Freedom To Travel – Page 55

Oct 21 2009

Why shouldn’t we have to show ID when we fly?

From time to time, people ask us, “But why don’t you want to show ID when you travel? What’s wrong with that?” There are probably as many answers to that question as there are people who resist government demands to show ID when they travel, even when it’s scary and involves some personal risk to say “No” to the TSA agents and their rent-a-cops. But for one answer among many to the question, “Why?”, we asked one of those people, Joe Williams. He responded with the following guest blog post:

Why shouldn’t we have to show ID when flying?

Because it doesn’t make us safer, it’s unconstitutional, and truly free countries don’t require it.

Long after the ID-demand policy was implemented in the summer of 1996, 9/11 proved that ID requirements don’t work. Even if you are on a no- fly list all one needs to do is: Buy a ticket in some innocent person’s name. Check in online and print that person’s boarding pass. Save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate use the real boarding pass to board your flight.

Being required to show ID only proves the success of al-Qaeda with fear established and freedoms violated.

Most people are not aware that freedoms in the Constitution are “inalienable & natural” meaning we were born with them. They are not government granted. Just as the U.S. Constitution represents our inalienable right to life, liberty, & freedom, so too does the TSA represent a significant threat to those God-given rights. TSA protocol is to assume all innocent people to be a threat until being cleared from a secret list. Put another way, “The innocent shall suffer the sins of the guilty.”

Previous court decisions are referenced in justifying the legalization of ID requirements which translates into; it’s OK to violate a little of the people’s freedom, just not a lot. Most people are not willing to be inconvenienced to challenge these requirements, let alone initiate a real legal battle or protest. It’s easier to show ID than to fight for one’s rights and freedom.

And when legal challenges have been made against these secret “security directives”, courts have ruled they are secret laws and barred from public scrutiny or debate. Checkpoints & ID requirements are more commonly associated with governments who suppress freedom yet we implement them in the name of safety and security. In the name of national security, government can violate peoples’ freedom. Being forced to announce one’s self is a loss of privacy and “taking away a person’s privacy renders to the government the ability to control absolutely that person.” (Ayn Rand)

“In the end, the photo ID requirement is based on the myth that we can somehow correlate identity with intent. We can’t.” (Bruce Schneier, Chief Security Technology officer of BT Global Services) Surveillance is not freedom. Having to ask for permission is not freedom. Most elected officials believe the more legislation passed exerting more government control over people, the better off society is. The Constitution was written to restrict government yet most elected officials look for ways to circumvent instead of defending the Constitution as stated in their oath of office. It is not an elected official’s job to give freedom. It’s their job to defend it.

I would rather live in a higher risk society wrapped in freedom than live as a slave in complete safety & security.

Joe Williams
concerned citizen
Atlanta, GA

“Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free nations.” (Congressman Ron Paul)

“Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction of life and property incident to war — the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security, to institutions, which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free. The institutions alluded to are STANDING ARMIES, and the correspondent appendages of military establishments.” (Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 8, November 20, 1787)

“We uphold Freedom by exercising it – not by restricting it.” (The Identity Project)

Oct 21 2009

Softball questions for TSA nominee

President Obama’s much-belated nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration, Erroll Southers — faced only softball questioning at a confirmation hearing last week before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. None of the questions we’ve raised for the nominee about TSA policies and procedures, or about the philosophical or practical attitude of the nominee toward the right to travel, were asked by any of the Senators. Nor, despite the nominee’s background of as a policeman (L.A. airport police commander and former FBI agent), was there any exploration of the role of the TSA as the Federal police agency that most often interacts directly with people who are accused of no crime — literally the front lines of Federal policing of innocent citizens.

The nomination of Mr. Southers has also been referred to the Committee on Homeland Security, which plans to hold its own confirmation hearing after it receives further background information from Mr. Southers, probably in late November.

If you want to know whether the Obama Administration and its nominee plan to set a new course for the TSA, let your Senators and the members of the Homeland Security know that you want them to ask tough questions (“Do we have a right to travel? Should the obligations of travelers at TSA checkpoints be spelled out in publicly-disclosed regulations? Should no-fly decisions be subject to judicial review? Should we have to show ID to fly? Should the government keep records of our travels?”) before they vote to approve any nominee for TSA Administrator.

Oct 01 2009

Congress, investors won’t let “Trusted Traveler” die

As a hearing yesterday before the Subcommittee on Transportation of the House Homeland Security Committee, Republicans and Democrats joined in urging a re-start of the all-but-bankrupt “Registered Traveler” or “Trusted Traveler” scheme that shut down this June. Subcommittee members even went to so far as to criticize the TSA for having planned — until members of Congress and a temporary injunction in a customer lawsuit for refunds prevailed on them to hold off — to delete the fingerprints, iris scans, and other personal data collected for use by the TSA and the Registered/Trusted Traveler vendors. If you think this data should be purged from government files sooner rather than later, let your representative know what you think.

