It’s that time, as it is every five years, for the U.N. Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) to review the status in the U.S of the rights protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) — including the right to travel. The Identity Project is taking part in this process by informing the […]
In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Hestor Prynne was required to wear a prominent badge on her clothes, for life, to identify her publicly with the crime she had been convicted of: violating the sexual mores decreed as law by the fundamentalist religious and political leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Today a Federal court […]
We’re pleased that Cuba has promulgated rules, effective January 13, 2013, which will eliminate the requirement for most (but not all) would-be emigrants to obtain the government’s permission to leave the country, and to make the issuance of a passport a matter of right for most Cuban citizens. At the same time, the US has […]
The new U.S. passport application forms are back, worse than ever. Ignoring massive public opposition, and despite having recently admitted that it is already using the “proposed” forms illegally without approval, the State Department is trying again to get approval for a pair of impossible-to-complete new passport application forms that would, in effect, allow the […]
Are TSA staff and police immune from liability when they violate travelers’ rights? Are First Amendment rights not “clearly established”? These are now the issues before Judge James O. Browning of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico in Phillip Mocek v. Albuquerque et al., a Federal civil rights lawsuit brought […]
We don’t normally require our friends and family to show us their papers to establish their identities. We have better ways of recognizing who they are. Many US government agencies, however, seems to want to make government-issued ID credentials the only way to establish who we are — even when Federal regulations require them to […]
Federal civil rights lawsuit for false arrest at TSA checkpoint U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit Argued March 17, 2015; decided December 22, 2015 Phillip Mocek v. City of Albuquerque, Albuquerque Aviation Police Department, Marshall Katz (in his official capacity as Chief of Police of the Albuquerque Aviation Police Department), Jonathon Breedon [TSA], […]
The obvious follow-up question to, Does an airline pilot have the right to refuse to let you fly?, is “What can you do if an airline pilot won’t let you fly?” Arijit Guha, one of the victims (his wife was also barred from the flight, merely for her association with her husband) in the incident […]
On December 20, 2002, Terry Bressi was arrested at a roadblock in Arizona being operated by a joint task force including tribal police and agents of the US Department of Homeland Security. After all of the trumped-up charges brought against Mr. Bressi were dismissed , he sued the tribal police department, the DHS, and the […]
There’s been much concern — and, we suspect, much confusion — about what to do about the portions of Arizona’s SB1070 immigration and ID-check law that weren’t struck down by the US Supreme Court in its decision last month in Arizona v. United States. The portion of the law that remains in place (at least […]