It's starting to become very painful to travel internationally. A flight from Amsterdam to Mexico city carrying 278 passenger was flying in Canadian airspace and requested permission to fly south past the Canadian-American border. The flight had by this time already lasted around 11 hours. The pilots were denied permission to enter American airspace by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI because two of the 278 passengers were on a US "no-fly" terrorist watch list. The plane had to fly all the way back to Amsterdam, much to the frustration of the other 276 passengers.

A blogger, Cory Doctorow, before boarding a flight from London to San Francisco, was asked to give a list of the names and addresses of all the friends he would be staying with. According to Doctorow, the airline refused to tell him what would be done with the list, but according to the press release, the airline told him that the information would be destroyed. At any rate, they told Doctorow this was part of TSA regulation, but they refused to tell him what the name of this regulation, or where he could find the regulation in writing. When Doctorow ask to speak to a supervisor, the supervisor confirmed what the initial security guard was saying: Doctorw had to produce this list, and that he was not allowed to know where he can find this regulation in writing.

I've been hearing more and more of these stories of of security guards (whether it be at airlines or subways or whatever) quote laws or regulations, but then don't tell you where you can find such a law. In other words, they are making this stuff up.