Freedom To Travel – Page 48

May 20 2010

Is “SPOT” a reasonable basis for suspicion or surveillance?

Today the Government Accountability Office released a detailed report on the TSA’s “Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques” (SPOT) program, providing considerably more detail than the TSA itself has ever provided, confirming the lack of any evidence that the program has spotted any terrorists, and suggesting implicitly that the DHS has been keeping yet another set of illegal records about innocent travelers.

We’ve followed the SPOT program since its existence was first revealed in 2004, and we’ve been detained, interrogated, and subjected to more intrusive search ourselves after being picked out by SPOT “Behavior Detection Officers”. (Fancy language for, “They didn’t like our looks, so they harassed us and gave us a thorough shakedown.”)

The SPOT program is the TSA’s attempt to adopt Israeli-style passenger profiling based on appearance and behavior (isn’t that supposed to be un-American, or at least illegal?), and now has a budget of more than $200 million a year. As shown in the diagram above from the GAO report, more than 150,000 people have been subjected to more intrusive search or interrogation as a result of being fingered by BDOs as “suspicious” or allegedly fitting the (secret, of course, this being the TSA) SPOT appearance and behavior profile. In 14,000 cases, police were called and passengers detained for “investigation”, typically including a police demand for, and logging of, their ID.

The GAO report serves mainly to confirm the obvious: There is no scientific evidence that the SPOT program has identified any actual would-be terrorists, or provides any legitimate basis for suspicion of those it singles out: Read More →

May 20 2010

Statistics on UK travel surveillance and control

It’s tempting to think that ID and PNR-based travel control systems don’t “work” as anti-terrorist measures (they obviously work as surveillance measures and as general law enforcement dragnets, as do house-to-house searches) solely because of the incompetence of the TSA and DHS. Could they be more effective elsewhere, if better implemented? That seems to be the view of some sectors of center-right opinion in Europe, where the EU continues to consider a mandate for members states to set up their own “Passenger Analysis Units” to decide who to allow to fly, even while the the European Parliament has defined strict standards that they would have to meet.

Newly-reported data from the UK, however, suggests the UK PNR scheme — the most developed and extensive in the EU to date — has all the same problems as the US one. This suggests that the defcst are in the concept, not the details of its execution, and calls in question whether any PNR scheme is likely to likely to be able to meet the Europarl’s criteria for acceptability.

USA presses travel surveillance and control agenda at ICAO

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has been holding another round of meetings this week at its headquarters in Montreal. As we predicted, the US delegation has been pressing its vision of an integrated and standardized global system of surveillance and control of air travel, in which government access would be built into airline reservation systems (think, “CALEA for CRSs and PNR data”, worldwide) and government permission would be a prerequisite to boarding any flight on what used to be considered a “common carrier” required to transport all comers.

It’s hard to know what’s going on at ICAO meetings if you aren’t there (think of other international bodies like the WTO and WIPO), and no privacy or civil liberties group was in attendance. But outsiders can get some sense what’s in ICAO’s pipeline from its own recently-published Vision 2020 10-year plan and from the working papers submitted by participants in last week’s sessions of the facilitation panel, including these:
Read More →

May 17 2010

Three Strikes?

Having been passed over for appointment to head the Drug Enforcement Administration, Deputy FBI Director John S. Pistole today got the booby prize as President Obama’s third-choice nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration.

For those who haven’t been keeping score, retired spymaster and Army General Robert A. Harding withdrew his name from nomination in response to questions about overbilling and cronyism in contracts between his security consulting firm and his former military comrades. Obama’s first choice, former Las Angeles airport cop Erroll Southers, withdrew earlier after apparently lying to Congress about his having used his police connections improperly to get derogatory information from supposedly restricted police files about his estranged wife’s lover.

We have the same questions for Mr. Pistole as we’ve had for the previous nominees for TSA administrator.

As of now, the TSA is still being run on auto-pilot by caretakers from the previous administration. Unfortunately, we don’t see anything in Mr. Pistole’s official biography as a career cop, or the President’s statement about his nomination (which mentions only a desire to “stengthen” screening at airports, and says nothing about strengthening civil liberties or human rights) to suggest any likelihood of improvement in TSA policies.

May 17 2010

Canadian privacy office questions US surveillance of Canadian travelers

In testimony before a Canadian parliamentary hearing last week by Assistant Commissioner Chantal Bernier, the office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada raised questions (previously asked in the Canadian press) about the implications for Canadian travelers of the US Secure Flight program — questions that travelers in the US and other countries should share.

