Dismissing formal objections filed by the Identity Project and other organizations, the TSA has decided to go ahead with its “Pre-Check” (Pre-Crime) scheme to collect and use even more comprehensive secret dossiers about travelers as part of the inputs to the TSA “black box” that decides whether you are allowed to fly, and if so, […]
[The TSA uses appearance profiles to decide whether to search you and/or your luggage, interrogate you, call the police, or allow you to fly. (Diagram from GAO report. Click image for larger version.)”] We’ve likened the TSA’s attempts to predict which travelers are would-be terrorists on the basis of their identities and profiles to the […]
We’re quoted on the front page of today’s New York Times in a story by Susan Stellin, “Security Check Now Starts Long Before You Fly”: The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records […]
In the latest version of TSA’s endless series of “trusted traveler” (or “less mistrusted traveler”) schemes, the agency is currently proposing to impose more intrusive searches on any traveler who doesn’t “voluntarily” enroll in the TSA Pre-Check program and authorize the TSA to create a new permanent file with everything from your fingerprints to any […]
U.K. authorities have apparently detained an Italian citizen disembarking from a trans-Atlantic cruise ship at Southampton on the basis of his inclusion on the U.S. “no-fly” list. It’s the latest in a steady series of expansions of the extra-territorial reach of U.S. travel surveillance and control, and should raise a red flag as to the […]
Yesterday the Bay Area Rapid Transit district (BART) held its first public discussion of BART’s recent actions to shut off wireless telephone and data service in parts of the BART system, and to close certain BART stations on the approach of certain groups of individuals, in order to prevent the use of those communications and […]
Bowing to ongoing lobbying from the “fascism’s fine with us if it makes the planes run on time” segment of the travel industry, the TSA announced today that it plans a new “trusted traveler” (“less mistrusted traveler”?) pilot program beginning this fall. The pilot program will be by invitation only, for certain frequent flyers on […]
The travel industry — concerned that treating all travelers as suspected terrorists will discourage travel and reduce their business — has joined forces with the homeland-security industrial complex of providers of travel surveillance and control technology in a pseudo-grassroots lobbying and propaganda campaign for more profiling of travelers. The motives of DHS contractors and their […]
Last week the European Parliament, following a hearing earlier in the month in Brussels at which we testified, held a three-hour plenary debate in Strasbourg on proposals to approve access by the US Department of Homeland Security to European interbank transfer (SWIFT) and airline reservation (Passenger Name Record, PNR) data. The current “provisional” agreement to […]