6 ms·

"Although there are perhaps viable alternatives to flying for domestic travel within the continental United States, such as traveling by car or train, the court

by jlgreco 13y ago

"Although there are perhaps viable alternatives to flying for domestic travel within the continental United States, such as traveling by car or train, the court disagrees with (the government's) contention that international air travel is a mere convenience in light of the realities of our modern world," Brown wrote. Yeah, no kidding. That somebody could sincerely espouse such a position is mind-boggling to me. It ranks up there with "Gay people can already get married too (to the opposite sex)."

veemjeem 13y ago
Are there any companies whose core source of revenue is transporting people via boat? I'm not referring to cruises or other entertainment-based boats.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Internationally, to and from the US? I doubt it. At a smaller scale you may find privately operated ferries, though I think those are usually operated by governments. There are companies like these guys: http://www.stenaline.co.uk/ferry/scandinavia/ http://www.stenaline.co.uk/ferry/scandinavia/ but I don't think those sort of companies will do you much good if you are trying to get out of or into the US. Edit: For non-cruise trans-Atlantic crossing by sea, the best I've been able to find on google is the Queen Mary 2. That seems to be generally considered an ocean liner rather than a cruise ship. "The Italian Line's SS Michelangelo and SS Raffaello,[4] launched in 1962 and 1963, were two of the last ocean liners to be built primarily for liner service across the North Atlantic. Cunard's transatlantic liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, was also used as a cruise ship.[3] By the early 1970s, many passenger ships continued their service in cruising. By the first decade of the 21st century, only a few former ocean liners were still sailing, while others, like Queen Mary, were preserved as museums or floating hotels. After the retirement of the Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2008, the only ocean liner in service was Queen Mary 2, used for both point-to-point line voyages and for cruising." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_liner#Decline_of_long-distance_line_voyages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_liner#Decline_of_long-dis...
  - mbrubeck 13y ago
    There are a few private ferry companies with international routes from the U.S... to Canada: https://cohoferry.com/ https://cohoferry.com/ (Of course this is just trivia and should not distract from the real point, which is that air travel has no real competition for a great number of routes, and the US government is increasingly restricting other forms of travel anyways.)
    - colomon 13y ago
      My hometown example: http://www.bluewaterferry.com/ http://www.bluewaterferry.com/ At the same time, isn't crossing the border firmly established as a "privilege"? In the good old days (ie a decade ago) you could just hop across the border pretty freely, but today you are required to have a passport or enhanced driver's license. Even fishing on the other side of the river (something my dad probably did at least four times a week when I was a kid) now has ludicrous reporting requirements, like calling customs via a landline to report you've crossed the border.
      - kd0amg 13y ago
        I was under the impression that the "privilege" in a border crossing was entering the destination country (and thus to be granted or not according to the destination country's will) rather than leaving the source country. This is what we dislike about the Berlin Wall and similar things, right?
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    I have a relative in Europe that has COPD and eventually won't be able to fly, even with oxygen. Something with the pressurization I've been told. In any case, I've been researching trans-Atlantic passage and the QM2 seems to be the only way to get from the USA to Europe and back via water on a semi-regular schedule and not making a dozen party stops on the way.
- tomfakes 13y ago
  I believe that some cargo ships have space for a very, very small number of paying passengers. I've read articles about this in the past, but have nothing to hand right now on how you can do this. Not a core source of revenue, but possible for someone needing to travel without using planes. You are traveling on a working ship, with a very small crew, and not a lot of provided entertainment,(or internet access), so be prepared to look after yourself during these passages
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    I looked into those sort of trips a while ago and was surprised by the large prices I saw quoted. I think the fact that you are basically paying for accommodations for several days keeps the price higher than you might expect.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      And if you are going across the Pacific it might take a month.
  - praxulus 13y ago
