Cellphone calls on planes? Don't ask the feds

[Palmpilot]

http://news.yahoo.com/cellphone-calls-planes-don-39-t-ask-feds-192327690--finance.html

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON (AP) — It looks like the government is more conflicted about cellphones on planes than most travelers. Even as one federal agency considers allowing the calls, another now wants to make sure that doesn't happen.

Passengers — particularly those who fly often — oppose allowing calls in flight, polls show. In line with that sentiment, the Transportation Department signaled in a notice posted online Friday that it is considering retaining the 23-year-old ban on the calls and asked for public comments. But the notice comes just two months after the Federal Communications Commission voted to pursue lifting the ban....

 

[Jim Logajan]

Oh for pity's sake. Humanity really sucks sometimes.

If there is no legitimate safety justification for the ban, if must be lifted. I would hope that future bans would be overturned on first amendment grounds.

People seem so quick to discard fundamental rights when exercise thereof causes even the slightest personal annoyance. They'll never get to the point of pledging their lives, fortunes, or sacred honor so they can exercise their own freedoms if they can't abide a fellow citizen exercising theirs on occasion.

The tyranny of the majority - the greatest threat to freedom in a democracy.

 

[Jim Logajan]

The first amendment doesn't work that way. You don't have freedom of speech in an enclosed compartment on public transportation.

The proposed Transportation Department rules would make it a Federal offense to use a cell phone (because it is annoying, not because it is a safety issue) even where an airline would have rules that allowed their use. That would deny freedom of choice of both the owners of the airline and its passengers.

It would be no different than a federal law banning passengers from speaking with any other passenger on a plane unless they got prior written approval. The law would be neutral as to content, but wouldn't pass legal muster either.

No one can shout about religous beliefs on an airliner. The crew will tell them to pipe down and then restrain them if they don't.

That is the airline's prerogative. The proposal is from a Federal agency.

Should you be allowed to talk on your cellphone just because you want to even though it annoys 100 other people? Of course not.

An amusing and absurd hypothetical pretty much in line with all the other crazy people who support the ban. In their fevered imaginations they've got fights breaking out hither and yon, caused by cell phone "torturers." Totally insane rantings. Me, I can barely hear someone more than a couple aisles away, and I have good hearing.

You do not have that right. You are not more important than 100 of your fellow citizens. Does it really suck for you to be forced to be considerate of your fellow man?

That consideration cuts both ways - the people in support of a Federal ban are somehow imagining planes full of continuous in-flight loud-mouthed jabber. It is the only way they can justify their own self-righteous shallowness.

Really? First amendment rights? Cellphones? Airplanes?

That is definitely in the top ten dumbest things I've ever read here.

You should read up on transit ad lawsuits to realize the First Amendment is indeed operative. Beyond that, all I can offer in helping you clear up your thinking are these points:

Is there a federal law or regulation being proposed? Check. Does it involve speech? Check. Does it usurp the right of choice of two private parties who might otherwise have chosen differently? Check.

The FCC was going to leave it to the airlines to decide. They still should.

 

[Jim Logajan]

But, my post that you responded to didn't even advocate any limitation, rather I simply stated that it's laughable that chatting on a cellphone is protected speech. But since you bring it up, I guess everyone should be able to chat on their phones at movies too.

In 2003 the New York City Council voted in a ban on use of cell phones in theaters and other places where live performances are taking place. To this day there is no indication that it has ever been enforced and was considered unenforceable by then mayor Bloomberg.

Employees should be able to talk on their phones all day long at work. Kids all day long at school, etc. All should be similarly protected speech.

There are no Federal laws against chatting with someone next to you in any of those scenarios. An such law wouldn't pass a laugh test, much less a constitutional one. I have no idea what aspect you think a cell phone inserts into those situations that nullifies the protection of the First Amendment.

Wrestling with pigs.

You've presented plenty of scorn and amusement, which are both as concrete and relevant as mud on a pig. No cites of statutes or case law that I can see posted by you.

 

[Jim Logajan]

I really don't get the ire that cellphone conversations cause nearby but unfamiliar persons.

I would hazard a guess that it might be the psychological dissonance of hearing only one half of a conversation. In a dialog between two or more people - or a long monologue not directed to you - your mind may be able to efficiently tune out the fact that you are not being addressed. Whereas utterances made at apparently random times requires the mind to be periodically distracted from whatever it was doing into determining "was that utterance meant for me?" If the person(s) are not speaking a language you understand, whether you hear only one side of the conversation or not, I suspect (based on my own experience only) that they aren't that distracting.

It'd be no different, I suspect, than having to sit near someone who mutters or talks to themselves at seemingly random times. No cell phone needed to get irritated.

