Justice Dept seeks secret judicial proceedings of airline ID case
MAY WONG
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Department of Justice has asked an appellate
court
to keep its arguments secret for a case in which privacy advocate John
Gilmore challenges federal requirements to show identification before
boarding commercial flights.
A federal statute and other regulations "prohibit the disclosure of
sensitive security information, and that is precisely what is alleged
to be
at issue here," the government said in court papers filed Friday with
the
U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Disclosing the restricted
information
"would be detrimental to the security of transportation," the
government
wrote.
Attorneys for Gilmore, a 49-year-old San Francisco resident who
co-founded
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said they don't buy the
government's
argument and that its latest request raises only more questions.
"We're dealing with the government's review of a secret law that now
they
want a secret judicial review for," one of Gilmore's attorneys, James
Harrison, said in a phone interview Sunday. "This administration's use
of a
secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any
external
threat."
Gilmore first sued the government and several airlines in July 2002
after
airline agents refused to let him board planes in San Francisco and
Oakland
without first showing an ID or submitting to a more intense search. He
claimed in his lawsuit the ID requirement is vague and ineffective, and
violated his constitutional protections against illegal searches and
seizures.
A U.S. District Court judge earlier this year dismissed his claims
against
the airlines but said his challenge to the government belonged in a
federal
appellate court.
Now under his appellate case, Gilmore, an early Sun Microsystems Inc.
employee, maintains the federal government has yet to disclose the
regulations behind the ID requirement to which he was subjected.
"How are people supposed to follow laws if they don't know what they
are?"
Harrison said.
The government contends its court arguments should be sealed from
public
view and heard before a judge outside the presence of Gilmore and his
attorneys as well. The government, however, said it would plan to file
another "redacted" public version of their arguments.
A hearing on the matter has not yet been set.