    http://wikitravel.org/en/Freighter_travel http://wikitravel.org/en/Freighter_travel According to that page, ships must hire a doctor if they have more than 12 passengers, so it's just not worth it for most of them to carry more.
    - techdragon 13y ago
      Now that is a damn valuable link! I intend to look into this sort of thing a lot more for my future travels. Just being able to give the middle finger to luggage overages & have a bed to sleep on instead of an airport bench during a 6 hr layover from midnight till 6am might make all the difference. And I wont have to turn off my ebook reader when the ship starts moving!
- fractalsea 13y ago
  do mean ferrys, or much longer distances? (days/weeks). if you mean ferrys, then in Europe -- and I assume other places -- it is really quite common to travel by boat to other countries. for example from England it is common to go by boat to France/Ireland/etc. I seem to remember p&o ferries was a big company doing that.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    There is a "ferry" highway in Northwestern Washington, BC, and the Alaska pan handle. It is used quite commonly, especially for car/person transport.
- mistercow 13y ago
  A lot of people actually do use cruises as transportation when traveling, since on net it can actually be much cheaper than flying, staying in a hotel, and taking care of your own food. I doubt there are cruises you could use to travel somewhere for longer than a few days though, since docking fees make up a large portion of a cruise ship's operating cost.
- foobarbazqux 13y ago
  Human smuggling and trafficking on boats is common enough, much easier than on planes.
- jonknee 13y ago
  Not for long distances, but there are still some "Ocean liner" type vessels out there. The Queen Mary II is almost both--fancy like a cruise ship but it does ocean passes and not cruises (where everyone boards and departs at a single location). http://www.cunard.com/ http://www.cunard.com/
Steko 13y ago
And if you can take away the right to fly in a Star Chamber proceeding you can presumably take away the right to ride trains and boats.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Yup. And even if they don't actually bother to do that, just being on the airplane list effects your ability to travel by ship: "For example, she wrote, the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center shares watchlist information with 22 governments, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection also makes recommendations to ship captains, which could interfere with a person's travels."
ilyanep 13y ago
I had someone on HN trying to convince me that we should put up with the TSA because flying is a privilege not a right. I can't believe how many people believe this, especially in a country as big as the US.
- jlgreco 13y ago
  Lots of people say it, even here on HN in the past. How many of them actually believe it is up in the air. I hope none of them...
- andrewfong 13y ago
  The dichotomy between privileges and rights may have some special legal meaning ascribed to it, but in practice, it's a distinction without a difference. For example, going to Disneyland is almost certainly a privilege, but if Congress passed a law saying Tom Jones from Denver, and only Tom Jones from Denver, was forbidden from going to Disneyland, I bet Tom would have a pretty good case that his constitutional rights were being violated.
  - abecedarius 13y ago
    Yes, that'd be called a bill of attainder, I believe -- those are expressly forbidden by the constitution. Of course, if powerful groups wanted such bills, we'd see lots of articles explaining how 'attainder' meant something else, something more specific. Maybe it does! A written constitution only helps so much.
- mturmon 13y ago
  There is a sliding scale of scrutiny for judicial review of laws (e.g., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny). If the law has no "rational basis" (as the example here of a specific person being forbidden from going to Disneyland) it will almost certainly be struck down, even if the restriction it imposes is unimportant. My point is that judicial review does not break down simply to determining whether a "privilege" or a "right" is being curtailed. Certainly, if a "right" (and this means specific rights such as those guaranteed by the Due Process clause) is being curtailed, this will tend to push the standard of review higher. But that is not the only factor at work, and there is a very specific meaning of the word "right" in this context.
einhverfr 13y ago
