Papers, Please!

The Identity Project

Category Archives: Freedom To Travel

May 17 2007

GAO confirms IDP complaints that ATS was a crime

Auditors from the Government Accountability Office who reviewed the “Automated Targeting System” (who’s a target? anyone who travels) concluded that the DHS Customs and Burder Protection division “has not fully disclosed or assessed the privacy impacts of its use of personal information during international passenger prescreening as required by law.”

CBP has published public notices and reports that describe certain elements of its international prescreening process, but these documents do not fully or accurately describe CBP’s use of personal data throughout the passenger prescreening process. It is important for CBP’s documentation to describe all of the steps of the prescreening process because the interrelationship of various steps of the process allows data to be transferred and used in ways that have not been fully disclosed.

CBP’s international prescreening process involves a wide range of procedures and data sources that CBP utilizes to determine passenger risk levels. According to a CBP official, to help make these prescreening decisions, CBP collects personal data from multiple sources (including passengers and government databases), and uses the data for several purposes, including identity matching against the government watch list, risk targeting, and passenger document validation. According to CBP, its officers also use commercial data, to a limited degree, to assist them in confirming a passenger’s identity when needed. CBP’s public disclosures about APIS and ATS do not describe all of the data inputs or the extent to which the data are combined and used in making prescreening decisions.

That’s one of the specific complaint the Identity Project made in our original and supplementary comments to the DHS in response to its (late and legally inadequate) notices about the targeting system. The GAO report on airline passenger “screening” was submitted to Congress, and to the DHS, in November 2006, but a censored (“redacted”) version wasn’t made public until this week.

As we pointed out in our comments, it’s a crime under the Privacy Act for a Federal official to operate a system of records — to keep dossiers on U.S. citizens or residents — without legal authority and proper notice. Now the government’s own auditors have confirmed that those running this system to target travelers are, indeed, criminals.

Are the DHS’s “Privacy Officers” capable of policing their own colleagues’ criminal violations of the Privacy Act? If not, will anyone else step in to hold them accountable? Or will the public have to take matters into our own hands, by refusing to comply with unlawful, unconstitutional demands to surrender our human rights and freedom of movement?

May 17 2007

Alaska REAL ID Enabling Legislation Left to Rot on the Vine

Good news from the Last Frontier: The REAL ID Enabling Act of 2007 (HB3) failed to even get a floor vote in in the House before the Alaska state legislature adjourned for the year. There’s a chance the bill will be taken-up again next year, but Alaskans are an independent lot who don’t like being told they have to carry ‘papers’.

The Identity Project is proud to have testified at every hearing held on HB3; and was instrumental in drawing attention to the real problems with REAL ID.

State Rep Bob Lynn (R), a nice guy who should know better than to push totalitarian nonsense down the throats of his constituents, has been pimping REAL ID snake oil for several years. Fortunately, he hasn’t been terribly successful.

Alaskans need to remain vigilant. They’ll have their chance over the next couple of months as an IDP assisted lawsuit against the Alaska DMV for changing their drivers license rules goes forward in state court.

May 17 2007

The Identity Project’s Comments Against Real ID

Real ID requires states to act as Federal agents in the unwise policy of turning our transportation systems into a dragnet for law enforcement. Americans must increasingly prove they are not on secret government lists in order to travel or generally function in their own country. This is wrong. Contrary to DHS’ mantra that “we must do everything to prevent terrorism,” we must not surrender our hard won liberty and then falsely believe ourselves safer or patriotic in doing so.

Other have addressed the financial cost and inconvenience this program imposes upon the states and their citizens, the violation of state sovereignty and the commandeering of their resources by the federal government, and the privacy and security concerns surrounding the gathering, maintaining, and sharing this huge amount of data. Briefly addressed here is whether the intended use of Real ID achieves its goals, and a warning that the path we are on is a dangerous one.

Click here to read our comments in full.

May 03 2007

Submit comments against Real ID (National ID) this week!

On May 1, 43 organizations encouraged citizens to submit public comments to stop the nation’s first national ID system: REAL ID. The groups represent privacy, consumer, labor, civil liberty, civil rights, and immigrant organizations, such as the American Library Association, AFL-CIO, Common Cause, National Council of La Raza, and Gun Owners of America. Read More →

Jan 23 2007

New passport rules frustrate last-minute travelers

Effective today, the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) requires passports for all air travel between the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

Today the New York Times reports on the problems the new rule has caused for would-be last-minute travellers from the U.S., especially business travellers, who find out they need to travel too late to obtain a passport by mail, and thus have to apply in person at a U.S. State Department Passport Office or through a commercial passport and visa expediting service. The numbers of last-minute applicants have exceeded the capacity of the Passport service, frsutrating travellers and causing some of them to lose potential business.

This is exactly what the Identity Project predicted in comments filed with the DHS and the State Department when these new WHTI rules were proposed last year.

In its assessment of the cost burden of the proposed rules, the DHS and the State Department considered only regular passport applications (supposedly six to eight weeks processing time, although we recently heard from someone who received their passport more than five months after they applied) and expedited two-week service by mail. They made no mention of what happens when a psasport is needed in less than two weeks.

In our comments, we pointed out this omission, and gave a detailed breakdown of the escalating costs of obtaining a passport more quickly, as well as of the consequential costs of trips that would be impossible becaase a passport couldn’t be obtained quickly enough.