Amazingly, there are even private equity investors who showed up at the hearing to proclaim their readiness to buy some of the assets (including the personal data bank, of course, but not the liability for refunds to no-longer-trusted travelers who now want out) of the largest of the former registered-traveler operator, “Clear” Verified Identity Pass, and to try to bring it back to life.

But the would-be investors made clear that their business model would depend on government support. The TSA has admitted that the Registered Traveler program has no security value, and stopped conducting, or charging for, background checks on applicants. That leaves the program as nothing more than a way for members to pay extra to go through a dedicated line at the TSA checkpoint, which is possible only if the TSA allows these private companies to control access to the government checkpoint people have to pass through to travel by common carrier. Sort of like a government-facilitated scheme to allow you to bribe your way to the front of the line. Except that it’s more like extortion than bribery, since the point is not to receive government services but to avoid (in part) government restrictions and costs imposed on the exercise of rights.

The government has no business collaborating with this racket, or helping private businesses shake down members of the public who can’t afford the delays imposed by TSA security theater. “Trusted Traveler” is dead, and the government should leave it in its grave.

Sep 28 2009

Now that Ted Kennedy’s dead, the TSA’s found somebody else in Congress to harass

Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) used to have constant trouble at airports because a name similar to his was on the TSA’s “no-fly” list. Even as a senior Senator he couldn’t find out why, and couldn’t get the harassment stopped (which he eventually mentioned publicly during a Senate hearing) for more than three weeks. For ordinary mortals, “redress” takes months or years, if it ever happens at all.

Now it’s Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) — sponsor of the amendment passed overwhelmingly by the House in June, despite opposition from the leadership of both major parties, to restrict the TSA’s use of virtual strip search (“Whole Body Imaging”) machines at checkpoints in airports — who’s gotten on the TSA’s VIP list for special treatment.

According to reports in the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News, frequent-flyer freshman Congressman Chaffetz — who has refused to move to Washington, sleeps on a cot in a back room of his Congressional office during the week, and flies home to Utah to be with his family every weekend — got into trouble at SLC last week after he (1) refused to “consent” to a virtual strip search (“Chaffetz had told the House, “You don’t have to look at my wife and 8-year-old daughter naked to secure an airplane.” He says he didn’t want the TSA looking at him naked either. He told the Deseret News the TSA has not lived up to promises to post signs about what the whole-body imaging machine does”) and then (2) tried to read the name on a TSA agent’s badge (which the agent only showed him after Chaffetz identified himself as a member of Congress, although the TSA agents said they already knew who he was).

Of course, Chaffetz was then “randomly” selected for extra groping (“secondary screening”). But we’re sure that had nothing to do with his political opinions or attempts to hold the TSA accountable to the laws he helps make.

Aug 24 2009

Travelers more worried about TSA than airline safety

Travelers are more concerned about TSA screening than airline safety, according to the results of the first poll conducted by the Consumer Travel Alliance.

“TSA screening” ranked sixth in the survey, with 44.1 percent of respondents saying it was of the highest priority among all possible travel issues (not limited to airlines). “Airline safety” was seventh, with 41.1 percent rating it among the “most important” consumer travel issues.

Congress, are you listening?

Aug 16 2009

Secure Flight: Frequently Asked Questions

There’s been a lot of confusing (and often confused) reporting recently about the TSA’s so-called “Secure Flight” scheme for surveillance and control of passengers on domestic U.S. airline flights, based on data mining of airline reservations and lifetime travel histories.

If you’re looking for answers, you might start with our FAQ about “Secure Flight”.

Much of the confusion comes from the fact that the TSA’s orders to the airlines to implement “Secure Flight”, setting out which airlines are required to do what, and when, are all contained in secret “Security Directives”. So we have only the TSA’s press releases — which they have previously told us would “creat[e] public confusion” were the public actually to rely on them, and which have often proven to be lies anyway — as clues to what is really being required.

We do know, however, the essence of what the “Secure Flight” regulations actually require: the shift to a permssion-based system of control of domestic air travelers (similar to the shift already being made for international air travelers under the APIS regulations, and for land border crossings under the WHTI rules), with a default of, “No”.