> Yeah, no kidding. That somebody could sincerely espouse such a position is mind-boggling to me. The key thing is that getting stranded somewhere like Hawaii would become a real problem. If there is a right to travel interstate to/from Hawaii, then there is a right to fly there. I would argue the same regarding Alaska too since you either have to go across international waters or through Canada. > It ranks up there with "Gay people can already get married too (to the opposite sex)." Having lived in more traditional places (and being in Indonesia now) I actually the due process issue in flying is far worse than the view you position, at least internationally. Marriage is extraordinarily cultural and multi-functional and in many countries, the fact that there are obligations to parents as well as children (and gender plays role in determining the qualities of power relationships) makes that argument valid in most of the world, so I have real trouble with the idea that it is a human rights issue. This being said, I think that "Marriage is about raising children and same-sex couples can adopt, but we don't want them to get married" is something I can't really understand how people believe. Both of these issues are functional questions. Can you drive across the Continental US as an average person, or take a train or a bus? Sure. One could argue that flying there is a matter of mere convenience but not a core liberty interest. But what about travel to/from Hawaii and Alaska? As an average person one cannot so easily get there outside of being on a plane. Holding this to be an area where government can freely interfere also then puts residents of those states fully at the mercy of the federal government in a way that California residents are not.
- seiji 13y ago
  (and gender plays role in determining the qualities of power relationships) Nope.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    It does in most of the world. For example here in Indonesia, Chinese-Indonesians prefer to retire with their daughters because the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship is more complex and problematic than the mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship or the father-in-law/son-in-law relationship. This means that over here same-sex couples are not similarly situated to the duties of marriage to the elderly.
davidp 13y ago
Indeed. Personally I'm surprised there aren't more comparisons to travel restrictions placed on black people during the Jim Crow era. Restricting someone's mode of travel even domestically, in such a way that they are at a significant economic disadvantage to their (comparatively) unrestricted fellow citizens is a true punishment; without due process it's just a weapon. Potentially even worse, since it's so insidious, is that the fear of getting put on "the list" can have a chilling effect on the perfectly legitimate activities of loyal, law-abiding citizens. Suppose you're a person of color or muslim, who happens to be interested in learning about the enemy (e.g. Al Qaeda). One obvious way would be to look at their forums online. But wouldn't you be at least a little bit afraid that someone's watching for people browsing to those sites, discovering your ethnicity and background, and slapping you onto the list? From the other side, why wouldn't the watcher put you on the list, just in case? There are no negative consequences for the individual doing so (because no oversight/warrant procedure), and what if he/she "missed the next terrorist" (i.e. maybe you, as far as they know)? It's a no-brainer and could even be rationalized by otherwise well-meaning people as being patriotic. Imagine the poster on their cubicle wall of the burning WTC towers, with "NEVER AGAIN" underneath. This warrantless, unsupervised paroxysm of fear has got to stop. We are Americans. We do not live in fear. We do not sacrifice our freedoms for security. We are willing to accept that some of us may have to die because we exercise those freedoms, and we know that the answer to "What if there's another 9/11?" is "Then we will survive and triumph through that, too."
- alexqgb 13y ago
  Exactly. And if you're honest about it, there are no "alternatives". Seriously, name one alternative to air travel that offers comparable value in terms of time and cost. You can't. Because there aren't any. Given the distances at which is makes the most sense to fly, all of the "alternatives" impose massive burdens in terms of both time and cost. To see just how important these are (and how abusive the "alternative" argument really is) consider the inverse, in which you're randomly banned from transit that uses wheels and were told that "as an alternative" you should "just" take a helicopter to the office every day. Figuring out how to pay for that is your problem. Can't pay? Well, then it's not really an alternative, is it?
icambron 13y ago
While I wholeheartedly agree with your reasoning here, I'd also like to ask why it would reasonable if it were, in fact, merely an inconvenience. Let's say, for example, that instead of the no-fly list, we had a hassle-me-extra-at-the-airport list with the same lack of transparency and process. Still absurd, in my view. Even if you establish something is a "privilege" and not a "right", having an arbitrary and capricious system for deciding who has it should still be illegal. I do understand that the judicial system applies different rational-basis scrutiny standards based on whether fundamental rights are being violated; I'm not protesting the legal logic at play in this case, especially since I haven't yet read the decision itself. But it could well be that the standards themselves are crazy. I plan on reading the decision in full tomorrow.