Asst. Privacy Commissioner Bernier noted that despite Canadian objections, the US continues to insist on applying the Secure Flight requirements (transmission of passenger data to the DHS, and receipt by the airline of affirmative DHS permission before each prospective passenger is allowed to board a flight) to flights that pass through US airspace to and from Canada, even if they never land in the USA. This includes most flights between Canada and Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. As Bernier pointed out to Members of Parliament, “This means that DHS will collect personal information of Canadian travelers. This is not without risk.”

It’s worth noting, although it wasn’t reported to have been mentioned at the hearing, that Canada imposes no comparable requirement for the vastly larger number of flights to and form the USA that pass through Canadian airspace. These include virtually all transatlantic flights to and from the USA, and transpacific flights to and from all points in the USA east of the West Coast. Nor does any other country through which flights routinely pass en route to and from the USA. Most flights between Miami and Latin America, for example, pass over Cuba. But American Airlines is required neither to provide the Cuban government with detailed information about each passenger on those flights, nor to obtain Cuban government permission before allowing them to board.

Important as they are, however, the concerns raised in last week’s testimony suggest that even the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada still doesn’t fully appreciate the scope of the problem or of the violations of Canadian law.

Asst. Comm. Bernier’s statement was limited to flights to, from, or overflying the USA. We suspect that her office is unaware that the DHS already has ways to get access — without the knowledge or consent of anyone in Canada, including airlines and travel agencies — to information about passengers and reservations for flights within Canada and between Canada and other countries, regardless of whether they pass though US airspace.

Two-faced Biden speech on “privacy” and surveillance

US Vice President Joe Biden gave a remarkable speech today at the European Parliament, devoting substantial time to professions of personal and institutional US commitment to “privacy” while focusing his policy agenda on lobbying the EP to approve warrantless, suspicious US government access to European financial (SWIFT/TFTP) and travel (PNR) data. If you don’t have time to watch it all, the discussion of privacy and surveillance starts at around 21:15.

Swedish libertarian blogger Hendrik Alexandersson’s comments about Biden’s tightrope act are, perhaps, indicative of the lack of persuasive power of such obviously hypocritical arguments for those genuinely committed to civil liberties.

Biden’s speech was a day late, following Europarl votes yesterday not to approve proposed SWIFT and PNR agreements with the DHS, but instead to set strict new condiitions any such agreements will have to meet.

Biden’s focus on “privacy” also indicates a lack of appreciation for what the EP resolution on PNR data actually says. It’s not limited to privacy or data protection, but makes explicit that the fundamental rights at stake include the right to travel, as guaranteed by Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The new terms of reference for any PNR agreement that will be acceptable to the EP are the criteria established by the U.N. Human Rights Committee for evaluating whether measures that implicate freedom of movement are consistent with that treaty. That right to freedom of movement, and those standards for it — entirely ignored by V.P. Biden and, to date, by the DHS, which has entirely ignored our formal complaint that their use of PNR data violates the ICCPR as well as the Privacy Act — are what both US and EU negotiators should be studying closely as the starting point for new negotiations on PNR data.

May 05 2010

European Parliament hands DHS a setback on access to PNR data

Today the Department of Homeland Security received its most significant rebuff from any democratically elected body since the DHS was created after September 11, 2001.

In response to a recommendation from the Council of the European Union (the EU member national governments) for approval of the “interim” agreement under which the DHS obtains all airline reservations (PNRs) for flights between the USA and the EU, the European Parliament instead voted to send the European Commission back to the negotiating table, and set strict conditions (which the DHS will likely be in part unable and in part unwilling to meet) that must be satisfied before Parliament will approve any such agreement in the future.

The motion for a resolution was jointly sponsored by representatives of all seven political groups in the Parliament. The votes by show of hands — including votes in favor of several amendment to strengthen the resolution — were overwhelming, with insufficient opposition to necessitate recorded votes. And that was in spite of what our sources in the Parliament tell us was an unprecedented and heavy-handed US government lobbying campaign.

The vote today in Brussels follows a Parliamentary hearing (at which we testified) and a debate last month in Strasbourg on travel surveillance and control, the likes of either of which the US Congress has yet to hold — despite the leading role of the US since September 11, 2001 (and even before then) in implementing a system of mandatory retention of travel data, using it as the basis for a permission-based travel control regime, and attempting to get these schemes adopted as global norms.

The ability of the Parliament to dictate conditions for negotiations to be conducted by the European Commission, with the implicit threat to veto any agreement that fails to meet those conditions, is one of the first expressions (the first was Europarl rejection of DHS access to European inter-bank wire transfer data) of the new veto power that the Parliament acquired in December 2009 when the Lisbon Treaty came into effect.

