[Exi-bay-announce] John Perry Barlow vs The Man

Amara Graps amara at amara.com
Tue Dec 14 15:22:15 UTC 2004


Dear Bay Area extropes:

tomorrow, December 15, you can show your support...

A few days ago, Boing-boing (http://boingboing.net) alerted me to a
story posted by John Perry Barlow about an incident one year ago, that
he feels that he can disclose to the public now. Barlow was arrested
in September 2003 at the San Francisco Airport and charged with the
misdemeanor possession of controlled substances that had allegedly
been discovered during a search of his checked baggage. He was
requested to get off the plane (which was about to take off) by an
attendant, who escorted him to the baggage claim area.

Barlow says at his Blog
(http://barlow.typepad.com/barlowfriendz/2004/12/a_taste_of_the_.html)
:

"He led me to an office in the baggage claim area that was thicker
with cops than some banana republics. They greeted me with same
distaste they'd likely have shown an actual terrorist and treated me
accordingly for the remainder of that very long day. On the counter
lay small quantities of marijuana (for which I have a physician's
recommendation), mushrooms, and ketamine that had allegedly been
encountered in my suitcase. That the total volume of this prize was
significantly more compact than the amount of high explosive necessary
to endanger an aircraft, and indeed, insufficient to merit a felony
charge on any count, didn't matter to them. They clearly regarded me
as a threat to public safety. When I pointed out to the officials that
they only had authority to search for threats to the aircraft, one of
them, a bug-eyed, crew-cutted troglodyte, declared that, if I had
taken any of these substances, then I would have endangered Flight
310. That such an obviously ungifted person was capable of so
imaginative a conceptual leap remains a marvel to me."

Barlow spent the day locked up in the Redwood City jail, and not being
given access to any of his documents or to a phonebook, he contacted
one of his daughters who contacted another EFF co-founder, John
Gilmore, who put up the $25,000 in cash to spring Barlow. They
couldn't have chosen a better person for the task, because, besides
having the money, and demonstrating a few more civil liberties
principles to the jail attendants, Gilmore has experience fighting
airport security laws. Rather than taking the path of least resistance
in this case, the two have now chosen to make a particular case out
of Barlow's incident, stating that a law has been broken, and they
would like to make this a precendent against TSA's routinely
over-broad searches of checked bags.

Those of you living in the San Francisco Bay Area, take note.
Barlow says:

"On December 15, at 2:00 pm, I will pay yet another visit to the North
San Mateo County Courthouse in South San Francisco. This time I expect
I will actually get a chance to plead my case. (Any interested Bay
Area BarlowFriendz are invited to attend. It should be pretty decent
theater.)"

I recommend reading Barlow's full blog on this story.

Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD    www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it



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