by jlgreco 13y ago

veemjeem 13y ago

Are there any companies whose core source of revenue is transporting people via boat? I'm not referring to cruises or other entertainment-based boats.

jlgreco 13y ago
Internationally, to and from the US? I doubt it. At a smaller scale you may find privately operated ferries, though I think those are usually operated by governments. There are companies like these guys: http://www.stenaline.co.uk/ferry/scandinavia/ http://www.stenaline.co.uk/ferry/scandinavia/ but I don't think those sort of companies will do you much good if you are trying to get out of or into the US. Edit: For non-cruise trans-Atlantic crossing by sea, the best I've been able to find on google is the Queen Mary 2. That seems to be generally considered an ocean liner rather than a cruise ship. "The Italian Line's SS Michelangelo and SS Raffaello,[4] launched in 1962 and 1963, were two of the last ocean liners to be built primarily for liner service across the North Atlantic. Cunard's transatlantic liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, was also used as a cruise ship.[3] By the early 1970s, many passenger ships continued their service in cruising. By the first decade of the 21st century, only a few former ocean liners were still sailing, while others, like Queen Mary, were preserved as museums or floating hotels. After the retirement of the Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2008, the only ocean liner in service was Queen Mary 2, used for both point-to-point line voyages and for cruising." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_liner#Decline_of_long-distance_line_voyages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_liner#Decline_of_long-dis...
- mbrubeck 13y ago
  There are a few private ferry companies with international routes from the U.S... to Canada: https://cohoferry.com/ https://cohoferry.com/ (Of course this is just trivia and should not distract from the real point, which is that air travel has no real competition for a great number of routes, and the US government is increasingly restricting other forms of travel anyways.)
  - colomon 13y ago
    My hometown example: http://www.bluewaterferry.com/ http://www.bluewaterferry.com/ At the same time, isn't crossing the border firmly established as a "privilege"? In the good old days (ie a decade ago) you could just hop across the border pretty freely, but today you are required to have a passport or enhanced driver's license. Even fishing on the other side of the river (something my dad probably did at least four times a week when I was a kid) now has ludicrous reporting requirements, like calling customs via a landline to report you've crossed the border.
    - kd0amg 13y ago
      I was under the impression that the "privilege" in a border crossing was entering the destination country (and thus to be granted or not according to the destination country's will) rather than leaving the source country. This is what we dislike about the Berlin Wall and similar things, right?
- joezydeco 13y ago
  I have a relative in Europe that has COPD and eventually won't be able to fly, even with oxygen. Something with the pressurization I've been told. In any case, I've been researching trans-Atlantic passage and the QM2 seems to be the only way to get from the USA to Europe and back via water on a semi-regular schedule and not making a dozen party stops on the way.
tomfakes 13y ago
I believe that some cargo ships have space for a very, very small number of paying passengers. I've read articles about this in the past, but have nothing to hand right now on how you can do this. Not a core source of revenue, but possible for someone needing to travel without using planes. You are traveling on a working ship, with a very small crew, and not a lot of provided entertainment,(or internet access), so be prepared to look after yourself during these passages
- jlgreco 13y ago
  I looked into those sort of trips a while ago and was surprised by the large prices I saw quoted. I think the fact that you are basically paying for accommodations for several days keeps the price higher than you might expect.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    And if you are going across the Pacific it might take a month.
- praxulus 13y ago
  http://wikitravel.org/en/Freighter_travel http://wikitravel.org/en/Freighter_travel According to that page, ships must hire a doctor if they have more than 12 passengers, so it's just not worth it for most of them to carry more.
  - techdragon 13y ago
    Now that is a damn valuable link! I intend to look into this sort of thing a lot more for my future travels. Just being able to give the middle finger to luggage overages & have a bed to sleep on instead of an airport bench during a 6 hr layover from midnight till 6am might make all the difference. And I wont have to turn off my ebook reader when the ship starts moving!
fractalsea 13y ago
do mean ferrys, or much longer distances? (days/weeks). if you mean ferrys, then in Europe -- and I assume other places -- it is really quite common to travel by boat to other countries. for example from England it is common to go by boat to France/Ireland/etc. I seem to remember p&o ferries was a big company doing that.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  There is a "ferry" highway in Northwestern Washington, BC, and the Alaska pan handle. It is used quite commonly, especially for car/person transport.
mistercow 13y ago
A lot of people actually do use cruises as transportation when traveling, since on net it can actually be much cheaper than flying, staying in a hotel, and taking care of your own food. I doubt there are cruises you could use to travel somewhere for longer than a few days though, since docking fees make up a large portion of a cruise ship's operating cost.
foobarbazqux 13y ago
Human smuggling and trafficking on boats is common enough, much easier than on planes.
jonknee 13y ago
Not for long distances, but there are still some "Ocean liner" type vessels out there. The Queen Mary II is almost both--fancy like a cruise ship but it does ocean passes and not cruises (where everyone boards and departs at a single location). http://www.cunard.com/ http://www.cunard.com/

