TSA Gestapo formally makes travel a privilege not a right

From a longer, depressing post at Disloyal Opposition, three excerpts:

TSA now plans to centralize the process of checking names against the watch lists in its own offices. Under the Secure Flight program, airlines will be required to supply lists of scheduled passengers to the TSA's crack clerical staff, who will then issue a "yay" or "nay" to each individual's travel plans -- essentially formalizing the process of making air travel a privilege to be dispensed by government officials....

The information the government compiles on travelers -- in particular, their comings and goins -- is about to get a lot more detailed. The Border Crossing Information system, recently announced by the Department of Homeland Security, will track, to the extent possible, everybody's movements into and out of the United States:

BCI shall contain border crossing information, as that term is explained above, for all individuals who are admitted or paroled into the United States, regardless of method or conveyance, and information for all individuals who depart the United States by air or sea and, in certain circumstances, by land. ...

The tracking of land travelers -- including casual shoppers and day-trippers across the Canadian and Mexican borders -- is a new development, and one that will give the government expanded knowledge of people's movements to retain (for 15 years, under current plans) and use as it pleases.

Here's a question I think should be put to both Barack Obama and John McCain [ironically, because I already know that Bob Barr, Ralph Nader, Chuck Baldwin, and Cynthia McKinney would all answer in the negative:

As President will you continue the deployment of the Secure Flight and Border Crossing Information systems?

Prediction: Obama will equivocate; McCain will say, "Yes." Neither will do anything to stop the steady erosion of civil rights.

That's why we call them Demopublicans.