This morning on the “Today” show, TSA Administrator and former FBI agent John Pistole said that the TSA is “actively rethinking its policy” to require all travelers to submit to either an x-ray virtual strip search or vigorous groping of their breasts and genitals. We aren’t reassured or appeased. The process of “rethinking” described by […]
“Opting out” of TSA demands or questioning and photographing the TSA is not a crime! We’ve reported before on the arrest of Phillip Mocek just over a year ago at a TSA checkpoint at the airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his prosecution by local authorities on trumped-up criminal charges. Now, after several postponements, Phil […]
We’re pleased and excited to see the spontaneous outpouring of grassroots outrage at the latest TSA “Standard Operating Procedures”, which offer would-be air travelers a Hobson’s choice between forms of submission to secret rules, illegitimate authority, and invasion of personal privacy. TSA wants us to choose between a virtual strip-search (x-ray or similar photography through […]
We’re pleased to see that — perhaps as part of the fallout from publicity in Europe (see the links in these comments) for our lawsuit against the DHS — questions are finally being asked in the European press about the role of Computerized Reservation Systems (CRSs, also known as Global Distribution Systems or GDSs) in […]
We’ve been reading with great interest Skating on Stilts, the political memoir of former DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy and current lobbyist and influence-peddler for the homeland security industrial complex Stewart Baker. Despite our disgust at Baker’s continued insistence on distorting both facts and law, we recommend it highly to those interested in understanding (from […]
In a speech to the Air Line Pilots Association earlier this week, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano made explicit the US government’s intentions to, as we have repeatedly predicted, use the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as its primary international policy-laundering forum to bypass and override national laws restricting surveillance and control of travel. […]
Privacy Act and FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) lawsuit for records of DHS surveillance of travelers filed August 25, 2010, San Francisco, CA Judge Richard Seeborg, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Case number C 10-03793 RS, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California First rulings in our lawsuit over […]
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, […]
Closely following the bad example (controversial both in the US and Australia) of the USA, the government of Australia is moving toward increasing detailed and integrated ID-based surveillance and control of air travelers. As of the first of this month, under the so-called Enhanced Passenger Assessment and Clearance (EPAC) systems, Australian authorities have real-time access […]
US citizens generally assume that, whatever mistreatment is meted out to foreigners by US border guards and the DHS, we are entitled to enter and leave our own country without asking for, or receiving, permission from”our” government. That should be a safe assumption, under both the First Amendment to the US Constitution (which guarantees our […]