Since the start of the post-9/11 shift from case-by-case government access to travel reservations to dragnet surveillance of all reservations and pre-crime profiling of all travelers, the government has claimed repeatedly that the information to which it has demanded access was already “routinely” provided by travelers to airlines and other travel companies. We’ve recently received […]
The European Parliament has approved (press release, breakdown of votes, text as adopted) a directive requiring each “member state” (country) in the European Union to: Establish or designate a new travel surveillance and control agency (“Passenger Information Unit”), Require all airlines operating flights to or from places outside the EU to transmit complete copies of […]
Argentina has promulgated regulations which will require operators of all flights in or out of the country to send copies of both Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR) data for each passenger and crew member to the government before any flight departs. The new regulations are to be fully implemented within six […]
We’ve noticed a disturbing pattern in how the DHS, and specifically US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has responded to people who have asked the DHS for its files about themselves. Eventually — typically months later than the statutory deadline for responding to a FOIA request — CBP has sent the requester a file of […]
Despite admitting that it was “too soon to speculate about any connection between these stolen passports and the missing plane,” Interpol officials did not hesitate to use the fact that two passengers on the missing Malaysian Airlines flight used stolen passports as the opportunity to step up its longstanding campaign for a global travel control […]
As we’ve noted previously, members of the European Parliament have been exercising their right to question the European Commission about the proposed agreement negotiated by the EC with the USA to give travel companies partial immunity from EU privacy law when they open their reservation (“PNR“) databases to the US Department of Homeland Security. Numerous […]
We were interviewed Friday on Scott Horton’s “Antiwar Radio” podcast on Antiwar.com and on KPFK Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles (play stream) (download). The two half-hour interviews cover much of the same ground. We recommend the one on Antiwar.com. Here are some links for more information about things we mentioned on the show: Gulet Mohamed […]
Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano is in Brussels today, lobbying the European Union to allow the DHS to access airline reservation Passenger Name Record (PNR) data on the same day that DHS lawyers will be facing us in court in San Francisco to argue that nobody — not even US citizens — should have the […]
The good news: In one of the first tests of US rules purporting to forbid US citizens from crossing US borders without first obtaining US passports (issued at the government’s apparently standardless discretion), the US Department of State issued “one-time waivers” authorizing the “Iroquois Nationals” lacrosse team to leave the US (and presumably to return, […]
In testimony before a Canadian parliamentary hearing last week by Assistant Commissioner Chantal Bernier, the office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada raised questions (previously asked in the Canadian press) about the implications for Canadian travelers of the US Secure Flight program — questions that travelers in the US and other countries should share. Asst. […]