In response to a scathing report by its Office of the Inspector General (OIG), the US Department of Justice has directed the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) to suspend most of its suspicionless “consensual” questioning and searches of travelers at airports and in other transportation facilities, pending an internal review of these practices. For years, DEA […]
[“The welcoming, friendly and visually pleasing appearance” of the TSA’s headquarters at 6595 Springfield Center Drive, Springfield, VA.] We spent most of a day last week outside the headquarters of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), trying and failing to find out what the rules are for the TSA’s new digital-ID scheme. What we did learn […]
More than 100,000 US citizens — almost ten times as many as the State Department had projected — have been required to complete one or both of two impossible “long form” supplements to their applications for US passports, according to records we received this month in response to a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request […]
US government travel blacklists (euphemistically described by the government as merely “watchlists”) are being used to restrict airline travel and target searches of electronic devices of organizers of protests against US support for Israel’s military actions in Gaza, according to a complaint filed this week in Federal court by attorneys for two blacklisted Palestinian-American US […]
Judge Nina Morrison of the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and Long Island) has ruled that police, including officers of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), need a warrant to search your cellphone at JFK International Airport, even when you are entering or leaving the US. […]
This month the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) division of the Department of the Treasury began collecting copies of passports, drivers licenses, and other ID documents submitted by officers and owners of all sorts of companies. In other words, you now have to have a government-issued ID and provide an image of it, probably including […]
According to a report by Zack Whittaker on TechCrunch, security researcher, and blogger Sam Curry “was taken into secondary inspection by U.S. federal agents on September 15 after returning from a trip to Japan. Curry said agents with the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) unit and the Department of Homeland Security questioned him at […]
Most people think of communications between attorneys and their clients as being among those having the highest level of legal “privilege” against compelled disclosure to the government. And it is widely believed that the US lacks a Federal “shield law” protecting journalists against being forced to reveal confidential sources. The assumptions are, in some situations […]
A lawsuit filed last week in Federal court in Oklahoma City by the Council on American-Islamic Relations on behalf of Oklahoma native Saadiq Long challenges unconstitutional searches and seizures (sometimes at gunpoint) and interference with freedom of movement on city streets and highways on the unlawful basis of a combination of warrantless dragnet surveillance and […]
[Jonathan Corbett argues on behalf of Michele Leuthauser] Two years ago, at least a dozen women on a Qatar Airways flight to Sydney were ordered off the plane at Doha Airport in Qatar and subjected to forced vaginal examinations. Australia made diplomatic protests, as both the airline and the airport are controlled by the government […]