Papers, Please!

The Identity Project

Category Archives: Secret Law

Jul 20 2017

Fact-checking the FAQs on ID to fly

In May and June of 2017, several new FAQs about “requirements” for travel on common-carrier airlines were posted on TSA.gov and DHS.gov:

Statements about current and future ID “requirements” similar to those on these websites have also appeared on official signs in some airports.

It should go without saying that neither government websites nor informational signs in airports create legal rights or obligations or can be relied on as authoritative statements of the law.

Federal law is contained in the US Constitution, international treaties duly ratified by the US in accordance with the US Constitution, the US Code, and US Public Laws. Federal regulations are contained in the Code of Federal Regulations. The Freedom of Information Act requires that binding Federal agency rules, regulations, and orders of general applicability be published in the Federal Register.

If you want to know what the law says, you need to read the law, not press releases from government agencies or anyone else (including us!).

This is especially important with respect to the TSA, since the TSA website and TSA signs in airports have for years included statements about ID requirements to fly that have been disclaimed by TSA witnesses testifying under oath and by TSA lawyers arguing before Federal courts.

So what is the TSA saying now about ID to fly? Is it true? And is it legal?

The TSA’s latest public statements are more accurate than some of the agency’s previous press releases about ID to fly, and may (although we can’t really tell, given the absence of fomal proposals or published rules) accurately describe the changes the TSA intends to implement. But major questions remain about the legality of both current and possible future ID practices at TSA and contractor checkpoints at US airports.

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May 23 2017

TSA reveals that “Naked American Hero” John Brennan wasn’t alone

Last week three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the TSA’s administrative decision to fine “Naked American Hero” John Brennan $500 for taking off all his clothes to protest TSA’s practices and to show that he wasn’t hiding any explosives under his clothes despite a false-positive result from a TSA swab test for residue of explosives.

At the same time, the TSA revealed that Mr. Brennan was not alone: At least two other air travelers have been fined in  recent years for taking off all their clothes in response to TSA demands that they submit to “pat-down” searches for weapons and explosives.

The judges on the 9th Circuit panel claimed not to believe that viewers would understand Mr. Brennan’s symbolic speech — notwithstanding the public reaction that made clear that Mr. Brennan’s expressive intent and message were perfectly clear to those who heard about what he had done. According to thre court’s “unbpublished” (it;s actually public, but can’t be cited as precednt in future cases) opinion:

Brennan’s core contention is that stripping naked in the middle of a TSA checkpoint is expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment. But Brennan fails to carry his burden of showing that a viewer would have understood his stripping naked to be communicative. Therefore, his conduct is not protected by the First Amendment.

The TSA fine was based on the claim that Mr. Brennan “interfered” with TSA screening because the TSA stopped screening him in order to stare at, or perhaps in order to avert their eyes from, Mr. Brennan’s naked body, or diverted their attention to trying to shield other travelers from sight of him.

But the TSA never claimed that Mr. Brennan’s nakedness violated any Federal law or regulation, and the local courts dismissed the criminal charges brought against him under state and municipal law on the grounds that his nakedness was, in the circumstances, protected by Oregon law. Mr. Brennan could legally have shown up at the TSA checkpoint already naked, and the duty of the TSA would have been to allow him to proceed unless “screening” showed him to be a threat to aviation security.

TSA staff and contractors are often distracted from their duties by the appearance of the travelers they are inspecting and groping. But that’s not a lawful basis for sanctions against those travelers. Mr. Brennan is not responsible for the decision of the TSA staff to stop doing their job because of what he looked like or how he was (legally) dressed or undressed.

The court found that the TSA rule against “interfence” isn’t unconstitutionally vague, even as applied to Mr. Brennan’s entirely peaceful and nonviolent conduct:

We have long recognized that “‘interfere’ has such a clear, specific and well-known meaning as not to require more than the use of the word[] . . . in a criminal statute.” In other words, the word has a “settled legal meaning[].” And courts have often defined and applied it, but never in a way that would lead a person of ordinary intelligence to think that he or she could strip naked at a TSA checkpoint and refuse to get dressed, leading to the closure of the checkpoint.

The court’s error, of course, is the mistaken claim that it was Mr. Brennan’s actions, rather than the choice of the TSA to abandon their duties and refuse either to screen a naked man or allow him to proceed once they could see he had no concealed weapons, that “led to” the closure of the checkpoint.

