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The Identity Project

Monthly Archives: April 2018

Apr 30 2018

Is your drivers license or state ID in the national REAL-ID database?

One of the major goals of the REAL-ID Act of 2005 was to create, and to pressure state governments to participate in, a national database of drivers’ licenses and state-issued ID cards.

The REAL-ID Act requires that, “To meet the requirements of this section, a State shall … Provide electronic access to all other States to information contained in the motor vehicle database of the State.”

In practice, the only available or affordable way for a state to comply with this part of the REAL-ID Act is to participate in the “State-to-State” (S2S) data sharing system operated by AAMVA and built by an AAMVA contractor, Clerus Solutions. AAMVA says that, “For those states … choosing to comply with REAL ID… the Department of Homeland Security has indicated that participation in S2S will be required for the state to be REAL ID compliant. This is because… the law and regulations governing REAL ID include requirements for state licensing agencies to connect their databases.”

Despite its name, which might be taken as implying that it is merely a messaging system, S2S relies on a centralized national database, “SPEXS”, which contains a record for each  drivers’ license  or ID card issued by any participating state or territory.

The DHS has been certifying states and territories as “compliant” with the REAL-ID Act, without regard for whether they have complied with this provision of the Federal law.

But that begs the question of how many states have uploaded information about how many of their residents to the national database in order to comply with the REAL-ID Act.

Are records of drivers’ licenses and ID cards issued by your state or territory already included in the national database? If not, when will they be?

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Apr 27 2018

DHS still using American Samoans as “REAL-ID” guinea pigs

When last we checked in on the status of DHS threats to harass residents of states and territories that haven’t been sufficiently “compliant” with the REAL-ID Act of 2005, the focus was on the territory of American Samoa.

The REAL-ID Act applies to the District of Columbia and five US territories as well as to the fifty US states. American Samoa is the most distant from the US mainland and one of the smallest in population of these US territories, and is the only place subject to the REAL-ID Act whose native-born residents are not US citizens. There are only two scheduled airline flights a week between American Samoa and any other US state or territory.

Perhaps for these reasons, the DHS in its infinite wisdom unreviewable discretion chose to make American Samoa the test of its threats to “enforce” the REAL-ID Act.

Every other state or territory was either certified as sufficiently compliant with the REAL-ID Act (even though few of them are) or given an extension of time to show a more compliant attitude. But the DHS invoked its REAL-ID “nuclear option” on American Samoa, announcing that  effective February 5, 2018, “a driver’s license or ID issued by American Samoa (AS) will no longer be an acceptable document to board a federally-regulated commercial aircraft.” Air travelers showing ID cards issued by the government of American Samoa are subject to additional “ID verification” and/or “screening” (searches).

So how has the DHS effort to make an example out of American Samoa fared? And what can other states and territories learn from this example?

Basically, (1) the sky didn’t fall, and (2) the DHS blinked (again). The message to other states is that they shouldn’t be panicked into “compliance” by empty DHS threats.

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Apr 12 2018

Mapping #CheckpointAmerica

Our friends at the Cato Institute have launched a new  section of their Website in English and Spanish, Checkpoint: America — Monitoring The Constitution Free Zone. The new site provides annotated maps of the locations and details of known permanent checkpoints operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to control internal travel on roads within the U.S.

CBP claims the “border” authority to operate permanent or temporary roadblocks and stop and question U.S. citizens without a warrant anywhere within 100 miles of any international border or coastline. Including the Atlantic and  Pacific coasts and Great Lakes shorelines, this “border” area includes the majority of the population of the U.S.

Cato compiled information about the checkpoints from non-governmental sources after CBP stonewalled a FOIA request for it: “A 2015 Freedom of Information Act request to CBP filed by Cato Policy Analyst Patrick Eddington for information on these checkpoints has been on administrative appeal for two years.”

The clickable map shows, “overhead and ground-level photography of the facilities, physical descriptions of the checkpoints, and … (where available) press accounts, administrative actions, and court proceedings involving a given checkpoint.”

The new Cato site also acknowledges and links to our friends at Roadblock Revelations (Checkpoint USA), who have been documenting and challenging these checkpoints for many years.

Apr 06 2018

Transportation companies should not consent to police harassment of travelers

The ACLU is calling on Greyhound to stop giving the Border Patrol (US Customs and Border Protection) permission to board Greyhound buses and interrogate passengers.

According to a public letter sent to Greyhound by ACLU affiliates across the US:

Greyhound recently has said that the company believes it is “required” to “cooperate with [CBP] if they ask to board our buses.” We are aware of no such requirement. Rather, Greyhound has a Fourth Amendment right to deny CBP permission to board and search its buses without a judicial warrant…. [W]e urge Greyhound to change its policy and to refuse CBP permission to conduct invasive bus raids without a warrant.

Or, as a petition already signed by more than 30,000 people puts it more succinctly, “Your company has the right to say no to [the] Border Patrol — now is the time to do it.”

We wholeheartedly endorse this call on Greyhound to stop doing the wrong thing — and we extend the same call to all transportation companies including airlines and Amtrak.

Federal, state, and local police routinely collaborate to interrogate travelers on buses and trains and in bus and train stations and airports. The purpose of this questioning is typically not to obtain information, but to trick and/or intimidate travelers with a sufficient show of force  to get them to “consent” to searches of their belongings for drugs and/or cash, so that travelers’ cash and/or other valuables can be seized and forfeited to the police agencies involved. “Consensual” questioning and searches are also used as the basis for additional harassment, detention, and deportation of immigrants and other foreigners.

These sordid practices depend, we reiterate, on trickery and intimidation as well as on the willingness of the courts to countenance “consent” given under patently coercive conditions when armed police are blocking the aisle of a bus or train or the door of a compartment on a sleeping car, or surrounding a traveler in an airport waiting area.