Steko 13y ago

And if you can take away the right to fly in a Star Chamber proceeding you can presumably take away the right to ride trains and boats.

jlgreco 13y ago
Yup. And even if they don't actually bother to do that, just being on the airplane list effects your ability to travel by ship: "For example, she wrote, the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center shares watchlist information with 22 governments, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection also makes recommendations to ship captains, which could interfere with a person's travels."

ilyanep 13y ago

I had someone on HN trying to convince me that we should put up with the TSA because flying is a privilege not a right. I can't believe how many people believe this, especially in a country as big as the US.

jlgreco 13y ago
Lots of people say it, even here on HN in the past. How many of them actually believe it is up in the air. I hope none of them...
andrewfong 13y ago
The dichotomy between privileges and rights may have some special legal meaning ascribed to it, but in practice, it's a distinction without a difference. For example, going to Disneyland is almost certainly a privilege, but if Congress passed a law saying Tom Jones from Denver, and only Tom Jones from Denver, was forbidden from going to Disneyland, I bet Tom would have a pretty good case that his constitutional rights were being violated.
- abecedarius 13y ago
  Yes, that'd be called a bill of attainder, I believe -- those are expressly forbidden by the constitution. Of course, if powerful groups wanted such bills, we'd see lots of articles explaining how 'attainder' meant something else, something more specific. Maybe it does! A written constitution only helps so much.
mturmon 13y ago
There is a sliding scale of scrutiny for judicial review of laws (e.g., see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_scrutiny). If the law has no "rational basis" (as the example here of a specific person being forbidden from going to Disneyland) it will almost certainly be struck down, even if the restriction it imposes is unimportant. My point is that judicial review does not break down simply to determining whether a "privilege" or a "right" is being curtailed. Certainly, if a "right" (and this means specific rights such as those guaranteed by the Due Process clause) is being curtailed, this will tend to push the standard of review higher. But that is not the only factor at work, and there is a very specific meaning of the word "right" in this context.