The 9th Circuit was the first (and only) court to review the Constitutionality of the TSA’s administrative fine of Mr. Brennan. TSA administrative decision-makers are forbidden from considering whether the regulations, policies, and practices they enforce are legal or Constitutional.

Brennan v. TSA and DHS was fully briefed before the 9th Circuit two years ago. Earlier this year, after a long silence, the court scheduled oral argument, which was to have been held earlier this month in Portland. Then, on its own initiative and without explanation, the court cancelled the scheduled oral argument, and decided the case a few days later on the written arguments. Our best guess is that one of the three judges on the panel had questions about a draft opinion, but was persuaded or decide to withdraw them.

Mr. Brennan discussed his original protest and his thoughts on the 9th Circuit decision in a lengthy interview with Portland TV station KGW. Some excerpts:

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May 10 2017

New long form proposed for (some) applicants for U.S. visas

The Department of State has requested “emergency” approval  from the Office of Management and Budget for a new questionnaire which some applicants for U.S. visas would be required to complete.

The questions on the proposed new “long form” for disfavored visa applicants would include:

  • Travel history during the last fifteen years, including source of funding for travel [how many frequent business travelers would be able to provide a complete and accurate 15-year retrospective itinerary of their travels?];
  • Address history during the last fifteen years;
  • Employment history during the last fifteen years;
  • All passport numbers and country of issuance held by the applicant [for an unspecified time period, so perhaps meaning for your entire life];
  • Names and dates of birth for all siblings;
  • Name and dates of birth for all children;
  • Names and dates of birth for all current and former spouses, or civil or domestic partners;
  • Social media platforms and identifiers, also known as handles, used during the last five years; and
  • Phone numbers and email addresses used during the last five years.

Applicants required to complete this form could include tourists and other short-stay visitors (business, visiting friend and relatives, etc.) as well as applicants for work, student, refugee, or other visas.

As with the “long form” supplemental questionnaire for U.S. citizens applying for passports, some but not all applicants for visas to visit or reside in the U.S. will be required to complete the proposed new form. The State Department says it expects to require about 65,000 people a year, or half a percent of all applicants for U.S. visas, to complete the proposed new long from.

As with the long form passport application, there are no publicly-disclosed standards or procedures for judicial review of decisions by State Department staff to require particular individuals to complete the long form. Those decisions would be “discretionary”, meaning that they would be arbitrary and could be discriminatory.

Most people would be unable to provide complete answers to some of the questions on the long from, or would inevitably leave things out or make mistakes that would provide a basis for denial of their application.  The proposed “discretionary” long form is thus a pretext for arbitrarily selective denial of entry to the U.S., at the whim of State Department staff and/or on the basis of secret pre-crime algorithms, as well as of arbitrarily selective surveillance of certain foreign citizens.

Comments on the “emergency” proposal for this new questionnaire can be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget through May 18, 2017.

Apr 14 2017

U.S. citizen stranded in South America without a passport

Imagine that you’re a U.S. citizen. You were born in the USA. You’ve never been a citizen of any other country, and you have no birthright to any other citizenship.

Now imagine that you are abroad long enough that your passport begins to approach its expiration date. Naturally, you apply to renew it, leaving plenty of time. You have to surrender your old passport with the renewal application, but of course you expect to get your new passport shortly.

Now try to imagine that the State Department puts your passport renewal application into limbo — for almost three years (and still counting). Your application for a new passport is neither granted nor denied, so there is no explicit “decision” to appeal administratively or challenge in court.

Without a passport, you are trapped in whatever country you happened to be in when you applied to renew your passport. No other country is likely to let you in without a passport, nor will any airline let you on an international flight without a passport — not even to return to the USA.

If your visa or permission to remain in that country as a foreigner expires, or if you get into any situation in which you are you are required to show your passport, you are liable to be arrested and thrown into detention or deportation proceedings.

You keep going back to the U.S. Consulate to find out what is happening with your passport application. They tell you they don’t know. They suggest that you go to the end of the line by withdrawing your still-pending application, and starting over — putting your new application at the back of the years-long queue.

Eventually they get tired of putting you off, and order you — a native born sole U.S. citizen — to leave the U.S. Consulate, and not to darken their door again under pain of arrest. Arrest for what violation of what country’s laws, they don’t say.

