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The Identity Project

Category Archives: Freedom To Travel

Aug 28 2018

CBP expands partnership with airlines on facial recognition

This month US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) posted the latest in a series of Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) for its Traveler Verification Service (TVS) program.

The  latest PIA gives notice (although not in the form required by Federal law) that CBP and its airline and airport  partners are carrying out a second expanded phase of “demonstrations” of TVS, an identity-as-a-service scheme designed to use automated recognition of images from a shared CBP/airline/airport database of facial photos for purposes including surveillance and control (for CBP) and business process automation and price personalization (for airlines and airports).

CBP (1) describes TVS as a “biometric exit” program, (2) describes the current use of TVS as merely a “demonstration”, (3) continues to claim that airlines and airports “have no interest in keeping or retaining” facial images any longer , or using them for any other purposes, than is required by CBP for “security”, and (4) says that U.S citizens aren’t required to submit to mug shots.

These claims are intended to lull the public into not protesting: “This is only a test, using photos for limited purposes. The photos will be deleted once you get on the plane, and not used for nay commercial or other purpose.” And so forth.

All that might be somewhat reassuring, if any of it were true. But  none of it is:

Read More →

Jul 18 2018

California DMV lies about the REAL-ID Act

We’ve heard that the California Department of Motor Vehicles has posted scary new signs in DMV offices around the state misinforming motorists and holders of DMV-issued non-driver state ID cards about the Federal REAL-ID Act of 2005.

We assume that these public disinformation messages are similar in content to the false answers to frequently asked questions and other propaganda about REAL-ID on the DMV website.

We’ve been through all this before with similar false claims about the REAL-ID Act by the California DMV and the Federal Department of Homeland Security. But lest anyone be misled by seemingly authoritative statements from government agencies, here are some of the real facts about REAL-ID that are contradicted, denied, or ignored in DMV press releases. Read More →

Jul 17 2018

3rd Circuit gives impunity to TSA checkpoint staff

TSA checkpoint staff often act as though they were above the law. But are they really?

Sadly, they often are, at least in the opinion of some Federal judges.

The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals recent decision in Pellegrino v. TSA , in combination with its decision last year in Vanderklok v. TSA, mean that — at least for now, and at least in the 3rd Circuit — no civil recourse or remedy is available through the Federal courts against checkpoint staff who deliberately assault travelers, lie about their own actions and those of travellers, and make knowingly and deliberately false complaints to police in order to get travelers wrongly arrested.

The two judges in the majority on the three-judge panel that upheld the dismissal of Nadine Pellegrino’s complaint  explicitly acknowledged the implications of their decision:

We recognize that our holding here, combined with our decision in Vanderklok, means that individuals harmed by the intentional torts of TSOs will have very limited legal redress. And we are sympathetic to the concerns this may raise as a matter of policy, particularly given the nature and frequency of TSOs’ contact with the flying public. For most people, TSA screenings are an unavoidable feature of flying, 49 U.S.C. §44901(a), and they may involve thorough searches of not only the belongings of passengers but also their physical persons…. For these reasons, Congress may well see fit to …  legislate recourse for passengers who seek to assert intentional tort claims against TSOs. But such policy judgments, particularly as they relate to sovereign immunity and the public fisc, fall squarely in the realm of the legislative branch.

The dissenting member of the panel (the dissent starts at p. 54 of the slip opinion) characterized the decision more bluntly:

My colleagues[‘]…  decision insulates TSOs from all intentional tort claims, leaving plaintiffs without a civil remedy. Absent congressional action, they cannot recover if a TSO [Transportation Security “Officer”] assaults them, unlawfully detains them, or unlawfully lodges a criminal complaint against them.

The details of the opinion dismissing Ms. Pellegrino’s complaint might be described charitably as arcane, and uncharitably as twisted.
Read More →

Jul 14 2018

Greyhound, Amtrak, and ID demands

Changes in Greyhound business practices jeopardize the already-limited options for cross-country travel by people in the USA who don’t have, or don’t chose to show, government-issued  ID credentials.

For local transportation, undocumented people who want or need to travel further and/or faster than they can walk can ride bicycles (although there have been proposals in some jurisdictions to require registration of bicycles and/or bicyclists), or use public mass transit (where it exists, and where fares can be paid anonymously in cash, which isn’t the case with some cashless transit fare payment schemes).

