Jan 31 2020

Can “quarantine” orders restrict travel and movement?

Imagine that you are a US citizen living or traveling overseas, and find yourself in a place of possible danger. The US government, as part of its “services” to US citizens abroad, offers to charter a plane to evacuate US citizens and repatriate them to the US, and you agree to pay a pro-rated share of the cost of the flight back to a US gateway airport, from which you are told you will be free to proceed to your home or to wherever else you choose to go.

But the flight, which was scheduled to take you to San Francisco International Airport, is diverted first to Ontario [CA] Airport and then to an Air Force Reserve Base in the Mojave Desert, where passengers are confined in a  cordoned-off section of the base. When one of you tries to leave, they are detained by the authorities.

This is what has happened to 195 US citizens “evacuated” from Wuhan, China.

Have they been “rescued” by their government? Or have they been kidnapped?

Questions are already being raised about this and other incidents of individual and mass “quarantines”.  Some have questioned the medical argument for quarantine orders, while others have suggested that the current panic reflects ethnic and national bigotry.

Our particular concern is — as it has been for many years, and as it has been for other legal experts who have criticized the Federal quarantine regulations — with the legal basis and procedures for restricting the right to freedom of movement, extrajudicially, on ostensibly medical grounds, rather than  relying on existing legal mechanisms for the issuance by judges of temporary restraining orders or injunctions restricting individuals’ movements.

Unfortunately, US authorities, especially the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have tried to avoid acknowledging the scope of the authority they claim, or giving either the public or specifically affected individuals clear notice of their rights. Instead, as in other recent incidents of quarantine orders, they have tried to avoid any judicial review of their actions by persuading individuals to waive their rights, just as police avoid judicial review of other types of detentions, searches, and interrogations by intimidating members of the public into giving “consent”.

KTLA television reports that “None of the passengers showed signs of the illness after being evacuated from the epicenter of the deadly coronavirus outbreak. However, they agreed to stay voluntarily, according to Dr. Chris Braden of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

The CDC claim that passengers “agreed to stay voluntarily” seems to be contradicted by other facts reported in the same news story: Read More

Jan 22 2020

European high court to review PNR-based travel surveillance

The highest court of the European Union will be reviewing the legality of  the directive adopted by the EU in 2017 requiring airlines to send Passenger Name Record (PNR) data to the government of each EU member state, and requiring each EU member state to establish a “Passenger Information Unit” to carry out PNR-based surveillance and profiling of air travelers.

National courts first in Belgium and more recently in Germany have referred questions concerning the legality under European Union human rights law of government access to and use of Passenger Name Records (PNRs) to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

Read More

Jan 17 2020

Is the TSA “screening” for threats to aviation, or for cash and drugs?

A class-action lawsuit filed this week in Pittsburgh by the Institute for Justice, Brown v. TSA, exposes the dirty non-secret that TSA checkpoints are used primarily as drug checkpoints  and as a revenue center for law enforcement agencies, not to protect aviation.

Warrantless, suspicionless dragnet administrative searches at TSA checkpoints are justified as measures to “screen” travelers for weapons, explosives, and other threats to aviation.

When the actions of TSA Transportation Security “Officers” are challenged in court, the TSA has claimed that its “Officers” are not the “officers” referred to in the Federal Tort Claims Act (“any officer of the United States who is empowered by law to execute searches, to seize evidence, or to make arrests for violations of Federal law”) ; conduct only limited administrative searches for weapons, explosives, and threats to aviation; do not have any authority to conduct searches for any other purpose; and neither have nor exercise authority to arrest or seize travelers.

In practice, however, the primary use of TSA checkpoints by the government is to “screen” travelers for drugs and cash, and to seize and expropriate illegal drugs, drug-related cash, and all “large” sums of cash being carried by airline passengers, regardless of the presence or absence of any evidence linking that cash to illegal drugs or any other illegal activity.

Read More

Jan 02 2020

Drivers’ license data sold to businesses, given to Feds

As we start the year of the once-a-decade US Census, it’s an appropriate time to start looking at some of the ways and the purposes for which data — including drivers license data — is used and shared by the Bureau of the Census.

State agencies that issue drivers’ licenses want us not to object to their demands for more and more personal information about matters unrelated to driving — digital photos, scans of birth certificates and social security cards, etc. — in order to obtain drivers’ licenses that comply with the Federal REAL-ID Act.

State driver licensing agencies say we shouldn’t worry — notwithstanding the requirement of the REAL-ID Act that drivers’ license and state ID data be made available electronically to all other states — because this data will only be shared “as permitted by law”.

But what does that mean? What sharing of this data does the law permit?

Recent reports show that drivers’ license data can be, and is, widely shared with both commercial entities and Federal agencies — including the Bureau of the Census, which will be conducting the decennial census in 2020 — for purposes unrelated to motor vehicle operation or drivers’ licenses. Both Federal and state agencies say that all of this is permitted by the Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA).

Read More