You try to find a lawyer to hire, but this is outside the expertise or experience of any U.S. lawyer, and none wants to take on your case.

Is this a realistic scenario? Yes.

We’ve heard from more than one person in this situation — and not just the Yemeni-Americans we wrote about a few years ago.

Meet Daniel Bruno, man without a passport:

I was born in Manhattan…. I have a birth certificate…

In May of 2014, I walked into the US Embassy in Buenos Aires with my perfectly valid US passport that was due to expire in six months. I filled out the renewal forms, paid the fees, was interviewed and dismissed by Vice Consul Creaghe. I never had a US passport again because they would not renew it.There is, of course, much more to this story,… but the bottom line is that according to them, Americans have no right to a passport, no right to a nationality document and no right to return to the US… and I know this is illegal.

BTW, let me mention that I’m not wanted for a crime, back taxes, child support, etc….

I am actively seeking constitutional and civil rights lawyers who want to help me defend the rights of all of us.

We’ve met Daniel Bruno in person, and all of the documentation we’ve seen — both from him and from the State Department in response to a Privacy Act and FOIA request we helped him file — supports his account of his bureaucratic ordeal. (The State Department has provided only a partial response, which does not yet include any of the records from the consulate in Buenos Aires.) Is Mr. Bruno now an expatriate? Or has he been effectively exiled by the USA?

We aren’t able to represent Mr. Bruno. But if you are, or you know a lawyer who is, we’ll be happy to put you in touch.

Mar 15 2017

Palantir, Peter Thiel, Big Data, and the DHS

San Francisco and Silicon Valley are among the centers of opposition to President Trump and his fascism, especially as it relates to restrictions on movement, border controls, immigration, and asylum.

Bay Area technology companies and their better-paid classes of employees like to think of themselves as building a better world that reflects the distinctive values that have attracted dreamers and futurists to this region  from across the country and around the world. But some of these companies are key developers and providers of “big data” tools for the opposite sort of “Brave New World“.

On Saturday, Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project was invited to speak to an ad hoc group of picketers outside the Pacific Heights mansion of Palantir Technologies founder and Trump supporter Peter Thiel (photo gallery from the SF Chronicle, video clip from KGO-TV; more photos from the East Bay Express).

As Anna Weiner reported in the New Yorker (“Why Protesters Gathered Outside Peter Thiel’s Mansion This Weekend“):

David Campos, a former member of the San Francisco board of supervisors, who emigrated from Guatemala, in 1985, stood on the brick stoop and raised a megaphone. “The reason we’re here is to call upon the people who are complicit in what Trump is trying to do,” he said. Clark echoed the sentiment. “If your company is complicit, it is time to fight that,” she said. Trauss, when it was her turn, addressed Thiel, wherever he was. “What happened to being a libertarian?” she asked. “What happened to freedom of movement for labor?”

Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant with the Identity Project, a civil-liberties group, took the stand, wearing a furry pink tiger-striped pussyhat. “The banality of evil today is the person sitting in a cubicle in San Francisco, or in Silicon Valley, building the tools of digital fascism that are being used by those in Washington,” he said. “We’ve been hearing back that there are a fair number of people at Palantir who are working really hard at convincing themselves that they’re not playing a role — they’re not the ones out on the street putting the cuffs on people. They’re not really responsible, even though they’re the ones who are building the technology that makes that possible.”

It’s easy to rationalize the creation of technological tools by saying that they can used for good as well as evil. But you can’t separate the work of tool-making from the ways those tools are being used. Palantir workers’ claims to “neutrality” resemble the claims made in defense of IBM and Polaroid and when they were making and selling “general purpose” computers, cameras, and ID-badge making machines to the South African government in the 1970s. None of this technology and equipment was inherently evil. But in South Africa, it was being used to administer the apartheid system of passbooks and permissions for travel, work, and residence.

The same goes for “big data” today. To understand what’s wrong with the work being done by Palantir for the US Department of Homeland Security, it’s necessary to look not just at what tools Palantir is building but at how and by whom they will be used; not just at the data tools but at the datasets to which they are applied, the algorithms they use, and the outcomes they are used to determine.

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Jan 20 2017

Inspector General: TSA uses secrecy to avoid embarrassment

A report on the security of TSA operational IT and communications systems released last month by the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) is prefaced with a scathing critique of the redactions demanded by the TSA in the censored public version of the report.

