Apr 03 2023

CBP wants more information to surveil and control air travelers

Today the Identity Project and allied civil liberties and human rights organizations submitted comments objecting to a proposal by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to require all travelers on international flights to or from the US to provide an address in the US, two phone numbers, and an email address, and prohibit or recommend […]

Feb 06 2023

CBP proposes to require even more information from international air travelers

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 […]

Jan 21 2019

“Refugees could travel to Europe or America by air. What’s stopping them?”

An article by Saad Hasan for TRT World (the English-language news service of Turkey’s national public broadcasting  network) highlights a life-and-death issue for refugees: Why are thousands of asylum seekers who could afford to buy a plane ticket to Europe or the USA dying every year trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea or the Sonoran […]

Jan 21 2018

Kudos to Lufthansa. Coals to the DHS.

A redacted version of the report of an internal review by the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of DHS implementation of President Trump’s January 2017 “Muslim Ban” Executive Order has been made public several months after the report was prepared. Both the manner in which the OIG report was eventually released and the […]

Sep 24 2017

Muslim Ban 3.0 blaimed on ICAO passport standards and “ID management”

Invoking memes that we’ve seen and warned about before under both Democratic and Republican administrations, President Trump has attributed the latest version 3.0 of his “Muslim ban”announced today (proclamation, FAQ, explainer) with the need to comply with ICAO and INTERPOL standards for passport issuance, “identity management”, and data sharing about travelers — as though US immigration […]

Mar 15 2017

Palantir, Peter Thiel, Big Data, and the DHS

San Francisco and Silicon Valley are among the centers of opposition to President Trump and his fascism, especially as it relates to restrictions on movement, border controls, immigration, and asylum. Bay Area technology companies and their better-paid classes of employees like to think of themselves as building a better world that reflects the distinctive values […]

Feb 16 2017

Executive Orders, lawsuits, and the right to travel

[D]ue process requires… notice and a hearing prior to restricting an individual’s ability to travel. (9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Order on Motion for Stay, February 9, 2017, State of Washington and State of Minnesota v. Trump) President Trump’s Executive Orders prohibiting entry to the US by citizens of specified blacklisted countries and cutting off […]