In addition to the questions in our original our FAQ, recent news reports raise some additional questions worth answering:

Was the “Secure Flight” scheme “[b]orn out of recommendations from the 9/11 Commission” (NPR)? No. “Secure Flight” is the latest name for a program originally called “CAPPS-II”, which was conceived almost immediately after 9/11 and well before the 9/11 Commission was even appointed. More importantly, “Secure Flight” is directly contrary to the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that, “The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the executive’s use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties. If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight to properly confine its use…. [There should be a board within the executive branch to oversee adherence to the guidelines we recommend and the commitment the government makes to defend our civil liberties.”
Is “Secure Flight” a legal “requirement” (TSA press release)? No. Not only is “Secure Flight” (a) in violation of international treaties to which the U.S. is a party (Article 12 of the ICCPR provides in part that, “Everyone lawfully within the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the right to liberty of movement”) and (b) the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (“Congress shall make no law … abridging … the right of the people peaceably to assemble”), but (c) the TSA has been expressly forbidden by Federal law from implementing “Secure Flight” “on other than a test basis” unless and until the GAO has certified that 10 specific criteria have been met. The GAO has moved the goalposts set by Congress to certify that most of those criteria have, under clearly distorted interpretations, been met — but not yet all of them. The assignment to each would-be passenger of a score of “cleared”, “inhibited”, or “not cleared” appears to violate the provision of the same law that, “None of the funds provided in this or any previous appropriations Act may be utilized to develop or test algorithms assigning risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists.” And “Secure Flight” also potentially violates restrictions on data mining. [Update: It appears that the TSA is interpreting the GAO’s statements as constituting the necessary certification, even though the GAO said that “Additional Actions Are Needed”. According to Business Travel News, “‘There’s nothing more to be tested, and no more approvals we need,’ said program director Paul Leyh…. ‘All it is now is to start the implementation process.'”]
Can the TSA or the airline prevent you flying or impose other sanctions as a penalty for non-compliance with “Secure Flight” requirements such as providing my date of birth, gender, etc? No. [Not unless they can successfully claim that the GAO has made the necessary certification, and that “cleared”, “inhibited”, or “not cleared” is not a “risk score”.] The same law that prohibits the TSA from “deployment or implementation, on other than a test basis” of “Secure Flight” also provides that, “During the testing phase … no information gathered from passengers, foreign or domestic air carriers, or reservation systems may be used to screen aviation passengers, or delay or deny boarding to such passengers, except in instances where passenger names are matched to a government watch list.”

Aug 12 2009

Rumors of a new administrator for the TSA

One reason there’s been no change in TSA “policy” under the Obama administration — if you can call it “policy” when there are no rules and the people in charge think their decisions aren’t subject to judicial review — is that President Obama hasn’t yet appointed an Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Transportation Security (a/k/a “TSA Administrator”). So the TSA is still being run by temprary caretaker holdovers, who are forging ahead with the deployment of several schemes promulgated last year by the previous administration, such as Secure Flight, which would transform domestic air travel into a permission-based surveillance and control system with a default of “No”, and the international APIS and WHTI rules for international travel.

Now there are beginning to be rumors of who Obama may appoint. We haven’t yet seen any discussion of what (if any) policies the rumored nominee might favor, but perhaps it’s time to remind Senators of the questions for such nominees that we put forward last year, after the elections, as part of our Proposed Agenda on the Right to Travel (PDF) for the Obama Administration and Congress:

Questions for nominees for the DHS and TSA:

“As the nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security or Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, …

Do you believe that individuals should have a right to travel in the USA? Why or why not?

What substantive (e.g probable cause) and procedural (e.g. due process and judicial review) standards do you believe should apply to actions by or directed by your agency, or other government agencies, that would restrict that right?

Should individuals in the USA be required to have or display government ID in order to travel by common carrier or on public rights-of-way by plane? By train? By bus? By ship or ferry? By private car? On foot? Why or why not?

Should individuals in the USA be required to obtain government permission in order to travel by common carrier or on public rights-of-way by plane? By train? By bus? By ship or ferry? By private car? On foot? Why or why not?

Should US citizens be required to have a passport and/or obtain government permission in order to leave the USA? Why or why not?

Should US citizens be required to have a passport and/or obtain government permission in order to return to the USA from abroad? Why or why not?

Should the government maintain records of the travel or movement of people who are not suspected of a crime or subject to a court order authorizing surveillance and logging of their movements? Why or why not?

Should the government mandate the collection or maintenance by travel companies of records of the travel or movement of people who are not suspected of a crime or subject to a court order authorizing surveillance and logging of their movements? Why or why not?

Should travel companies or other third parties to whom individuals are required by the government to provide personal information be free to use, sell, or “share” that information, or should it be protected by laws? Why or why not?

What do you think should be done with existing government files of travel records about innocent people?

The Senate should also ask whether a TSA nominee is willing to commit the agency to the rule of law, by promising to enforce only those sanctions against travelers prescribed by publicly-promulgated rules, and by ensuring that all TSA snactions against travelers (including , of ocurse, “no-fly” orders), are subject to judicial review.

If you agree that these are the key issues for the TSA, let your Senators and the members of the Committee on Homeland Security know that you want these questions asked and answered before any new head of the TSA is confirmed.