But all this angst seems overdone since technical solutions already exist - headsets can be brought along (or are available from the crew on some flights) that can be used to muffle any and all such audio irritants, whether cell phone caused or otherwise.

 

[Jim Logajan]

I just it appalling how deeply addicted some people have become to their gadgets, and to being constantly connected to the rest of the world.

Fortunately posters to PoA like us with thousands of posts to their name are free of such annoying addictions.

I suppose it's a generational thing.

I suppose so - like displaying non-natural hair color.

 

[Jim Logajan]

It was a dare / bet from my granddaughter. She owes me three lawn mowings if I keep the avatar up for three days.

Hopefully you have plenty of acerage and a manual push mower.

Blue isn't bad - at least it wasn't a green or red hue.

 

[Jim Logajan]

First of all this isn't a free speech matter. It is a matter of orderly behavior on common carrier transportation.

The location in question is inside a privately owned vehicle containing private individuals who have contracted with each other for mutual benefit. The "common carrier transportation" categorization exists to define who is subject to regulations that insure reasonable safety standards. Nothing you point out removes a cell phone ban from first amendment scrutiny.

Second of all annoying people is not a protected behavior.

The use of a cell phone is not an annoying behavior per se, and a blanket prohibition on an entire medium of expression violates the First Amendment. Check out the section of the book that Everskyward linked to, and scroll back to page 72 and read that. Shucks, scroll back even farther and read as much as Google Books shares of that book.

It most certainly is a free speech issue.

You're proposing to prohibit speaking in a particular venue, by way of federal government regulation. That puts it squarely within the domain of the 1st Amendment.

Annoying speech is the entire purpose of the 1st Amendment (well, the free speech clause anyway). Non-annoying speech doesn't need protection, it is only that speech that bothers others that brings the government into the picture to try and prevent it.

Still waiting for a "compelling government interest" to be cited.

If what you state is true we could not have noise ordinances but clearly we do.

http://books.google.com/books?id=Tp...v=onepage&q=noise ordinance bullhorns&f=false

Yes, there are noise regulations - but they can't ban all noise, merely limit its magnitude. A ban on cell phone use isn't a regulation on noise per se. On the other hand, if there were a proposal to regulate passenger-created noise above a certain magnitude, it might fit within one of the exceptions to first amendment limits that has allowed noise regulation. Scroll back to page 72 in the book you linked to and read what that book says about blanket prohibitions on an entire medium of expression.

 

[Jim Logajan]

When will you get it through your head that a cell phone call is not protected speech?

I get that you keep making the same conceptual mistake - that a cell phone ban has nothing to do with free speech because the speech isn't directly proscribed. The tests that the courts apply in determining whether a law violates the First Amendment aren't as shallowly literal as you mistakenly think.
"Writing for the majority, Judge Roger Gregory, joined by Judge Allyson Duncan, said it is "crystal clear that the First Amendment protects peaceful nondisruptive speech in an airport, and that such speech cannot be suppressed solely because the government disagrees with it.""

 

[Jim Logajan]

Note the use of the word "nondisruptive." That leaves a lot of room open to interpretation.

Do you see any qualifiers in the First and Fourteenth Amendments that allows laws against "disruptive" speech? I see none - the concept is a post hoc interpretation of those amendments by the courts. They have invented exclusions that aren't there with (one hopes) great reluctance to balance other rights.

By the way, would you mind providing some context by citing which case that's from?

http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2...ers-claim-of-first-amendment-retaliation.html

 

[Jim Logajan]

The other big difference I see is that the airport is public property, an airplane is private property.

I'm willing to bet that ruling was a result of a peaceful demonstration on public propery, which is clearly protected speech.

Freedom of speech is about protecting the citizens' right to express ideas and opinions without fear of harassment. It's not about being free to chat with one's mother about what's for dinner on private property.

Government may regulate speech on private property that it may not regulate if it occurs on public property? Fascinating. Not sure from whence that remarkable claim springs.

I don't think we hold any assumptions about reality in common at all, and at this point I expect I would simply be repeating myself to no avail.

 

[Jim Logajan]

If you disagree with that court's opinion, why did you quote it?

Post 80 was just my observations about the discrepancy between the First Amendment plain meaning and the court's historical interpretations - not meant to show agreement or disagreement.

I posted that quote because chatting on a cell phone is typically "peaceful nondisruptive speech" to anyone of normal mental stability. It seems to show the courts already agree such speech is protected from regulation. Chatting on a cell phone would be disruptive to Human/Vulcan hybrids in heat who have super sensitive hearing and prone to violence while rutting. I had no idea there were so many flying by commercial airline.

 

[Jim Logajan]

However, a large majority wants it banned.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institute...titute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1988

Then the airlines will implement such bans if their customers prefer that. The airlines can adjust and fine tune their rules as technology and sentiment change a lot faster than the lumbering feds ever could.