[CBP sign at biometric boarding gate at Newark Liberty International Airport. Note the absence of the OMB Control Number and other notices required by the Paperwork Reduction Act.] Repudiating the principles for assessment of biometric identification of travelers it adopted in December 2019, and effectively mooting the policy development process it had begun since then, […]
This week the Port of Seattle Commission — a special-purpose government body elected by the voters of King County, Washington, to administer both the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and the maritime Port of Seattle — became the first airport operating or oversight body in the US to publicly discuss any policy for use of facial recognition […]
Buried in the latest Fall 2019 edition of an obscure Federal bureaucratic planning database called the Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions is an official notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that: To facilitate the implementation of a seamless biometric entry-exit system that uses facial recognition … DHS is proposing to […]
A 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the government’s procedures and criteria for issuing “no-fly” orders against a complaint that the criteria (which are essentially “pre-crime” criteria based on predictions of future bad actions) are too vague to provide fair notice of what actions might lead to a “no-fly” order, […]
A 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals heard arguments today in Portland, Oregon, in Kariye v. Sessions, the third and latest round of appeals to the 9th Circuit in a challenge to US government “No-Fly” orders that was filed in 2010 as Latif v. Holder. The lawsuit has survived two previous […]
One of the major goals of the REAL-ID Act of 2005 was to create, and to pressure state governments to participate in, a national database of drivers’ licenses and state-issued ID cards. The REAL-ID Act requires that, “To meet the requirements of this section, a State shall … Provide electronic access to all other States […]
When last we checked in on the status of DHS threats to harass residents of states and territories that haven’t been sufficiently “compliant” with the REAL-ID Act of 2005, the focus was on the territory of American Samoa. The REAL-ID Act applies to the District of Columbia and five US territories as well as to […]
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 […]
Civil Action #05-11445DPW Last updated 5 Feb 07 The Gray case involved a foreign born commercial pilot who was initially denied authorization by the TSA to train on larger aircraft. When he appealed this determination he found himself on the No-Fly list. This was a particular hardship as he was then working as a commercial […]
[Sign carried by Dan Malashock at San Francisco International Airport, January 29, 2017. Photo by Ruth Radetsky.] Since the start of our work against restrictions on freedom to fly, well before September 11, 2001, we’ve been wondering what further outrage it would take to provoke mass protests at airports, and when that would finally happen. […]