But these practices also depend on the willingness of transportation companies to let these goons onto their buses and trains and into their stations and airports to conduct these looting expeditions for anything they can expropriate through civil forfeiture.

Greyhound buses are private property. Except in “hot pursuit” of a suspected criminal, police cannot board Greyhound buses without a ticket or permission from Greyhound.

Amtrak is a Federal government corporation, but nothing in its charter from Congress requires it to collaborate with, or consent to, warrantless searches of Amtrak property, including passenger coaches and sleeping cars, or questioning of Amtrak passengers.

(We are continuing to receive a foot-dragging trickle of responses to a FOIA request we made to Amtrak in 2014 for information about Amtrak’s sharing of information about passengers with the DHS and with foreign law enforcement agencies.)

Similarly, most airports and some bus and train stations are publicly operated, but free to refuse their consent to warrantless entry onto some or all of their premises, other than customs facilities leased to CBP, by agents of the DEA, CBP, or other law enforcement officers not involved in routine airport, train station, or bus station patrols and policing.

If you see police doing something you don’t like on a bus or train, in a bus or train station, or in an airport, say something to the company that “consented”  to this police activity.

Apr 04 2018

Anything you say (to the census) can and will be used against you

[Excerpt from census report used for internment of Japanese-Americans. Names and street numbers were redacted by the academic researchers who published this, but were included in the original report provided to internment authorities and later found in government archives.]

Yesterday 17 more states, the District of Columbia, and six cities joined the state of California in court challenges to plans for the 2020 Census to include a question about the citizenship of each person found to be present in the US on census day.

Like police, census takers can ask any questions they like. But if they ask questions such as, “Are you a US citizen?”, you can, and you should, exercise your right to remain silent.

The US Constitution requires to Federal government to conduct a census — a count — every ten years. But you don’t have to say anything for the government to count you.

Anything you say to the US Census can and will be used against you.

How do we know this? We know it could happen again, because it has happened before.

In 1943, the Bureau of the Census prepared block-by-block reports based on responses to the 1940 census listing the name, street address, age, occupation and employer, and citizenship of each Japanese or Japanese-American person. A sample of one of these reports is reproduced at the top of this article.

These census reports were turned over to the military authorities administering the round-up and “internment” (a euphemism) of Japanese and Japanese-American people. Archived copies of these reports were found in the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and published by academic researchers in 2007.

Responses to census questions were thus used against (Japanese-American) US citizens as well as against (Japanese) foreign citizens who resided in the US.

This documented history teaches that it’s not just immigrants and foreigners who should decline to answer census questions. US citizens have a well-founded fear that answers to census questions about lawful status — there was nothing illegal or sanctionable, at the time of the 1940 census, about being of Japanese ancestry — can be and have been used against them.

Today, the Bureau of the Census claims that “We promise that we will use the information only to produce timely, relevant statistics about the population and the economy of the United States.” According to the Census Bureau FAQ on “Why We Ask Questions About… Citizenship“:

We use your confidential survey answers to create statistics…. no one is able to figure out your survey answers from the statistics we produce. The Census Bureau is legally bound to strict confidentiality requirements. Individual records are not shared with anyone, including federal agencies and law enforcement entities. By law, the Census Bureau cannot share respondents’ answers with anyone — not the IRS, not the FBI, not the CIA, and not with any other government agency.

History shows, however, that it times of war, panic trumps previously declared policy. The “War on Terror” is no exception.

The only way to prevent the misuse of information is not to collect it. Unless the current lawsuits are successful, the only way to prevent the census from collecting this information will be for people questioned by census takers to exercise their right to remain silent. If you want to be counted, you can show yourself at a window. You don’t need to say anything for the census taker to count you.

If someone claiming to be a census taker knocks on your door, don’t open the door. Claiming to be a census taker is a great pretext for identity theft, burglary, or home invasion. Ask them if they have a warrant or court order signed by a judge. If they don’t, tell them to them to go away. If they persist, say the same things you would say to police: “Go away. I do not consent to any search. I want to talk to a lawyer. I’m going to remain silent.”

Apr 02 2018

Can US citizens entering the country opt out of CBP mug shots?

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has published a new Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for its Automated Passport Control (APC) kiosks and Mobile Passport Control (MPC) apps.  Unlike most PIA’s, this one does not say why it was prepared, or what, if anything, about the programs it assesses has changed. But it appears to be a response — although an inadequate and possibly still a factually inaccurate one — to some of our complaints.

At many international airports and some cruise ports  in the US, travelers — including US citizens — have to submit their mug shots to CBP through either an APC kiosk or the MPC smartphone app before they are allowed to proceed to CBP officers for customs, immigration, and agricultural inspections.  This requirement is enforced by “line minders” manning the velvet ropes and directing pedestrian traffic inside “sterile” arrival areas. These line minders are employed by the airline, airport, and/or their contractors or sub-contractors, making it easy for CBP to deny any responsibility for their actions.

In January of this year, we were part of a meeting between civil liberties and human rights organizations and CBP officials on the subject of these  “biometric entry/exit” schemes.

The CBP officials we met with in January denied that anyone is required to use the APC kiosks, contrary to our experience and that of other participants in the meeting.

When we complained that CBP hasn’t complied with even the minimal notice requirements of the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) for this sort of data collection, CBP’s Privacy Officer responded, “I do not consider this program to be operating in violation of the Privacy Act, therefore, I have nothing to investigate.”

But although CBP didn’t conduct an “investigation”, it does appear to have conducted a new “assessment” and published a new set of claims about what it is doing.

What does CBP now say about its mug shots of arriving travelers? And is it true?

We call B.S.

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