This week is Stop C-51 Week, marked by events throughout Canada and elsewhere in opposition to Bill C-51, currently under consideration by the Parliament of Canada, “An Act to enact the Security of Canada Information Sharing Act and the Secure Air Travel Act, to amend the Criminal Code, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act and […]
Documents newly released to us by the TSA strongly suggest that the TSA has been lying about whether people are “allowed” by the TSA to fly without showing ID, and that decisions about whether to allow travelers to fly without ID are being made arbitrarily, on the basis of irrelevant and unreliable commercial data and/or […]
[Point scores assigned by TSA “Behavior Detection Officers” are used to decide whether to search you or your luggage, interrogate you, call the police, or allow you to fly. (Diagram from 2013 GAO report. Click image for larger version.] The Intercept has published the scorecard used by TSA “Behavior Detection” precogs to assign points to […]
For only the second time, a would-be traveler has been given offical notice by the US government that they are not on the US “No Fly” list. Just weeks before a scheduled March hearing in a Federal lawsuit brought by US citizen Jamal Tarhuni challenging his repeatedly having been prevented from boarding commercial airline flights, […]
Under color of a vestigial provision of Federal law related to an airline passenger profiling program that was discontinued more than four years ago, and applying the name of that program (and attempting to apply the same legal mandate) to an entirely new scheme, the TSA is adding a new, additional layer of passenger profiling […]
The US Department of Justice has issued new Guidance for Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Regarding the Use of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, National Origin, Religion, Sexual Orientation, or Gender Identity. “This Guidance … reaffirms the Federal government’s deep commitment to ensuring that its law enforcement agencies conduct their activities in an unbiased manner” — except at […]
[Excerpt from DHS “TECS” travel history log showing API data extracted from the reservation for a passenger on Amtrak (carrier code 2V) train 69 from Penn Station, New York (NYP) to Montreal (MTR). “QYRSLT” redacted by DHS (at left on second line from bottom) is result of pre-crime risk score query to DHS profiling system. […]
We talked at length with Watchdog investigative reporter Dave Lieber for his column in today’s Dallas Morning News: Travelers, say bon voyage to privacy. Lieber hits the nail on the head by calling out how few travelers realize that the U.S. government is keeping a permanent file of complete mirror copies of their reservations: Did […]
We’ve been reading the Jetsetting Terrorist blog (highlighted last week by Boing Boing) to see what we can learn from the anonymous author’s chronicles of his experiences traveling on commercial airlines, within the U.S. and internationally, after being convicted of a nonviolent misdemeanor criminal offense the U.S. has since defined as “terrorism”: Since 2009, I’ve […]
In a self-assessment published this week by the DHS on the integration of DHS programs for surveillance, profiling, and control of airline passengers (the TSA’s Secure Flight for domestic flights and the CBP’s Automated Targeting System for international flights), the DHS says it is reducing to 15 years the length of time for which DHS […]