s germane to this discussion, except where he’s brought it in.
Your first example is poorly chosen–prison rape is one of America’s filthiest secrets, and I sympathize with its victims.
Richard doesn’t present that point particularly well, and he uses it, in my opinion, to bash on women who are raped, which is, as I say above, repugnant. Still, being the left-wing secular humanist Pollyanna that I am, I appreciate signs of compassion in anyone.
Devil’s Advocate is not my favorite role,
John A
It’s really sad to see someone with such a good head on their shoulders about things like SPAM be so very stupid about something like this.
To paraphrase you, wearing the button served no good end either.
You want to fight something? Help the poor webmaster that is being arrested for having links to websites that teach how to make bombs, and writes anti-government posts. Last I heard, there is a thing called free speech that our ancesters fought for a long time ago, yet now we have to write on eggshells or face prison time.
When I first heard about Mr. Gilmore being ejected from a British Airways flight for refusing to remove a button reading “Suspected Terrorist” I figured it was a publicity stunt and calling his actions “trolling” isn’t far off. However, in my opinion, it is this type of troll that is at times necessary to raise awareness to something in front of our eyes which we fail to see.
Mr. Gilmore’s publicity stunt had what I presume to be its intended effect on me. It got me thinking. By labeling himself a “suspected terrorist” he reminded me of the “trusted traveler” initiative in which certain individuals would be qualified as “trusted traveler”s and could bypass certain airport security screenings and searches. Programs such as this one, and others like TRIPS and TRIPS 2 indicate a shift in the philosophy of airport security.
I always thought that the basis for airport security was to manage unknown risk by placing a ceiling on the damage any one passenger (or perhaps a small group) could cause. The ceiling is the amount of damage an unarmed passenger can cause. By screening luggage, weapons, explosives, and other dangerous materials are not allowed onboard, along with the passenger attempting bring them on. The perspective of airport security is basically, “we don’t know who is coming to the airport with the intention of causing harm, if we can prevent weapons, explosives, etc. from getting onboard, then the worst that can happen is the damage someone can do with their hands and feet.” It reminds me of movie Westerns where the town sheriff takes the guns from dusty strangers what drift into town. Once everyone is disarmed, the most chaos these men with no names can cause is limited to bar fights. An acceptable risk level.
The main problem with this approach is that the luggage screening procedures become a single point of failure. One of the positives, however, is that it is an objective, measurable process. There are lists of banned weapons, materials that are potentially explosive and so forth. This list is available to passengers so they won’t unknowningly bring something on the banned list. The couple going camping in Utah will know to put the flare gun in the checked baggage and not in the carry-on.
The new approach is to include disarmament, but enhance it and perhaps even supercede it by assessing the security risk of every passenger and tailoring their treatment by security personnel accordingly. Now that is becoming technologically feasible (although perhaps not legally feasible yet) to instantaneously call up the entire credit, medical, job and criminal history of every passenger, airline security can try and make use of that information to assign a relative security risk measure to each.
This change in attitude is highlighted by Mr. Gilmore’s other argument with the airlines: why do you need to see my ID? You looked through my bags and my person and have concluded that I don’t have any weapons or explosives — isn’t that good enough? Under the old regime — yes, under the new regime — no.
It would be like in a Western where a dapper gentleman rides into town on his carriage and presents to the sheriff letters of reference from sheriffs in three other towns. The sheriff says, “I will have to take your hip holster and guns as is our town’s policy, but you have good references here and since I can see that you are an honorable gentleman I won’t bother checking your boots or under your jacket for hidden weapons.”
I’m Looking At This Whole Controversy At A Circumspect And I Can See Without Doubt Most Were Impressed By The Grandiloquents, But I’m Not.
I believe there’s an admenment that allows freedom of discretion.
My plane, my rules. Simple. You don’t like it? Drive.