Long-distance travel options for people without papers are even more limited. Policies adopted by airlines and Amtrak, combined with ID requirements for drivers of private motor vehicles, have left long-distance bus companies as the carriers of last resort for long-distance travel by undocumented people.

The options for the undocumented get even narrower when one starts looking at specific routes. Greyhound is the only company providing scheduled transcontinental bus service, a truly national route system, or any intercity bus service to many destinations in the USA.

That makes Greyhound’s route system and ID policies, or the lack of any Greyhound policy conditioning domestic US travel on possession or display of government-issued ID, of paramount importance to anyone who wants to move about the US without showing ID.

Read More →

Jun 22 2018

Arguments for and against TSA Form 415

We’ve finally begun receiving records from the TSA of how the public responded to the TSA’s proposal in 2016 to start requiring travelers to show ID in order to fly.

Since 2008, TSA and contractor staff at airport checkpoints have been demanding that some travelers who do not have ID, do not show ID to checkpoint staff, or show ID that is initially deemed “unacceptable” fill out and sign TSA Form 415, “Certification of Identity”, and answer questions about the information in the (secret) file about them maintained and made available to the TSA by the commercial data broker Accurint.

Before any Federal agency such as the TSA starts collecting information from the public, whether verbally or through a written form, the agency is required to obtain approval for the “information collection” from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

The TSA has never requested or obtained approval for any version of Form 415. But in 2016, the TSA gave notice that it intended to seek OMB approval for Form  415, and accepted comments on that proposal from the public by email. After submitting our own objections to the TSA’s proposal, the Identity Project made a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request for the complete administrative record related to the TSA’s contemplated request.

The TSA has not yet actually submitted a request to OMB for approval of Form 415, but has continued to use it illegally without OMB approval.

In May 2018, we received a heavily redacted version of the TSA’s procedures for “ID verification” including use of Form 415.

Now we’ve received a first partial set of excerpts from the “administrative record” related to the TSA’s proposal, consisting mainly of comments submitted by the public.

Most of the comments were from civil liberties and human rights organizations opposed to the TSA’s proposal, including the Identity Project, the Cyber Privacy Project,  the Constitution Alliance, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

But the TSA also received comments questioning the TSA proposal from at least one state government, and a single frighteningly revealing comment urging the TSA to use even more intrusive measures to track people who try to fly without “acceptable” ID.

Read More →

May 29 2018

More stupid questions for applicants for U.S. visas

The list of questions asked of applicantas for U.S. visas goes on for page after page, including:

  • Do you belong to a clan or tribe?
  • Are you or have you ever been a drug abuser or addict?
  • Are you coming to the United States to engage in prostitution or unlawful commercialized vice?
  • Do you seek to engage in espionage, sabotage, export control violations or any other illegal activity in the United States?
  • Are you a member of a terrorist organization?
  • Have you ever participated in genocide?
  • Have you ever been directly involved in the coercive transplantation of human organs or bodily tissue?
  • Have you ever committed torture?
  • Have you ever engaged in the recruitment or the use of child soldiers?
  • Are you coming to the U.S. to practice polygamy?
  • Are you a member of the Communist party?

Some of these questions are pointless. How many people have been denied admission to the U.S. because they volunteered that they were terrorists, torturers, or genocidists?

Others of these questions are vague, irrelevant, and/or intrusive.

Unfortunately, the list of questions asked of would-be travelers to the U.S. has grown ever longer, under both Democratic and Republican administrations.

In 2016, questions about social media identifiers were added to the online application for the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), a sort of short-form electronic visa used by tourists and some short-stay business visitors from most-favored countries.

Now those same questions are being added to the printed and  online forms used by all other applicants for any type of visa to visit, transit, or immigrate to the U.S.

Today the Identity Project and five other national civil liberties and human rights organizations — Government Information Watch, Cyber Privacy Project (CPP), American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Restore the Fourth, Inc., and National Immigration Law Center (NILC) — filed comments with the Department of State objecting to this questioning as unconstitutional and contrary to international human rights treaties and Federal laws.

Read More →

May 14 2018

Senators say US citizens shouldn’t have to submit to airport mug shots

Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) have sent another joint letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielson renewing their objections to requiring US citizens to submit to mug shots (“facial recognition”) as part of a DHS “biometric exit” program for identifying and tracking international travelers departing from US airports and seaports.

