[US government delegation listens to questions from the UN Human Rights Committee. (Click image for larger version.) At the head table, left to right: Scott Shuchart (Senior Adviser, Office of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, DHS), Megan Mack (Officer for Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, DHS), Bruce Swartz (Deputy Assistant Attorney General, DOJ), Roy Austin, […]
Public questioning by the UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) of a delegation from the US government on the subject of US implementation (or not) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) began today in Geneva, Switzerland, and will continue tomorrow. The proceedings are part of the periodic review of each party to […]
We’ve focused mostly on the “no-fly” list and other government blacklists and “watchlists” restricting the movement of people. But the latest administrative injustice involving an innocent British philosopher reminds us that government blacklists also restrict the movement of information, goods, and money — sometimes with serious negative effects on innocent people’s lives. How the US […]
The right to freedom of movement and travel is recognized in black-letter international human rights treaty law as Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Every five years, pursuant to the treaty itself, implementation of the ICCPR by each treaty party is reviewed by the United Nations Human Rights Committee. […]
Imagine that you are a US citizen living or traveling abroad. Imagine that you go to the US Embassy to avail yourself of its “Consular Services” as a US citizen. Then imagine that embassy staff confiscate your US passport. That’s what’s been happening to many, perhaps most, Yemeni-American US citizens who make the unwitting mistake […]
On January 2, 2005, Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim found out she was on the US government’s no-fly list when she was denied boarding, arrested, handcuffed, and locked in a cell for two hours when she tried to check in for a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii. Just over nine years later, on January 14, 2014, […]
Do you think that if you are a U.S. citizen you have a right to return to your country, and don’t need “authorization” from the US government? Article 12, section 4 of the ICCPR (a treaty ratified by and binding on the US) provides that “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to […]
Recent events in three legal cases — one decision, one oral argument, and one interim order, each in different federal circuits — demonstrate the Alice-In-Wonderland character of the “reviews” of TSA practices conducted by the Courts of Appeals.
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, […]
“Democracy needs whistleblowers. That’s why I broke into the FBI in 1971,” begins an op-ed by Bonnie Raines, one of the members of the previously-anonymous “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI” who took the spotlight today through public appearances and interviews and the publication of a new book about their 1971 action, The Burglary, by […]