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Comment by caymanjim | Hacker News Reader

> When the DOC deposed her, Isner had to answer deeply personal questions about her faith, her social media habits, her adopted children, her political beliefs, her charitable donations, her work history and just about everything you might imagine apart from the only question that mattered — whether the DOC documents are public records.

IANAL but I don't think she "had" to answer these questions. I'm not defending Alabama at all here, but depositions are not an open forum where anything goes. She is legally required to answer truthfully, but she doesn't have to answer at all if the question isn't germane. Maybe she opened the door to some of the questions by providing a religious basis for her information request, but most of these questions are completely irrelevant. She should have refused to play the game.

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You do not have to answer, but if you do not, I presume the state, under the interpretation it has made of the law, can use your refusal as a basis for refusing your request for public records.

Declining to answer probably wouldn't have helped her cause, but I doubt anything she said would have stopped them from refusing. Hopefully now she at least has evidence of bias or misconduct that will serve as ammunition for her appeal against the ruling. I just wish she'd taken a stand against their absurd questions and stood up for the principle.

Then again, I still let the TSA and customs perform intrusive searches and ask intrusive questions (that have no bearing on safety) when I travel, because I want to get on with my life. For example, when I return to the US (as a natural born US citizen), immigration will ask me what the purpose of my trip was, where I went, etc. They have no legitimate reason for this, I legally don't have to answer any of the questions, and they cannot refuse me re-entry (assuming they accept the validity of my passport), yet I play their game because at the end of a 10-hour flight and a 2-hour queue, I don't feel like sitting in a cell for 72 hours while they process me.

The purpose of your trip is actually valid. It can trigger certain customs limitations on monetary value that you can legally return to the country with. It's obtuse, but it's a valid question. It's also important to note that you have zero civil liberties, even as a citizen, within 100 miles of a border to the United States, of which an airport has been considered I've in some cases.

TSA security theatre on the other hand is a whole different ball of wax. Very little of what they do contributes more to security than prior measures or alternative, less intrusive measures. The fact that programs where you can pay to avoid it exist prove this point. They already have the same level of access to every person thorough the dragnet of law enforcement and intelligence databases that every single air traveler gets processed through. When it's trivially easy to spot numerous gaps in security in every single airport I've been to, it's more a statement to the fact that most people are good than it is to the fact that we're good at catching bad guys. An airport just needs to be a less viable target and bad guys will go elsewhere that's easier.

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