The letter sent last Friday is a follow-up to an earlier letter six months ago, in which the Senators told the DHS that such a requirement for US citizens is “facially unauthorized”:

Most crucially, while Congress has repeatedly voted to authorize biometric entry-exit scanning of foreign nationals, it has never authorized biometric exit screening for U.S. citizens. In fact, Congress has pointedly neglected to authorize DHS to use the program on U.S. citizens for any purpose. Additionally, while airport infrastructure may not be conducive to separate boarding procedures for U.S. citizens and non-citizens, convenience should not be placed above congressionally mandated requirements. We are concerned that the use of the program on U.S. citizens remains facially unauthorized.

Read More →

May 08 2018

TSA releases redacted ID verification procedures

Five years after we requested them under the Freedom Of Information Act, the TSA has released a redacted copy of its Identity Verification Call Center (IVCC) procedures for interrogation and “screening” of people who show up at TSA checkpoints without ID or with ID the TSA initially deems unacceptable.

Most of these people — 98% of them, according to summaries and logs eventually released to us by the TSA in response to our FOIA request — are eventually “allowed” by the TSA or TSA contractors to exercise their right to travel by common carrier, but only after being put through the TSA’s identity verification procedures.

The TSA’s Standard Operating Procedures for travelers without ID or with initially unacceptable ID include requiring them to complete and sign an (illegal) TSA Form 415, “Certification Of Identity” (COI), and playing a pointless game of 20 questions by telephone with the ID Verification Call Center to see if the traveler’s answers to questions match the information in the files secretly maintained by a commercial data broker, the Accurint division of LexisNexis (part of Reed Elsevier).

In 2013, we asked the TSA for its records of what happens to people who try to fly without ID or with ID that the TSA or its contractors initially deem unacceptable. As part of the same request, we asked for related email messages and policies.

The TSA dragged its feet for years, gradually releasing a trickle of redacted and scanned page-view images of derivative reports, but none of the email messages or reports.

A year ago, the TSA declared its munged partial response “complete”. We filed an administrative appeal, and six months later, the TSA’s appeal officer partially upheld our appeal and remanded our request for a further search for email messages and policies.

After eight more months, we’ve finally received a redacted image of the 2013 version (the version in effect when we first made our request) of the TSA’s ID Verification Call Center “Standard Operating Procedures”.

By the time the TSA finally looked for the email messages on which some of the reports were based, after our appeal was upheld, those messages had all been deleted:

No email messages pertaining to the responsive records were located. The email account utilized to prepare and distribute the TSOC reports was centralized into the National Transportation Vetting Center email account, and all emails created during that time associated with the TSOC reports already released to you have been deleted.

Ultimately, the  ID Verification SOP leaves the final decision on whether a would-be airline passenger is allowed to travel to the standardless discretion of the TSA staff person in charge for each airport, the Federal Security Director (FSD) or their designee.

There are some other curious statements between the redactions in the version of the  ID Verification SOP released to us by the TSA.

According to the SOP:

Under these procedures, passengers are required to produce acceptable identification to a TSA Screening Representative (TSR) before proceeding to the security checkpoint. Passengers who do not produce acceptable identification and who fail to assist TSA personnel in adequately identifying their identity will be denied entry.

There is no indication of the legal basis, if any, for this TSA claim that airline passengers have an affirmative duty to  “produce acceptable identification” or “assist TSA personnel in adequately identifying their identity”, or what the basis would be for denial of passage.

The SOP also contains a bizarre assertion in section 2.5.9 of the SOP that the COI form (TSA Form 415), which travelers without ID or with unacceptable ID are required to complete and sign, is “Sensitive Security Information” (SSI) which is “not to be circulated to the public” and which passengers must surrender to checkpoint or TSA staff on demand. The SOP doesn’t say how this form could be held to constitute SSI.

TSA Form 415 has already been made public in response to another of our FOIA requests, and the Paperwork Reduction Act requires that forms used to collect information from the public be published for comment before they are approved.

In 2016, after using Form 415 and its unnumbered predecessor illegally for years, the TSA published a notice that it planned to apply for approval of this form (to which we objected). But the TSA has yet to apply for, much less receive, the approval it would need before using this form.

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.

Read More →

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.