From time to time, people ask us, “But why don’t you want to show ID when you travel? What’s wrong with that?” There are probably as many answers to that question as there are people who resist government demands to show ID when they travel, even when it’s scary and involves some personal risk to […]
Until recently, the TSA has been a domestic legal Guantanamo, and the TSA has treated their domain of “checkpoints” and travel control and surveillance as a law-free zone where their powers of search, seizure, detention, and denial of passage were unconstrained by the Constitution, human rights treaties, judicial review, or stautory or regulatory standards. As […]
260,000 members down the tubes. No refunds. Congratulations, suckers! Not only did you sign up for and pay money to a totalitarian program, but as usual, the police state was run by incompetents. Your little attempt to suck up to the TSA gestapo now won’t be doing you any good. Their competitor “Flo Corp” is […]
As of today, June 1, 2009, even U.S. citizens are officially prisoners in the USA, or exiles barred from entering our own country without the government’s permission. We are now forbidden by Federal regulations from leaving or entering the USA, anywhere, by any means — by air, by sea, or by land, to or from […]
In response to a request by the Identity Project under the Freedom of Information Act, the TSA has for the first time given us a (redacted) version of the section on Travel Document and ID Checks from the TSA’s “Screening Management SOP” (Standard Operating Procedures) manual. Our request was made June 21, 2008, the day […]
We were surprised last week to see that the GAO has issued a report certifying that, “As of April 2009, TSA had generally achieved 9 of the 10 statutory conditions related to the development of the Secure Flight program and had conditionally achieved 1 condition (TSA had defined plans, but had not completed all activities […]
Has anyone ever looked at your face and mistaken you for someone else? If so, and if you live in California, you could be a victim of a proposal by the California Department of Motor Vehicles which is now under consideration in the state legislature. At a hearing yesterday (May 13, 2009) before the Assembly […]
The Council of the European Union has put forward its new version of the “Proposal for a Council Framework Decision on the use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) for law enforcement purposes” originally made by the European Commission. (More background on the proposal is available from Statewatch.) The latest Council version of the proposal is […]
Amendments to the ATA/IATA Reservations Interline Message Procedures – Passenger (AIRIMP) take effect today, providing the first industry standard formats that airlines, travel agencies, and computerized reservation systems (CRSs) can use to transmit the additional information about travelers and prospective travelers newly required by the TSA for its Secure Flight airline passenger “screening” (surveillance and […]
The Identity Project participates actively in U.S., Canadian, European Union, ICAO, and other international regulatory and policy development proceedings through policy analysis, research, written comments, white papers, and testimony on proposed rules and regulatory notices. We monitor ID-related regulatory filings in the Federal Register and E.U. notices, but we also welcome your tips on upcoming […]