What has the European Parliament done? What happens next? And what else remains to be done, outside the negotiating room? Read More →

Apr 30 2010

Arizona radio call-in discussion on S.B. 1070

We’ll be on the Jay Lawrence Show on KTAR (92.3 FM) in Phoenix this Sunday, May 2nd, from 7-8 p.m. Arizona time (7-8 p.m. PDT, 10-11 p.m. EDT) to discuss and take calls on the new Arizona “immigration enforcement” law, S.B. 1070, its implications for ID demands, and the amendments to the new law already being proposed in Arizona H.B. 2162.

KTAR-FM (live audio stream) has the largest listenership of any talk-radio station in the state. Last week in this same time slot they interviewed the sponsor of S.B. 1070, and we’re happy to have a chance to represent the other side of the debate.

[Update: Our appearance on KTAR has been preempted by an interview with a Congressional candidate. “This issue isn’t going to go away,” though, says Jay Lawrence, and we are working to reschedule.]

Apr 30 2010

Universal fingerprinting and national ID card to be included in “immigration reform” bill

As we reported last month, members of Congress are moving ahead with an increasingly detailed road map for a bipartisan “immigration bill” that would include mandatory universal fingerprinting and a mandatory national ID card in the guise of a “biometric Social Security card”.

The Identity Project was one of the signers of a joint public letter of opposition to the national ID card component of the proposal issued earlier this month, we were one of the signatories and we share the objections to the latest draft of the bill voiced yesterday by other civil liberties organizations. In the joint letter, we and numerous allies said that:

We write today to express our opposition to a proposal by Senators Charles Schumer (D – NY) and Lindsey Graham (R – SC) to create a biometric Social Security card – one that relies on personal characteristics like fingerprints to identify individuals….

A national ID system is not the solution. Both Republicans and Democrats have opposed a National ID system. President Reagan likened a 1981 proposal to the biblical “mark of the beast,” and President Clinton dismissed a similar plan because it smacked of Big Brother. A National ID would not only violate privacy by helping to consolidate data and facilitate tracking of individuals, it would bring government into the very center of our lives by serving as a government permission slip needed by everyone in order to work. As happened with Social Security cards decades ago, use of such ID cards would quickly spread and be used for other purposes – from travel to voting to gun ownership….

A biometric ID system would be controversial and unpopular with constituencies across the ideological spectrum. It would require the fingerprinting of every American worker – not just immigrants. It would also require the creation of a bureaucracy that combines the worst elements of the Transportation Security Administration and state Motor Vehicle Departments.

All this, should of course, go without saying. What we find most disturbing is that, even as people across the country are speaking out against the badly-drafted attempt by the state of Arizona to impose an ID requirement in the guise of “immigration enforcement”, members of Congress from both parties think they can get away with this same Trojan Horse to push through a national ID scheme at the Federal level.

Clearly what’s called for is for opponents of the new Arizona law to recognize the new Federal proposal as a larger instance of the same Big Brother mentality, and redirect some of their outrage and activism from Arizona legislators to the House and Senate. If you don’t want the whole country to go the way of Arizona on this question, let your representatives know that any national ID is unacceptable, no matter what its excuse or what it is called.

Apr 29 2010

European Parliament debate on DHS access to EU airline reservations

Last week the European Parliament, following a hearing earlier in the month in Brussels at which we testified, held a three-hour plenary debate in Strasbourg on proposals to approve access by the US Department of Homeland Security to European interbank transfer (SWIFT) and airline reservation (Passenger Name Record, PNR) data.

The current “provisional” agreement to authorize blanket access by the DHS to PNRs for trans-Atlantic flights was executed by the Council of the EU over the objections of Parliament, but the changes in the structure of the EU brought about by the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force in December 2009, now give the EP veto power over its continuation in force, or over any new agreement.

The transcript of the plenary session is posted only in the language in which speeches were delivered. But if the Europarl website recognizes your browser and media player, you can click the link under the thumbnail portrait of each speaker for an archived video clip with the the full choice of 23 languages — the most elaborate simultaneous translation operation in any chamber in the world — that were provided to those in attendance in the Hémicyle during the session.

The precautionary closure of most European airspace in response to the volcanic ash cloud kept some MEPs from reaching Strasbourg. As a result, voting on this and all other issues was postponed until next week, May 5-6, in Brussels.

But despite the deferral of voting, the debate was an important manifestation of the climate of opinion among the 736 directly-elected representatives of more than 500 million European citizens.

Several things were noteworthy in the plenary discussion: Read More →

Papers, Please!

The Identity Project