Mar 30 2021

Expanding travel policing beyond no-fly lists (and the Fourth Amendment)

According to an article in POLITICO based on interviews with unnamed “law enforcement officials,” the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is considering expanded use of airline reservation data  to target travelers  for more intrusive searches:

The department could begin analyzing the travel patterns of suspected domestic extremists, monitor flights they book on short notice and search their luggage for weapons, a senior law enforcement official told POLITICO. There have also been discussions about putting suspected domestic violent extremists — a category that includes white supremacists — on the FBI’s No Fly List, the official said. When suspected extremists travel internationally, officials may be more likely to question them before they pass through customs and to search their phones and laptops.

A second law enforcement official told POLITICO that conversations about monitoring domestic extremists’ travel have involved multiple federal agencies at the interagency level, including the FBI.

We’ve recently discussed what’s wrong with the no-fly lists (there are several, created and maintained by different, although interlocking, entities, for different ostensible purposes) and why they shouldn’t be used like this or in most of the other ways that they are now used.

As Gary Leff puts it in his View from  the Wing travel blog:

Denying the freedom of travel, without trial, is precisely the mob rule outside of the rule of law that we’re supposed to be pushing back on after the events of January 6th. Having the government ban travel on all airlines without judicial review is frightening in a democracy.

The latest article in POLITICO suggests tactics that go well beyond no-fly lists. It’s important to understand what’s being talked about, and how it would differ from previously-disclosed practices and exceed what is permitted by current law.

It’s crucial to recognize that, in this proposal, the DHS is testing the waters not for an expansion of existing authority, but an entirely new category of exception to the Fourth Amendment: a “pre-crime” search that is based on neither a warrant nor probable cause, but that — unlike an administrative search — targets individuals selectively.

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Mar 18 2021

Laundering Federal funding for the national ID database

The latest response to one of our Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests shows the lengths to which the Federal government has gone to obscure its underwriting of the construction of a national ID database.

Supporters of  a national ID database know that there is resistance to exactly that idea. So they try to pretend that there is no such thing.

They can’t credibly claim that the SPEXS database doesn’t exist, so they try to pretend (1) that this isn’t a national database but merely a distributed national network of state drivers license and ID databases (which it could be, but isn’t, since it includes a national “pointer” database with a record of personal information for each drivers’ license or state-issued ID card), (2) that this State-to-State  network isn’t mandated by Federal law (a clearly false claim, since the Federal REAL-ID Act of 2005 requires that to be “compliant”, each state  must “Provide electronic access to all other States to information contained in the motor vehicle database of the State”), and (3) that this network and database are being built by states, not by the Feds.

The problem with this third and last line of rhetorical defense against opposition to the creation of a national ID database is that much of the funding actually is coming from the Federal government. But the Feds have gone to great lengths to obscure their role in funding the creation of the infrastructure for a national ID scheme.

Here’s how it works:

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Mar 05 2021

Court says you can sue TSA agents who don’t let you film them

Judge John A. Gibney, Jr. of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled that TSA checkpoint staff can be sued (and, potentially, held personally liable for damages) for stopping a traveler from recording video with his cellphone of them searching (“patting down”) his wife, and ordering him to delete the video.

The initial decision in the case of Dyer v. Smith is likely to be appealed to the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. But Judge Gibney’s ruling is an important step toward holding the TSA accountable to the 1st Amendment (freedom of speech and of the press) and 4th Amendment (freedom from unreasonable search and seizure) to the US Constitution.

In particular, Judge Gibney not only (1) recognized that members of the public have a Constitutional right to film at TSA checkpoints, and not to have their recordings seized, but also (2) rejected the claim that this right was not “clearly established” and thus that TSA checkpoint staff should have “qualified immunity” from lawsuits, and (3) allowed the lawsuit against the TSA to go forward, under the so-called “Bivens doctrine” already recognized by courts in other contexts, even though there is no specific law (other than the Constitution itself, which ought to suffice) providing for lawsuits against TSA staff who violate travelers’ Constitutional rights.

We are particularly pleased that Judge Gibney recognized that the Constitutional right to film the TSA is “clearly established,” contrary to the court finding in 2015 in Phil Mocek’s lawsuit against TSA checkpoint staff and Albuquerque Police that, while Mr, Mocek’s rights had been violated, the right to film at TSA checkpoints was not (yet) clearly established — so Mr. Mocek was not entitled to any redress through the courts for the violation.

The plaintiff, Dustin Dyer, is himself a lawyer, but served only as pro se local counsel to civil rights attorney Jonathan Corbett, one of whose specialties is TSA wrongdoing.

(Mr. Corbett is also, we are pleased to report, representing Sai in his challenge to the Constitutionality of 49 USC § 46110, the Federal law which establishes special and especially limited procedures and criteria for judicial review of “orders” issued by the TSA.)

As with Mr. Mocek, Mr. Dyer was able to recover the “deleted” video, although it’s not clear how important that may have been in deterring the TSA from making up stories about what happened, as the TSA and police did (unsuccessfully, in the face of video and audio evidence falsifying their official reports) with respect to Mr. Mocek.

It’s worth reading both Mr. Corbett’s brief in support of his client Mr. Dyer, and the amicus brief by Constitutional law professors Brandon Hasbrouck of Washington and Lee School of Law and Katherine Mims Crocker of William and Mary Law School (where Judge Gibney is also an adjunct professor). As friends of the court, these law professors note that “The logic of the single decision [the defendants] cite [Mocek v. Albuquerque] is quite strained.” Judge Gibney seems to have agreed.