The OIG report found a pervasive lack of basic security measures and consciousness at TSA airport facilities: doors propped open or with locks taped off, unmonitored entrances, lack of logs of physical access to communication nodes and servers, lack of redundancy, etc.

But the TSA tried to keep the OIG from reporting on even those problems that at already been publicly reported, after TSA review and permission, in earlier OIG reports or other pages of the same report. The real point of the TSA’s censorship is not security but avoidance of public and Congressional debate and oversight.

Here’s what the DHS’s own internal auditor reported:

I must lodge an objection regarding the way that TSA has handled information in the report it considered Sensitive Security Information (SSI). Specifically, we issued the draft report, Summary Report on Audits of Security Controls for TSA Information Technology Systems at Airports, to the Department on September 16, 2016.

[W]e asked for agency comments, including a sensitivity review, within 30 days of receipt of the draft. On October 7, 2016, the Chief of the SSI Program provided the results of its sensitivity review, marking as SSI various passages in the report. The redactions are unjustifiable and redact information that had been publicly disclosed in previous Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports. I am challenging TSA’s proposed redactions to our summary report….

I can only conclude that TSA is abusing its stewardship of the SSI program. None of these redactions will make us safer and simply highlight the inconsistent and arbitrary nature of decisions that TSA makes regarding SSI information. This episode is more evidence that TSA cannot be trusted to administer the program in a reasonable manner.

This problem is well-documented. In addition to my previous objection to the handling of one of our reports, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2014 issued a bipartisan staff report finding that TSA had engaged in a pattern of improperly designating certain information as SSI in order to avoid its public release because of agency embarrassment and hostility to Congressional oversight.

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Jan 09 2017

IDP comments on TSA proposal to require ID to fly

Today the Identity Project and the Cyber Privacy Project filed comments with the Transportation Security Administration opposing a stealthy TSA proposal to start requiring ID to fly.

The TSA has long harassed people who try to fly without being required to show their “Papers, Please!” at TSA checkpoints.

But the TSA’s official position in court has always been that ID is not required to fly: “You don’t have to show ID to fly. You can fly without ID. We have a procedure for that.”

You can fly without ID, if you (1) fill out and sign the obscure TSA Form 415, (2) satisfy the TSA with your answers to a bunch of questions about what’s the file about you obtained by the TSA from the commercial data broker Accurint, and (3) submit to more intrusive than standard search (“secondary screening”) as a “selectee”.

That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’s been for years.

Now, as we reported in November of last year, the TSA is contemplating a new pattern and practice of preventing anyone from passing through a TSA checkpoint or getting on an airline flight unless either  they have ID the TSA deems acceptable, or they reside in a state that the TSA deems sufficiently compliant with the REAL-ID Act.

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Dec 08 2016

The rhetoric and reality of counterterrorism

Remarks by President Barack Obama on the Administration’s Approach to Counterterrorism, MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa, Florida, December 6, 2016:

Let my final words to you as your Commander-in-Chief be a reminder of what it is that you’re fighting for, what it is that we are fighting for…

The United States of America is not a place where some citizens have to withstand greater scrutiny, or carry a special ID card, or prove that they’re not an enemy from within. We’re a country that has bled and struggled and sacrificed against that kind of discrimination and arbitrary rule, here in our own country and around the world.

We’re a nation that believes freedom can never be taken for granted and that each of us has a responsibility to sustain it…. We are a nation that stands for the rule of law.

That sounds great in theory. But in practice?

  • Some citizens do have to withstand greater scrutiny.  That’s the whole point of the pre-crime profiling that the Obama Administration has called “risk-based security” and that President-Elect Trump has called “extreme vetting”.
  • Under the REAL-ID Act and the TSA’s latest proposal, some citizens — those who want to exercise our right to freedom of movement and to air travel by common carrier — will have to carry a special “REAL-ID Act compliant” ID card and have our personal information added to a national ID database maintained by a private contractor that isn’t subject to government rules for transparency or accountability.
  • The DHS has held itself above the law, arguing that its actions should not be subject to judicial review and that it needs to be allowed to act secretly and unpredictably (i.e arbitrarily) in order not to reveal “rules” that would help terrorists “game” the system — as if asserting one’s legal rights was tantamount to terrorism.

