[Slide from internal TSA presentation, Identity Verification Staffing Support Overview, March 2017, released in response to FOIA request by the Identity Project.] As of 2016, almost 2,000 people a day were allowed through TSA checkpoints at US airports either without showing any ID at all, or with other forms of ID that the TSA or […]
In a letter first reported by Reuters and first published in full by The Points Guy, CEO Edward Bastian of Delta Air Lines has called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to “support our efforts with respect to… putting any person convicted of an on-board disruption on a national, comprehensive,… ‘no-fly’ list that would bar that […]
On the 20th anniversary of the creation of the Transportation Security Administration, the Freedom to Travel Act of 2021 (H.R. 6030, “To protect the right to travel by common carrier”), has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and the […]
As we have long feared, and as has already happened in other countries, COVID-19 vaccination requirements are being used to impose unrelated ID requirements. There’s a difference between “unvaccinated” and “undocumented” — a difference that’s gotten lost in some recent regulations and orders imposing “vaccination mandates”. Case in point: the San Francisco Department of Public […]
The Department of Homeland Security has published a Request For Information (RFI) from vendors and other stakeholders regarding standards for drivers licenses and other IDs stored on smartphones or other mobile devices to be considered compliant with the REAL-ID Act of 2005. Responses to the RFI are due by June 18, 2021. The amendments to […]
A Request For Information (RFI) posted on a website for Federal government contractors gives a glimpse into the degree to which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has embedded itself into the information technology infrastructure of the airline industry. The RFI for Services to Electronically Transmit Airline Data was posted April 5, 2021, by US […]
Judge John A. Gibney, Jr. of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has ruled that TSA checkpoint staff can be sued (and, potentially, held personally liable for damages) for stopping a traveler from recording video with his cellphone of them searching (“patting down”) his wife, and ordering him to delete the video. […]
[Flowchart of “goTravel” software package developed by the government of the Netherlands and offered to U.N. members through the Countering Terrorist Travel Programme of the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT)] National governments of all members of the United Nations are being pressured to implement new U.N. mandates for surveillance, profiling, and control of air travelers. […]
[Dashcam video of George Wingate being wrongfully arrested by Stafford County, VA Deputy Sheriffs, April 2017] In its 2004 decision in Hiibel v. Nevada, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a demand for a pedestrian to identify himself to police only on the basis that (1) there was already a reasonable articulable basis for suspicion […]
The most significant legal challenge since the creation of the Transportation Security Administration to the TSA’s attempt to operate outside the law, and to avoid judicial review of its actions, is coming to a head in the next month in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. It’s a David v. Goliath legal battle, […]