A top Constitutional scholar from Princeton who gave a televised speech that slammed President George W. Bush’s executive overreach recently learned that he had been added to the Transportation Security Administration’s terrorist watch list. He shared his experience this weekend at the law blog Balkinization.
Walter F. Murphy, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Emeritus, at Princeton University, attempted to check his luggage at the curbside in Albuquerque before boarding a plane to Newark, New Jersey. Murphy was told he could not use the service.
“I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list,” he said.
When inquiring with a clerk why he was on the list, Murphy was asked if he had participated in any peace marches.
“We ban a lot of people from flying because of that,” a clerk said.
Murphy then explained that he had not marched, but had “in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution.”
The clerk responded, “That’ll do it.”
Murphy was allowed to board the plane, but was warned that his luggage would be “ransacked.” On his return trip, his luggage was lost.
Murphy is a decorated Marine who served in the Korean War and was a reservist for 19 years.
Ed Felten over at Freedom to Tinker sees no sinister plot here:
It’s well known by now that the no-fly list has many false positives. Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman John Lewis, among others, seem to trigger false positives. I know a man living in Princeton who triggers false positives every time he flies. Having many false positives is inevitable given that (1) the list is large, and (2) the matching algorithm requires only an approximate match (because flight reservations often have misspelled names). An ordinary false positive is by far the most likely explanation for Prof. Murphy’s experience.
Note, too, that Walter Murphy is a relatively common name, making it more likely that Prof. Murphy was being confused with somebody else. Lycos PeopleSearch finds 181 matches for Walter Murphy and 307 matches for W. Murphy in the U.S. And of course the name on the list could be somebody’s alias. Many false positive stories involve people with relatively common names.Given all of this, the most likely story by far is that Prof. Murphy triggered an ordinary false positive in the no-fly system. These are very annoying to the affected person, and they happen much too often, but they aren’t targeted at particular people.
His luggage was lost? Nah, I don’t believe that.
If the TSA feels a need to give your luggage “additonal screening” you should get to the airport a full 2 hours early, and I mean your luggage must be checked in at least 2 full hours early. I am a frequent traveler and fly with a tool box that receives “additional screening” on every flight. I have had my tool box miss my plane at large airports with as much as 1 hour and 45 minutes of lead time. It really sucks as I can do nothing at my destination without my tools. What is really bad is having to get up at 4 am to make an 8 am flight.
Don
Dissent IS Terrorism…
*yawn* So what else is new?
It was all just coincidental, a false positive because the professor has a common name. The airline person who said “that’ll do it” after hearing about the televised speech had no business disclosing that, I mean saying that to the refused passenger, and had better not try flying anywhere himself from now on. But it isn’t a vindictive policy intended to discourage public criticism of political figures. No sir, nothing like that. Nope.
yah, I call BS on this one. who cares what some airline desk clerk says about how people get on the terrorist watch list? anyone here think he actually knows? he’s talking out his tater hole.
its just a false positive.
You deleted my previous comment to this post, with out comment because I used the word “ASS HOLE”.
Be real.
Ok, so this is a false positive. Now, could someone explain why if he was a suspected danger to fly they didn’t arrest him? Or at least TSA question him in some detail? Why the hell accuse him of being a suspected terrorist then allow him on the plane?
Anyone accepting that this is the way it is and the way it should be, is as guilty of terrorism as the idiots that implemented this asinine idea in the first place. The pretense that well known terrorist Walter (Bubba) Murphy will be flying under his own name is ludicrous. The CIA file explicitly says he is afraid to fly !!!
/sarcasm
This isn’t a case of just a false positive. It is a case of another American being prevented from going about his daily business for no reason other then to make the Fox Spews set feel better about their government protecting them from terrorists. Every false positive is just another nail in the coffin of our civil liberties and another thumbs up to the terrorists winning.
Surrender shouldn’t be an option. If we have to screen people at transportation terminals, then screen them for a real reason, not some made up bullcrap. Just making someone’s life difficult won’t stop the next terrorist attack but it will annoy the hell out those who are supposed to be protected.
OK, let’s assume that it was a false positive. Now, how did Prof. Murphy get from Princeton to Albuquerque in the first place? Did he walk or did he fly? If he flew, why was he not denied a boarding pass on the outward flight? What does this tell us about the system?
Exactly. That’s why I think it’s more likely Murphy is making up the story. If he’s on the no-fly list, then presumably you don’t fly, you get arrested. Plus I would expect that the decision doesn’t get made by an airline agent.
I am NOT calling BS on this one. With all the under the radar surveillance and dossier keeping going on these day. This is all too likely and very possibly real. Big Brother is very much alive and watching you!
No fly doesn’t mean getting arrested, it only means no fly.
Being arrested is the surest/quickest way to challenge the constitutionality of an obviously faulty No fly list. And the Bushy want a system least likely to be publicly challenged. Bush is from Texas so he used to ignoring injustices in systems he manages.
He just rationalizes the whole mess as bringing security to the public. And some people love it, and say AMEN.
I am sure this will change with the next president, one more educated and self made, the kind we used to elect. Not one who basically inherits the “Throne” (where he craps all over peoples rights) as Bush treats it, both figuratively and in reality.
The elections seem too far away. I am impatient, I think the Congress has more then enough grounds, more so then any other president (or self appointed King in this case) to impeach this “Royal Hinyness”.
But then again some people like being crapped on, I think they are called Americans.
but presumably no-fly means no-fly, right? How did he get on the plane?
#11, Noname,
Well said. If we agree again I’ll have to take back some of those nasty things I said about you.
#10
I think that you may have missed the point that I was trying to make in #9.
I see no reason why the prof. would have anything to gain by making up this story. Let’s assume for the moment that he was telling the truth.
I then see three possibilities:
1. He was not on the no-fly list when he left the New York area but was before he left Albuquerque. While not impossible, I would rate the probability of this to be vanishingly small.
2. He was not on the list at his original airport of departure. In this case the no-fly list itself is fatally flawed.
3. He was on the list at his original airport of departure but his name was not correctly checked. In this case the implementation of the no-fly list is fatally flawed.
Since the strength of any chain is determined by its weakest link, it would appear that the no-fly list is a total, ineffective nonsense in practice. All that it appears to do is to inconvenience innocent people.
14 – Don’t forget it provides jobs to airport guards, and helps people decide flying in the U.S. isn’t worth the hassle. That’s presumably bad for the airlines, but think like a government for a moment. If you want to keep your own populace under close scrutiny, making it hard for them to move around freely would certainly make your controlling hand a little stronger.
well, of course the issue is (1) whether this guy was (temporarily) banned from flying because of his anti-Bush statements or was it a false positive, not (2) whether the no-fly list is competently maintained or (3) is a BS idea to begin with. my proposed answers are:
(1) false positive
(2) incompetence
(3) bad idea – if you have enough evidence to think that a person is too dangerous to fly, arrest the bastard and charge him with something! otherwise, shut the hell up.
Of course, with time, and a little reason, one can arrive at a conclusion that doesn’t involve conspiracies and black helicopters.
#11 Mr. Fusion, All is forgiven, I do get ahead of myself sometimes.