einhverfr 13y ago

> Yeah, no kidding. That somebody could sincerely espouse such a position is mind-boggling to me. The key thing is that getting stranded somewhere like Hawaii would become a real problem. If there is a right to travel interstate to/from Hawaii, then there is a right to fly there. I would argue the same regarding Alaska too since you either have to go across international waters or through Canada. > It ranks up there with "Gay people can already get married too (to the opposite sex)." Having lived in more traditional places (and being in Indonesia now) I actually the due process issue in flying is far worse than the view you position, at least internationally. Marriage is extraordinarily cultural and multi-functional and in many countries, the fact that there are obligations to parents as well as children (and gender plays role in determining the qualities of power relationships) makes that argument valid in most of the world, so I have real trouble with the idea that it is a human rights issue. This being said, I think that "Marriage is about raising children and same-sex couples can adopt, but we don't want them to get married" is something I can't really understand how people believe. Both of these issues are functional questions. Can you drive across the Continental US as an average person, or take a train or a bus? Sure. One could argue that flying there is a matter of mere convenience but not a core liberty interest. But what about travel to/from Hawaii and Alaska? As an average person one cannot so easily get there outside of being on a plane. Holding this to be an area where government can freely interfere also then puts residents of those states fully at the mercy of the federal government in a way that California residents are not.

seiji 13y ago
(and gender plays role in determining the qualities of power relationships) Nope.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  It does in most of the world. For example here in Indonesia, Chinese-Indonesians prefer to retire with their daughters because the mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship is more complex and problematic than the mother-in-law/son-in-law relationship or the father-in-law/son-in-law relationship. This means that over here same-sex couples are not similarly situated to the duties of marriage to the elderly.

davidp 13y ago

Indeed. Personally I'm surprised there aren't more comparisons to travel restrictions placed on black people during the Jim Crow era. Restricting someone's mode of travel even domestically, in such a way that they are at a significant economic disadvantage to their (comparatively) unrestricted fellow citizens is a true punishment; without due process it's just a weapon. Potentially even worse, since it's so insidious, is that the fear of getting put on "the list" can have a chilling effect on the perfectly legitimate activities of loyal, law-abiding citizens. Suppose you're a person of color or muslim, who happens to be interested in learning about the enemy (e.g. Al Qaeda). One obvious way would be to look at their forums online. But wouldn't you be at least a little bit afraid that someone's watching for people browsing to those sites, discovering your ethnicity and background, and slapping you onto the list? From the other side, why wouldn't the watcher put you on the list, just in case? There are no negative consequences for the individual doing so (because no oversight/warrant procedure), and what if he/she "missed the next terrorist" (i.e. maybe you, as far as they know)? It's a no-brainer and could even be rationalized by otherwise well-meaning people as being patriotic. Imagine the poster on their cubicle wall of the burning WTC towers, with "NEVER AGAIN" underneath. This warrantless, unsupervised paroxysm of fear has got to stop. We are Americans. We do not live in fear. We do not sacrifice our freedoms for security. We are willing to accept that some of us may have to die because we exercise those freedoms, and we know that the answer to "What if there's another 9/11?" is "Then we will survive and triumph through that, too."

alexqgb 13y ago
Exactly. And if you're honest about it, there are no "alternatives". Seriously, name one alternative to air travel that offers comparable value in terms of time and cost. You can't. Because there aren't any. Given the distances at which is makes the most sense to fly, all of the "alternatives" impose massive burdens in terms of both time and cost. To see just how important these are (and how abusive the "alternative" argument really is) consider the inverse, in which you're randomly banned from transit that uses wheels and were told that "as an alternative" you should "just" take a helicopter to the office every day. Figuring out how to pay for that is your problem. Can't pay? Well, then it's not really an alternative, is it?

icambron 13y ago

While I wholeheartedly agree with your reasoning here, I'd also like to ask why it would reasonable if it were, in fact, merely an inconvenience. Let's say, for example, that instead of the no-fly list, we had a hassle-me-extra-at-the-airport list with the same lack of transparency and process. Still absurd, in my view. Even if you establish something is a "privilege" and not a "right", having an arbitrary and capricious system for deciding who has it should still be illegal. I do understand that the judicial system applies different rational-basis scrutiny standards based on whether fundamental rights are being violated; I'm not protesting the legal logic at play in this case, especially since I haven't yet read the decision itself. But it could well be that the standards themselves are crazy. I plan on reading the decision in full tomorrow.