Jul 17 2009

PASS ID or REAL-ID? Tweedle-dum or Tweedle-dee?

The Senate Homeland Secuirty Committee hearing this Wednesday on “Reevaluating the REAL ID Act” was a sham, in which the only”opponents” or “critics” of the current REAL-ID law allowed to testify were those who prefer the PASS-ID bill to substitute an alternate national ID card mandate. Critics of any national ID need not apply to be heard as part of this debate between Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum.

Eevn the few positive features of the PASS-ID bill came under attack. Senator Collins of Maine wanted to know whether the bill would allow the sort of airport “security” measures that are used in Israel (notorious for ethnic profiling), and specifically whether the PASS-ID provision that, ““no person shall be denied boarding a commercial aircraft solely on the basis of failure to present a driver’s license or identification card issued pursuant to this subtitle,” would still allow denail of boarding, regardless of ID, solely on the basis of “behavioural profiling”. And the National Retail Association wants to make sure that the PASS-ID prohibition on non-governmental scanning or use of machine-readable (bar-code, mag stripe, or RFID) data on government-issued ID cards would still allow stores to skim this data in order to profile patterns of “suspicious” merchandise returns. Would anyone object, they want to know, to an exception to this provision that would allow scanning and tracking of machine-readable ID data to detect or prevent “fraud or other illegal activity”?

Yes, we would object to such an open-ended exception. More importantly, we object to any mandatory national ID. So do tens of millions of Americans, regardless of whether Congress does’t want our views to be part of the debate.

Jul 17 2009

Secure Flight to use same data mining tools as CAPPS-II

The TSA has been anxious to convince us that the renamed Secure Flight scheme for airline passenger profiling, surveillance, and control is fundamentally different and (despite the great new name) less Orwellian than its prdecessor, the thoroughly discredited CAPPS-II (“Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System, version 2”).

The TSA also wants us to believe that Secure Flight “does not use commercial data” (actually, it relies primarily on commercial data in airline reservations or Passenger Name Records) or data mining.

Now we learn from the boasts of one of the TSA’s contractors that “Secure Flight” will rely on the same fuzzy matching and data mining software that was used in the first trials of CAPPS-II in 2002 — which were unsuccessful, and which used illegally obtained PNRs for real travelers on real flights.

And despite the TSA’s claims that it isn’t a data-mining system, the contractor, Infoglide Software, describes the software being incorporated into “Secure Flight” as a tool for “mining today’s evergrowing sources of data”. Oops! perhaps the TSA forgot to tell them the party line about how to describe their products, or their marketing department didn’t get the message.

Nothing has really changed in CAPPS-3, a/k/a “Secure Flight”. Depite all the minor tweaks from CAPPS-II, it still doesn’t meet the standards required by international human rights treates, the Constitution, or Federal statutes. Nothing has changed, including the need to stop it now — before another billion dollars or more is spent over the next year or two on implementing this system of surveillance and control of our movements.

Jul 14 2009

D.C. Circuit court enjoins checkpoints on public streets

Striking down both a permission-based system of controls of movement (under which motorists on public streets in the District of Columbia were required to explain the purposes of their intended movements to the satisfaction of police before being permitted to pass police checkpoints, with the burden of justification placed on the would-be travellers), and the use of “security”, generalized crime prevention or deterrence, and general law enforcement as justifications for the use of checkpoints as de facto general warrants to stop, detain, interrogate, and compel responses to questions by travellers on public rights of way, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has overturned the denial by the D.C. District Court of a permanent injunction against the Metropolitan Police scheme of so-called Neighborhood Safety Zones.

In Mills v. District of Columbia (No. 08-7127, decided July 10, 2009), the D.C. Circuit Court explicitly addressed, and reaffirmed, both the right to movement on public ways (“It cannot be gainsaid that citizens have a right to drive upon the public streets of the District of Columbia or any other city absent a constitutionally sound reason for limiting their access”) and the unconstitutionality of checkpoint stops, searches, or seizures “whose primary purpose was to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing…. Because the primary purpose of the … checkpoint program is ultimately indistinguishable from the general interest in crime control, the checkpoints violate the Fourth Amendment” (quoting City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, 531 U.S. 32).

It’s also notable that the Court ruled as it did despite explicitly noting that the checkpoints at issue applied only to travellers by motor vehicle, and not to pedestrians. (It’s unclear from the appellate opinion how bicyclists and other travellers by non-motoirized vehicle were treated.) The undisputed fact that there existed an alternative, unrestricted mode of travel — by foot — was not a factor in the decision.

We’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader, and the TSA, to consider how the logic of this decision — and the Supreme Court precedent in Indianapolis v. Edmond on which it relies — would apply to TSA checkpoints at airports.

Our friends at Checkpoint USA have more details in their Roadblock Revelations blog.

Papers, Please!

The Identity Project