Last week three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the TSA’s administrative decision to fine “Naked American Hero” John Brennan $500 for taking off all his clothes to protest TSA’s practices and to show that he wasn’t hiding any explosives under his clothes despite a false-positive result from a TSA swab test […]
[Entities and data flows involved in decision-making (“vetting”) about travelers. Larger image, PDF with legend.] The latest annual report on data-mining by the Department of Homeland Security contains a disturbing hint that the TSA may have gotten the ability to include checks for warrants and police “wants” in its “vetting” of passengers on domestic airline […]
Imagine that you’re a U.S. citizen. You were born in the USA. You’ve never been a citizen of any other country, and you have no birthright to any other citizenship. Now imagine that you are abroad long enough that your passport begins to approach its expiration date. Naturally, you apply to renew it, leaving plenty […]
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 […]
Our work is cited in an article today by Kaveh Waddell in The Atlantic, “How Long Can Border Agents Keep Your Email Password? Some data gathered from travelers going through customs can stay in a Homeland Security database for 75 years.” The article in The Atlantic highlights several recent incidents in which international travelers have […]
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has joined other Courts of Appeals in finding that the First Amendment protects the right to make audio and video recording of police activities in public places, including recording police officers and vehicles outside a police station from a public sidewalk. The Court also found that Texas Penal Code […]
[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 […]
President Trump’s Executive Order expanding the pre-existing and ongoing #MuslimBan from foreign airports to US points of entry, by forbidding entry to the US by citizens of specified blacklisted countries, doesn’t say anything explicit about searches or interrogation of people entering or leaving the US. But this Executive Order seems to have been interpreted by […]
[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. […]
We’ve heard a lot of talk in recent months about “extreme vetting” of immigrants, Muslims, and foreign visitors to the US. But what does “extreme vetting” really mean? “Vetting” of both domestic and international travelers — making predictive pre-crime decisions as to whether or not to allow them to travel — is already extreme, and […]