“Freedom Flyer” arrested at TSA checkpoint “NOT GUILTY” VERDICT BY JURY ON ALL CRIMINAL CHARGES (see also follow-up Federal civil rights lawsuit against police and TSA staff) Video of the verdict and excerpts from Phil Mocek’s reaction Audio of Mr. Mocek’s comments outside the courtroom immediately after the verdict (complete and unedited) Our analysis of […]
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has been holding another round of meetings this week at its headquarters in Montreal. As we predicted, the US delegation has been pressing its vision of an integrated and standardized global system of surveillance and control of air travel, in which government access would be built into airline reservation […]
US Vice President Joe Biden gave a remarkable speech today at the European Parliament, devoting substantial time to professions of personal and institutional US commitment to “privacy” while focusing his policy agenda on lobbying the EP to approve warrantless, suspicious US government access to European financial (SWIFT/TFTP) and travel (PNR) data. If you don’t have […]
Today the Department of Homeland Security received its most significant rebuff from any democratically elected body since the DHS was created after September 11, 2001. In response to a recommendation from the Council of the European Union (the EU member national governments) for approval of the “interim” agreement under which the DHS obtains all airline […]
Last week the European Parliament, following a hearing earlier in the month in Brussels at which we testified, held a three-hour plenary debate in Strasbourg on proposals to approve access by the US Department of Homeland Security to European interbank transfer (SWIFT) and airline reservation (Passenger Name Record, PNR) data. The current “provisional” agreement to […]
We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the new Arizona “immigration” law, S.B. 1070, which we mentioned earlier in this blog. As we read the text (PDF) of the law it imposes no new requirement to show ID credentials or other evidence of identity. On the contrary, it gives people even more reasons to […]
Under a series of new laws and regulatory proposals, almost everyone traveling internationally to or from the USA — US passport holders, visa-free foreign visitors, and foreigners with visas — would have to pay more in government fees for the required credentials and/or permissions. This week the U.S. Senate passed the “Travel Promotion Act”, a […]
After two months, we’ve gotten an initial round of non-responses from the DHS and TSA to our complaint that their procedures for subjecting holders of certain passports to more intrusive search and/or interrogation as a condition of domestic common-carrier air travel violate published TSA civil rights policies, Federal laws, Constitutional rights, and rights guaranteed by […]
Three members of Congress have sent a joint letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano about the posting of a version of the TSA’s Screening Management Standard Operating Procedures on a Federal government website. (We’re still pursuing our FOIA appeal for the current version and related documents, which the TSA has been stonewalling, as […]
In the course of testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, the Director of the FBI’s “Terrorist Screening Center” (TSC) has, for the first time, stated publicly what the government claims to be the “substantive derogatory criteria” used in the (secret, non-adversarial, extra-judicial) process of determining whether to place a name on the “No-Fly” list, […]