While it’s gotten almost no notice (yet) in the USA, our publication of the previously-secret text of the proposal for an agreement between the US and the European Union on DHS access to European PNR (passenger name record) data has prompted extensive discussion this week by journalists, activists, politicians, and bloggers throughout Europe. Here’s a […]
On November 17, 2011, US and European Union officials initialed a renegotiated proposed agreement (original English version; official German translation; official French translation) to authorize airlines to forward PNR data (travel reservations) to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). As an executive agreement, not a treaty, it doesn’t require any further US approval, but […]
In an article here yesterday, we mentioned a report earlier this month by Andrej Hunko, a member of the German national legislature (“Bundestag”) , based on responses to his information access requests to the German government about its collaboration with DHS and use of PNR data. There was more about this in DHS testimony at […]
A troika of officials from the DHS appeared today before the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence of the House Committee on Homeland security to make a joint sales pitch for the proposed agreement between the US and the European Union on DHS access to PNR data (airline reservations). Today’s hearing appears to have been staged […]
In an appearance on September 20th before the LIBE (civil liberties) Committee of the European Parliament to lobby for legalization of US government access to European airline reservations (PNR data), US Attorney General Eric Holder claimed that there has been “not one single example of privacy being breached” by the US in its processing of […]
A little more than a year after we filed suit on behalf of Edward Hasbrouck against the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division of DHS to find out what records they are keeping about our international travels, and what they have done with those records, we had our first real day in court yesterday in […]
U.K. authorities have apparently detained an Italian citizen disembarking from a trans-Atlantic cruise ship at Southampton on the basis of his inclusion on the U.S. “no-fly” list. It’s the latest in a steady series of expansions of the extra-territorial reach of U.S. travel surveillance and control, and should raise a red flag as to the […]
Yesterday the Bay Area Rapid Transit district (BART) held its first public discussion of BART’s recent actions to shut off wireless telephone and data service in parts of the BART system, and to close certain BART stations on the approach of certain groups of individuals, in order to prevent the use of those communications and […]
As we noted a few months ago, some elements of the travel industry (those more interested in whether the trains and planes run smoothly and on time than on whether their smooth operation includes integral surveillance and control of travelers by governments) have joined the homeland-security industrial complex in a lobbying campaign for traveler profiling […]
We aren’t sure how it’s been done, but the US government has somehow prevailed on Air Canada to deny boarding in London, for a flight to Toronto, to U.K. citizen Moazzam Begg. Begg was imprisoned (and, he says, tortured) for more than three years by the U.S. at Bagram, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, Cuba, but was […]