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 […]
A Congressional hearing last week on the so-called “Secure Flight” system for “screening” domestic air travelers confirmed that the TSA has completed a shift from blacklist and whitelist matching to a comprehensive real-time pre-crime profiling system that assigns each air traveler a “risk assessment” score on the four-step scale we’ve previously described and which is […]
Our friend Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has an important article this week on a theme that’s long been central to our work: “Secret Law is Not Law“: One of the many ways that the NSA’s mass surveillance violates the human rights of both Americans and others around the world is […]
We’ve noticed a disturbing pattern in how the DHS, and specifically US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has responded to people who have asked the DHS for its files about themselves. Eventually — typically months later than the statutory deadline for responding to a FOIA request — CBP has sent the requester a file of […]
A lawsuit filed today in Federal District Court in Michigan challenges “the widespread government practice of placing names on watch lists without providing individuals with any notice of the factual basis for their placement and without offering a meaningful opportunity to contest the designation.” According to the complaint: This lawsuit is an expression of anger […]
A million people around the world were listed in the US government’s “Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment” (TIDE) as of August 2013, of whom 680,000 were included in the “Terrorist Screening Database” (TSDB), according to a classified breakdown of watchlist entries and uses published today by The Intercept. Two weeks ago, The Intercept made public the […]
The Intercept has published the March 2013 edition of the US government’s Watchlisting Guidance. This 166-page document, previously kept secret as Sensitive Security Information (SSI), provides standardized but not legally binding “guidance” to Federal executive agencies as to how, on what basis, and by whom entries are to be added to or removed from terrorism-related […]
Since late last year, we’ve gotten several inquires from readers wondering why they got a boarding pass marked “TSA Pre-Check” or were sent through the “Pre-Check” lane at a TSA checkpoint even though they hadn’t participated in the “TSA Pre-Check Application Program”. The confusion stems from the TSA’s own misleading publicity about the program, which […]
The TSA has assessed a $500 civil penalty against “Naked American Hero” John Brennan, who removed all his clothes at a TSA checkpoint at the Portland, Oregon, airport in 2012 to show that he wasn’t carrying any weapons or explosives and in protest of the TSA’s practices. Mr. Brennan was arrested at PDX airport by […]
Despite admitting that it was “too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane,” Interpol officials did not hesitate to use the fact that two passengers on the missing Malaysian Airlines flight used stolen passports as the opportunity to step up its longstanding campaign for a global travel control […]