Sara Robinson at Orcinus reminds us of a story run last April by MSNBC.com that now shows the absolute Fascism that will exist in country when we will not be allowed to leave or enter the country without permission by the Department of Homeland Security.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a system which will in essence make it mandatory for you to have permission before leaving or entering the country, effectively putting everyone on a no-fly list unless the government says otherwise....The Identity Project, which was the original source for the Slashdot item, is considerably less sanguine about the new Homeland Security regulations, which are scheduled to go into effect on January 15. In fact, in a public comment they've filed with DHS, they warn that what we're seeing here is yet another group of Constitutional rights crumbling in the grip of yet another DHS power grab:
That's all we need. A government that not only decides what you can see and hear and read, but when you can come and go. They bleep out cuss words. They protect us from janet Jackson's titty. But they need to know where you're going and why.
In the guise of an NPRM [Notice of Proposed Rule-Making] alleged to propose a change only in the required timing of transmission of information already required to be provided to the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the CBP has actually proposed a fundamental regulatory change with far-reaching (literally and figuratively) legal, policy, and logistical implications: The NPRM would replace a requirement for ex post facto notice to the CBP of information about who is on each vessel (ship or plane) with an unconstitutional system of prior restraint of international travel, entirely unauthorized by statute and inconsistent with the U.S. obligations embodied in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Under the proposed rules, orders by the CBP to common carriers not to transport specific persons would not be based on restraining orders (injunctions) issued by competent judicial authorities. Instead, they would be based on an undefined, secret, administrative permission-to-travel ("clearance") procedure subject to none of the procedural or substantive due process required for orders prohibiting or restricting the exercise of protected First Amendment rights. From the authority of law enforcement officers and agencies to enforce certain types of orders, once lawfully issued by competent judicial authorities, the NPRM would usurp for the CBP the authority to issue those orders on its own. It's as though the FBI were to construe its authority to maintain in the NCIC a list of persons for whose arrest warrants have been issued by competent judicial authorities, and execute those warrants, as authority for the FBI to issue and execute its own warrantless administrative arrest orders.
The NPRM would create a clearly invalid administrative presumption, reversing the presumptions of innocence and of entitlement to the exercise of First Amendment rights, that all those persons not affirmatively "cleared" in advance by the CBP - according to decision-making procedures and criteria specified nowhere in the NPRM - are barred from travel.
The proposed rules would burden equally, and infringe the rights to varying degrees of, U.S. citizens, resident aliens, immigrants, nonimmigrant visitors, and even those with no intention to enter the U.S. who merely wish to travel on flights that will, or might, transit through U.S. airspace. Reciprocal adoption of similar rules by other countries would further burden travel worldwide by U.S. citizens and residents, including their international travel and their travel within the USA. Since both the current rules and the proposed rules are incompatible with current European Union privacy and data protection laws, their retention or adoption would make it impossible for airlines to operate direct flights between the USA and the E.U. without violating the laws of one or both jurisdictions, and would thus require an enormously disruptive and costly cessation of such flights.
In short: Starting on January 15, you can't get on a plane or a cruise ship that might touch US airspace or waters without specific prior approval from DHS. And if they get away with this one, it will open the door for requiring everyone (including yours truly on her weekly mail runs) to get DHS' official blessing before they try to cross the border into or out of the U.S. The decisions, as always, will be made by anonymous bureaucrats who account to no one. There will, as always, be no avenue of appeal.
Link here:
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/...
and here
http://papersplease.org/...