Edward Hasbrouck of the Identity Project is attending the “no-fly” trial in Ibrahim v. DHS, which is going on this week and may continue into next week. Cellphone and Internet access in the courthouse is unreliable, but he’ll be tweeting updates when possible in addition to posting articles in this blog. You can use the […]
[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 […]
In a preliminary ruling in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU three years ago on behalf of a group of people who have been prevented by the U.S. government from traveling by air, a Federal judge in Oregon has found (1) that international air travel is a Constitutional right, and (2) that a categorical ban […]
Buried in the TSA’s response last month to our FOIA request for information about its ID verification forms a and procedures was a fragmentary report on how many people try to fly without ID, and what happens to them. An e-mail message discussing the changes made in 2008 to the TSA’s (secret) procedures for flying […]
While we’re picking on what the TSA posts in its official blog, let’s take a look at what the TSA said in another blog post earlier this week entitled, “Can you fly without ID?” It’s an important question, but the TSA only hints at the answer. One might expect that the answer to the question, […]
When last we wrote about Saadiq Long — an Oklahoma native, U.S. citizen, and Air Force veteran — he had been sentenced by the U.S. government, without judge or jury, to life without air travel. First he was prevented from returning to the U.S. to visit his ailing mother. Then he was prevented from returning […]
Last year, we reported on the case of Saadiq Long, an Oklahoma native and U.S. Air Force veteran who was stranded in Qatar for six monthes, unable to return home because for unknown reasons he had been placed on a “no-fly” list, and all airlines serving the U.S. had been forbidden to transport him, on […]
Ruling last week in a case brought by a man who was falsely arrested for displaying the text of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution written on his chest during a “secondary inspection” by the TSA at the Richmond, VA, airport (RIC), the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal seeking the dismissal of […]
The TSA has made explicit its intent to take the next logical but lawless step in the merger of (1) profiling of travelers and (2) privatization of judicial decision-making: outsourcing of decisions as to who should be subjected to what degree of intrusiveness of search to private contractors acting on the basis of commercial data. […]
At a “Big Data” conference in Sydney earlier this month, the head of Australia’s traveler tracking and profiling office (his actual title — we are not making this up — is “Director Intent Management & Analytics“) gave an unusually revealing presentation (PDF) [also here] about the nature of the government’s travel data warehouse and how […]