ECO-TERROR
Suspected Terrorist: Multimillionaire John Gilmore is suing the government to remain anonymous. Is this the last stand for privacy? [...]
John Gilmore is here today because on July 4, 2002, representatives of Southwest Airlines in Oakland and United Airlines in San Francisco refused to let him board a plane to Washington, D.C., when he wouldn't show them an ID. He wished to fly, he says, in order to personally petition his elected representatives for a redress of grievances. Gilmore thinks the airlines' ID policy is based on a secret demand from the federal government. He committed his act of civil disobedience against the security state on July 4 explicitly for the symbolism.
Gilmore can afford to be here because he made a great deal of money in the 1990s as employee No. 5 of Sun Microsystems and as a one-third owner of Cygnus Solutions, a company sold for what Gilmore vaguely remembers was "around $675 million." (The vagueness comes across as oddly charming, not airily plutocratic.) Gilmore is used to quixotic fights against the legal system. A dedicated libertarian, he spends some of his free time and money agitating for medical marijuana rights, though he is a hardcore abolitionist about all drug laws.
While Gilmore remembers 9/11, when 19 villains used airplanes to murder 3,000 innocent people, he maintains that showing ID before getting on a plane is just a way to make the rubes feel safer. Anyone can flash a card with his or her picture (or someone who looks like him) and a name and address.