On Thursday the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against millionaire John Gilmore, who had sued the federal government after being denied boarding on two aircraft because he refused to show identification. In ruling against him, the court explained that “the Constitution does not guarantee the right to travel by any particular form of transportation.”

People wanting to board commercial aircraft in the U.S. are required to show identification or submit to secondary screening by a classified Transportation Security Agency security directive.

In the decision (PDF) in Gilmore v. Gonzales, the court rejected all of Gilmore’s claims.

According to the Associated Press, Gilmore’s lawyer is currently deciding whether to appeal to the Supreme Court.

If you want a good fright, you really should go read the decision. It appears perfectly sensible on the surface. It really does.

But actually being informed about security issues, some things don’t really make sense. Consider this:

Justice Department lawyer Joshua Waldman argued that demanding identification “promotes the right to travel by protecting everyone’s safety.” — Associated Press

But this is a fallacy, as any real security person can tell you. Like this one:

Identification and profiling don’t provide very good security, and they do so at an enormous cost. Dropping ID checks completely, and engaging in random screening where appropriate, is a far better security trade-off. People who know they’re being watched, and that their innocent actions can result in police scrutiny, are people who become scared to step out of line. They know that they can be put on a “bad list” at any time. People living in this kind of society are not free, despite any illusionary security they receive. It’s contrary to all the ideals that went into founding the United States. — Bruce Schneier

“There are good people with bad papers; and bad people with good papers.” — Bertolt Brecht

Then there’s the ridiculous assertion that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee the right of travel by any particular means. If this were so, then as long as only one form of transportation remains unrestricted, any restriction might be possible on any other mode of transportation, either now known or invented in the future. In other words, the only way you’d be sure to be able to cross a state line without restriction would be to walk across. (I’ve done this, actually, at four different state lines.)

Taken to its logical conclusion, the only way to get from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., without having to show identification, ultimately may be to walk there. This is unreasonable on its face. I’d really like to see Judge Susan Illston try to walk across the Nevada desert.

But maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps you can use any form of transportation that was known in 1789 when the Constitution was ratified. That opens up riding across the country on horseback…

And then there’s the little issue of regulations which we’re all expected to follow, but which are classified, so we have no opportunity to know exactly what they say, or to petition the government for a redress of the grievance such a secret law is bound to cause sooner or later. I could probably live with having to travel on horseback, but it’s for the existence of classified regulations which are being applied against ordinary Americans that I hope this does get appealed — and overturned.