The DHS dismissed our comments out of hand, in a response to comments published in the _Federal Register_ in November along with the final rule that goes into effect today:

Comment

One commenter argued that the cost to obtain a passport is significantly underestimated because the time estimated to obtain a passport is too low.

Response

We appreciate this comment and the detail that accompanied the estimate provided in the comment. However, the commenter presented an estimate that was overly pessimistic and represented an absolute ‘‘worst-case’’ scenario that would rarely, if ever, be realized.

The final WHTI cost assessment continued to ignore any of the implications of passports applied for in person or needed in less than two weeks.

As today’s story in the Times shows, the “worst-case scenario” we predicted has already been realized, even before the new rules have taken effect.

It’s time to end the DHS’s extra-judicial and unconstitutional interference with internationally recognized human rights to freedom of travel.

Dec 29 2006

More illegalities in the “Automated Targeting System”

Even while trying to defend the Automated Targeting System that is being used to deny travelers their rights on the basis of secret “risk assessments” that give each of us a terror score from secret databases of third-party and government information about us, the Department of Homeland Security has admitted to more and more violations of Federal laws, the U.S. Constitution, and international human rights treaties.

Today the Identity Project filed supplemental comments with the DHS, pointing out the additional legal problems — including criminal violations of the Privacy Act by DHS officials — revealed by DHS statements since we filed our initial comments on the ATS scheme and how it violates an explicit Congressional prohibition on assigning risk to airline passengers whose names aren’t on government watch lists.

We don’t expect the DHS, especially its Privacy (invasion) Ofiice, to police itself. Keep asking questions and demand answers and action from Congress and European Union officials. If you are in the EU, request your travel records so that we can find out what has really been happening, and how they have really been used.

Dec 14 2006

Czar Chertoff defends Real ID

The Real ID bill that was sneaked into law last year is getting pushed by head totalitarianism czar Michael Chertoff. Slashdot readers are unimpressed. State legislators throughout the US will be considering bills to either ban Real ID or to implement it in 2007. We suggest writing to your state representatives, asking them to ban it in your state. It will cost billions, it will hassle every ordinary person (you’ll have to produce original birth certificates and such to the DMV again — and any paper that’s out of order will mean endless harassment), and the basic premise is wrong in two ways. One, the federal government can’t tell us citizens that we’re not permitted to travel, or go to court, without its permission; those are RIGHTS, not privileges. Second, the federal government doesn’t have the authority to demand that the states revise their IDs; that’s a state power. The reason the federal government doesn’t have either of these powers is to guard against totalitarian rule from Washington. All hail Czar Chertoff! (Those who don’t salute will be blacklisted).

Dec 13 2006

Targeting the Automated Targeting System

The DHS has been illegally operating a scheme for at least four years that assigns a terrorist risk assessment score to any American who crosses the border by air; and retains all the data used to generate the score for 40 years. The “Automated Targeting System”, which DHS Chertoff has described as “righteous”, has been operating illegally for several years, despite a specific ban by Congress on any and all risk assessment scoring on US citizens.

The time to speak out against this illegal, un-American program is now. DHS is trying to paper-up it’s illegal scheme by publishing a notice in the Federal Register.

We’ve set up an easy way for you to submit your comments without having to navigate the Byzantine labyrinth that is the Federal Register. Simply click here to be taken to a user-friendly submission form.

The comment period closes December 29th, so now is the time to have your say.

Dec 08 2006

Chertoff thinks it’s “righteous” to give each traveler a terror score

Everywhere he goes this week, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is being dogged by questions about the illegality of the “Automated Targeting System” we pointed out in our comments filed Monday.

Today in Atlanta, Chertoff had this to say about the scheme that is already being used to archive your last 40 years of travel records, use them and everything else the government can find out about you to assign you a terror “risk assessment” each time you cross a U.S. border, and use that score to decide whether to let you travel:

“It’s not only legal but required by law,” Chertoff said during a visit to
Atlanta. “I think this is a righteous program.”…

Literally every day we’re turning people away” at U.S. entry points,
Chertoff said.

And he asserted that the ATS has “no cost to privacy or human rights.”

The AP story that reported this didn’t say whether Chertoff said godliness or cleanliness are among the 50+ factors used to calculate this “righteous” score.

Dec 05 2006

DHS dismisses the right to travel

Rejecting the objections raised in comments by the Identity Project and others, the DHS Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has ordered that all travelers between the USA and Canada, Mexico, or other countries in the Western Hemisphere, where passports weren’t previously required, will have to present current valid passports to enter or leave the USA by air or sea, effective January 23, 2007.

“Your papers, please!”

Orders applying the same requirement to travel by land across the U.S. borders will follow, no later than June 1, 2009.

In issuing its final rule and an updated (but still grossly inaccurate) assessment for the “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative”, the CBP summarily dismissed all of our objections based on international treaties and human rights laws protecting the freedom to travel:

Comment

One commenter stated that the NPRM [Notice of Proposed Rulemaking] is contrary to U.S. obligations under international human rights law, free trade agreements, and U.S. statutes, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Charter of the Organization of American States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the NAFTA Implementation Act, because the rules restrict free movement of people in the Western Hemisphere.

Response

By requiring a valid passport as an entry document, DHS and DOS are not denying U.S. or non-U.S. citizens the ability to travel to and from the United States.

So I guess they mean that as long as they give us permission to travel, they can impose whatever restrictions they feel like on how, when, or where we are allowed to travel, or what papers we need to show them in order to get their permission?