Senior officials of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) came to San Francisco last week to meet with representatives of the Identity Project and other civil liberties and human rights organizations regarding CBP “biometric entry/exit” schemes. These CBP programs, some of which are already in operation, involve taking digital mug shots of international travelers — […]
A redacted version of the report of an internal review by the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of DHS implementation of President Trump’s January 2017 “Muslim Ban” Executive Order has been made public several months after the report was prepared. Both the manner in which the OIG report was eventually released and the […]
Again postponing its threats to interfere with air travel by residents of “noncompliant” states, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it has given the last three remaining states either certifications of “compliance” with the REAL-ID Act of 2005, or extensions of time to comply until at least October 10, 2018. Travelers in all […]
The latest so-called “Privacy Impact Assessment ” (PIA) made public by the US Department of Homeland Security, “CBP License Plate Reader Technology“, provides unsurprising but disturbing details about how the US government’s phobias about foreigners and drugs are driving (pun intended) the convergence of border surveillance and dragnet surveillance of the movements of private vehicles […]
Today the Identity Project joins more than 20 other government-accountability and civil liberties organizations in a joint letter opposing S. 2192, the “SECURE Act of 2017”, which was introduced in the Senate earlier this month and immediately placed on the Senate calendar for a floor vote at any time. The name of this bill is […]
What is required by the Secure Flight regulations that wasn’t required before? (1) You have to give the airline or travel agency your name, data of birth, and gender, all exactly matching your ID, before you can make a reservation for any flight. (2) The airline has to send that information, and various other data […]
Is the U.S. government monitoring social media? Yes. Since December 2016, all visitors to the U.S. under the “Visa Waiver Program” (VWP) have been asked to identify the social media IDs they use to the Department of State on the online ESTA form. In several recent notices in the Federal Register, and in official statements […]
The encouraging disclosure in the latest installment of documents released by Amtrak in response to one of our Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests is that some travel agents resisted Amtrak demands that they collaborate in surveillance, profiling, and control of train travelers by entering passport or ID numbers and details in each reservation for cross-border Amtrak travel. […]
On September 1, 2017, the California Department of Motor Vehicles quietly published a notice of proposed regulations that would purportedly allow the California DMV to issue drivers licenses and state ID cards that would be “compliant” with the Federal REAL-ID Act of 2005: Notice of Proposed Action Initial Statement of Reasons Proposed Regulatory Text Proposed “Exception Process […]
We were invited to a briefing session today at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) headquarters: “an information sharing session and open dialog … with external privacy stakeholders” to discuss “recent enhancements to CBP’s biometric exit initiatives” and “CBP’s implementation plans for a biometric exit system“. Although we weren’t able to make it to Washington for today’s […]