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 […]
The broadest and most fundamental legal challenge to the waging of the US “War on Terror” through standardless, secret, extra-judicial government blacklists was filed today in the Federal court for the district in Virginia where the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Terrorist Screening Center (TSC), and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are headquartered. (Video backgrounder and interviews […]
Independent legal experts commissioned by the Council of Europe (COE) to assess proposals for surveillance and profiling of air travellers throughout the European Union have returned a detailed and perceptive critique of the proposed EU directive on government access to, and use of, Passenger Name Record (PNR) data from airline reservations. Before the revelations by […]
For only the second time, a would-be traveler has been given offical notice by the US government that they are not on the US “No Fly” list. Just weeks before a scheduled March hearing in a Federal lawsuit brought by US citizen Jamal Tarhuni challenging his repeatedly having been prevented from boarding commercial airline flights, […]
The US government’s use of smear tactics to evade judicial review of its secret, standardless administrative”no-fly” orders has reached a new low with the latest developments in the case of Gulet Mohamed. Mr. Mohamed’s saga began when his name was added to the US no-fly list in 2010, while the then-teenaged US citizen was visiting […]
Faced with a series of Federal court rulings upholding challenges to “no-fly” orders, or allowing them to proceed toward trial, the US government agencies responsible for “no-fly” orders have responded by pretending that they don’t understand what the courts have ordered them to do. Instead of complying with court orders, the responsible agencies are asking […]
Faced with a series of decisions by federal District Court judges that the procedures for putting names on the “no-fly” list lack the due process of law required by the Constitution, and with more no-fly and “watchlist” (blacklist) cases on track toward trial, the government is trying to claim that the basis (if any) for […]
In a significant reaffirmation of the decision earlier this year in Ibrahim v. DHS, another federal District Court has now found that the US government’s administrative procedures for reviewing and appealing “no-fly” decisions violate both Constitutional standards of due process and the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act. The ruling this week by Judge Anna […]
Since late last year, we’ve gotten several inquires from readers wondering why they got a boarding pass marked “TSA Pre-Check” or were sent through the “Pre-Check” lane at a TSA checkpoint even though they hadn’t participated in the “TSA Pre-Check Application Program”. The confusion stems from the TSA’s own misleading publicity about the program, which […]
Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim still doesn’t know why she was placed on the “no-fly” list, even after the trial of her lawsuit against the US government and US District Judge William Alsup’s finding that Dr. Ibrahim was denied the due process of law which was her right. At trial, the government admitted that back in 2004, […]