When we reported last week on the passport provisions in the new “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act”, we focused on the details of the rules for denial or revocation of US passports of citizens alleged to owe more than $50,000 in Federal taxes. We should, perhaps, have put more emphasis on the other new basis […]
President Obama’s televised speech last Sunday included a smorgasbord of proposals (and endorsements for proposals already made by members of Congress) for more control and surveillance of travel. We’ll look first at the proposals for restrictions on travel by foreign visitors to the US, followed in our next post by some of those that would […]
Despite a recent decision by the European Court of Justice based in part on the inability of US courts to enforce US obligations under human rights treaties to which the US is a party, and despite a direct order from the President, most Federal agencies have still done nothing to create even administrative channels or […]
Documents released to us by Amtrak suggest that since 2012, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has had direct access to Amtrak’s reservation system, possibly including access to reservations for Amtrak passengers traveling entirely within the USA. What do these documents show? And why would an immigration and border patrol agency want access to records […]
Stumbling into the embrace of the homeland-security state, California’s state legislature has sent to Governor Jerry Brown a bill which, unless the Governor vetoes it by October 11th, will require that: [T]he Department [of Motor Vehicles] shall require an applicant for an original driver’s license or identification card to submit satisfactory proof of California residency […]
If you exercise your right to travel, will the US government use your past travel as the basis for denying you the right to travel in the future? Reading between the lines of the redacted public versions of recent filings in one of the ongoing legal challenges to US government no-fly orders, the answer appears […]
The latest response to one of our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests confirms our suspicion that despite sworn testimony to the contrary to Congress by the DHS Chief FOIA Officer, the DHS has resumed, or never abandoned, its illegal practice of political interference and specially disfavored and delayed treatment of FOIA requests from journalists […]
The US Department of Homeland Security has announced plans to expand its data mining and “sharing”of DHS files about travelers, while removing some of the limited access controls and audit logging that it had only recently claimed to be putting in place for its Department-wide surveillance data framework: Privacy Impact Assessment for the DHS Data […]
In updates filed with Federal courts in at least two pending challenges to US government “no-fly” orders, lawyers for the government have revealed plans for changes to the internal procedures administrative agencies use in deciding who they “allow” to fly — and who they don’t. While these changes look like cosmetic but inadequate improvements, they […]
Barely more than a year after publicly cancelling a request for bids on the construction of a national database of vehicle location data compiled from commercial and government-operated license-plate reader (LPR) cameras, the DHS has quietly revealed that it is once again seeking to buy access to commercially-aggregated LPR data, and that some DHS component […]