Attempts by airlines, airports, and government agencies to make facial recognition mandatory for air travel, while pretending that it is “optional” or based on “consent”, are being challenged in both the United States and the European Union. In the US, the Transportation Security Administration continues to tell Congress and the public that it is “testing” […]
Undeterred by the manifest unfairness of the US government’s current no-fly list, some airlines and their allies are apparently renewing a campaign they began last year to get Congress to create yet another extrajudicial procedure by which the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) could put even more people on the US no-fly list. Seriously? Can anyone […]
In a case we’ve been following closely, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that orders requiring the Sabre computerized reservation system to provide real-time reports to the FBI on any reservations made in or through Sabre associated with specific individuals can continue to be kept secret, at least as long as warrants for […]
In an on-stage interview yesterday at South By Southwest by a reporter for the Dallas Morning News, the head of the US Transportation Security Administration made explicit that the TSA plans to make collection of biometric data mandatory for airline travel: According to a report in today’s edition of the newspaper by Alexandra Skores on […]
US Customs and Border and Border Protection (CBP) has proposed new rules to expand its Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) to require all international airlines serving the US to provide additional information about all passengers, prior to flight departures. CBP’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), published last Thursday in the Federal Register, falsely claims that […]
A lawsuit filed last week in Federal court in Oklahoma City by the Council on American-Islamic Relations on behalf of Oklahoma native Saadiq Long challenges unconstitutional searches and seizures (sometimes at gunpoint) and interference with freedom of movement on city streets and highways on the unlawful basis of a combination of warrantless dragnet surveillance and […]
[CommuteAir routes operated as “United Express”] In news first reported by Mikael Thalen and David Covucci of of the Daily Dot, Swiss hacker maia arson crimew has found versions of the Transportation Security Administration’s “No-Fly” and “Selectee” lists dating from 2019 on insecure Amazon Web Services cloud servers used by the airline CommuteAir for software […]
(video; slides) [Facial recognition at each step in airline passenger processing. Slide from presentation by Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd. to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Traveler Identitification Program symposium, October 2018] Today, the day before Thanksgiving, will probably be the busiest day for air travel in the USA since the outbreak of the COVID-19 […]
[Arrows indicate populations of states where abortion is, or is likely to become, illegal, and directions and distances to the nearest states where abortion is legal. Note that some of the routes shown are more likely to be followed than others, since abortion is more or less heavily restricted in some states where it is […]
Ongoing litigation on behalf of journalist Thomas Brewster and Forbes Media has revealed a few more details about how computerized reservation systems (CRSs) collaborate with the US government to surveil travelers. It has also prompted new denials by some of those CRS companies that range from misdirection to out-and-out lies.