Today the City Council of Portland, Oregon, voted unanimously to ban the use of facial recognition technology by City agencies or by private entities in places of public accommodation within the City limits, including at the Portland International Airport (PDX), effective immediately. Many local and national organizations and individuals testified eloquently in favor of these […]
On March 26, 2020, the World Economic Forum published specifications and launched a new website for a project it has christened “Known Travel Digital Identity” (KTDI): World Economic Forum KTDI project page (with links and list of partners) KTDI.org March 2020 KTDI specifications 2019 KTDI video on Vimeo 2018 KTDI video on Youtube Marriot / […]
We’ve seen before — notably after September 11, 2001 — how a crisis can result in damage to rights and freedoms that persists long after the initial cause of public panic. Some advocates for restrictions on individuals and our movements and activities will exploit any crisis to ratchet the mechanisms of surveillance and control tighter. […]
In response to fears by the travel industry (fueled by government lies) that businesses dependent on air travel will lose money if their would-be customers are prevented by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) from flying because they don’t have ID credentials that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deems sufficiently “compliant”, a proposal was introduced […]
In a new twist on the familiar US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tactic of trying to intimidate state governments into sharing drivers license data with the DHS by threatening to harass, delay, or interfere with the rights of residents of those states when they travel, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security has declared that […]
The highest court of the European Union will be reviewing the legality of the directive adopted by the EU in 2017 requiring airlines to send Passenger Name Record (PNR) data to the government of each EU member state, and requiring each EU member state to establish a “Passenger Information Unit” to carry out PNR-based surveillance […]
A 3-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the government’s procedures and criteria for issuing “no-fly” orders against a complaint that the criteria (which are essentially “pre-crime” criteria based on predictions of future bad actions) are too vague to provide fair notice of what actions might lead to a “no-fly” order, […]
An advance notice posted last week by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of a forthcoming request for bids by IT contractors includes one of the most detailed inventories made public to date of the databases and interfaces used by CBP and its government and commercial partners (some of which are shown in the illustration […]
Following its most recent meeting on May 31, 2019, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) announced last week that “The Board has voted to conduct an oversight project related to the use of airline Passenger Name Records.” We welcome this announcement by the PCLOB, and look forward to whatever opportunities may be presented […]
A new report by Seth Harp in The Intercept confirms that, despite by ongoing litigation challenging warrantless, suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division of the DHS is continuing to target journalists for these illegal searches and for interrogation about their journalistic travel and other activities. Mr. Harp’s experience […]