We’ll be watching closely to see whether the gap between the rhetoric and reality of profiling, discrimination, rights, and rule of law widens or narrows under President-Elect Trump and his nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security, retired Marine Gen. John F. Kelly.

In the meantime, we’ll keep doing our part, as we encourage our readers to do theirs, to act on the President’s statement that “freedom can never be taken for granted and that each of us has a responsibility to sustain it.”

Nov 18 2016

What does Donald Trump’s election mean for our work?

We endorsed neither Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, nor any other candidate for elected office. So what does the presumptive election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. — when the electors cast their ballots on December 19, 2016, and the votes are counted on January 6, 2017 — mean for the work of the Identity Project?

First and foremost, it means that our work, and the need for it, will continue — as it has under previous administrations, both Democratic and Republican.

Human and Constitutional rights are, by definition, no more dependent on the party affiliation of the President, if any, than on our own. Freedom is universal. Our defense of the right of the people to move freely in and out of the U.S. and within the country, and to go about our business, without having our movements tracked and our activities logged or having to show our papers or explain ourselves to government agents, has been and will remain entirely nonpartisan.

We will continue to criticize those who restrict our freedoms and infringe our rights, regardless of their party, just as we have criticized the actions of both the Obama and Bush administrations and of members of Congress and other officials of both parties, many of whom remain in power despite the changes at the top.

Attacks on our liberty have been, and remain, just as bipartisan as our resistance to them. This is especially true of the imperial power which the Presidency has been allowed to accrue, and which is exercised through Presidential proclamations, executive orders, and the secret law (or, to be more accurate, lawlessness) of Federal agency “discretion”. Those who acquiesced in the expansion of Presidential power and executive privilege because they thought that it would be used to their benefit by a President of their own party have only themselves to blame if that power is later used against them by a new President of a different party, or without allegiance to a traditional party hierarchy.

Many of the most imminent ID-related threats are those that arise from existing laws or extrajudicial administrative practices, the limits of which — in the absence of legislative or judicial oversight and checks and balances — are set solely by executive order. Where President Trump can make changes to ratchet up repression, to register and track both U.S. and foreign citizens, and to monitor and control our movements within the country and across borders, with the stroke of a pen, we don’t expect that he will hesitate to wield the power he has inherited to govern by issuing public decrees or by giving secret orders to his minions.

In some of these cases, Federal officials and the homeland-security industrial complex of contractors, confident that the incoming occupant of the White House will bless their efforts to anticipate has desires, may take action even before they are ordered to do so. This seems especially likely, in our area of concern, with respect to (1) the DHS implementation schedule and requirements for the REAL-ID Act,  (2) the TSA’s longstanding desire to enforce and eliminate exceptions to a de facto ID requirement for air travel that lacks any basis in statute and contravenes the U.S. Constitution and international law, and (3) expanded use of ID and surveillance-based pre-crime profiling (President-to-be Trump calls it “extreme vetting”) as the basis for control of movement, especially across borders.

We will be watching closely and reporting on signs of activity on all these fronts, some of which are already visible.

Now more than ever, we need your support — not just helping us to defend your rights, but asserting your rights and taking direct action to defend them yourselves. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

We invite you to join us in our continued resistance to all lawless attacks from any and all sides on our Constitution, our freedom, and our human rights.

Aug 19 2016

An apology from the State Department

We got a pleasant surprise this week: a phone call from Eric F. Stein, the head of the State Department’s FOIA-processing office.

Mr. Stein’s name and signature appeared on a bizarre letter we received last month, telling us that one of the unanswered Freedom Of Information Act requests we’d been bugging the State Department about for the last five years would be “dismissed” if we didn’t respond immediately to say that we were “still interested” in the records we had requested.  To make it harder to respond, there was no phone number or e-mail address in the letter.

“I want to apologize to you directly for that letter,” Mr. Stein said. “I’m sorry we sent you that letter. It was sent by somebody who had the authority to use my signature, but we should never have sent it to you. I’m still trying to find out why it was sent. Somebody is supposed to look at the file before they send out one of these letters. You laid it out very clearly in your letter, and you’re right: Nobody could have looked at that file, and everything you had done to follow up on your request, and thought that you weren’t interested in a response any more. I’ve just had an all-hands meeting of my department and told my staff not to send out any more ‘still interested’ letters until we can be sure that we are following the procedures we said we would follow.”

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