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The Identity Project

Oct 22 2013

TSA’s lying “response” to today’s story in the New York Times

We’re quoted on the front page of today’s New York Times in a story by Susan Stellin, “Security Check Now Starts Long Before You Fly”:

The Transportation Security Administration is expanding its screening of passengers before they arrive at the airport by searching a wide array of government and private databases that can include records like car registrations and employment information….

“I think the best way to look at it is as a pre-crime assessment every time you fly,” said Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to the Identity Project, one of the groups that oppose the prescreening initiatives. “The default will be the highest, most intrusive level of search, and anything less will be conditioned on providing some additional information in some fashion.”

More:

The TSA refused to say anything to the Times on the record, but published a blog post today (with the misleading title “Expediting Screening for the Traveling Public”) responding to the Times’ story with a succession of lies and prevarications.

We call “bullshit” on the TSA:

  • “We are not using “private databases.”” This is an out-and-out lie, as “Blogger Bob” and the TSA surely know. All TSA pre-secreening systems relie primarily on information from private commercial databases of airline reservations (PNRs). Since there is no requirement for a U.S. citizen to notify the government directly before taking a trip by common carrier, “pre-screening” would be impossible without access to, and reliance on, these private commercial databases. The US government has gone to great effort, through the APIS,  PNR, and Secure Flight regulations and through lobbying for changes to Canadian privacy law and exceptions to European privacy law, to implement requirements for DHS access to this data.  If these databases are no longer “private”, that is only because the TSA and other DHS components have compelled airlines and reservation hosting companies to make this data available to government agencies.
  • “TSA does not monitor a passenger’s length of stay in any location.” The TSA doesn’t always retain the travel itinerary information it compels airlines to provide for domestic travel, but it claims the right to do so for anyone deemed (arbitrarily or according to secret criteria) to be “suspicious” or to “match” an entry on any of the government’s (arbitrary, secret) “watchlists”.  And for international travel, CBP (another DHS component agency) does retain complete PNR data, including travel itineraries, and comprehensive border crossing and entry/exit logs, for all travelers, in its Automated Targeting System (ATS) — and claims the right to “share” all this data with the TSA. (And that doesn’t even begin to consider the NSA’s apparently independent hacking of airlines and reservation systems and potential sharing of PNR and other travel data with DHS.)
  • “We are not using car registrations.” Again, it’s CBP rather than the TSA that is logging license plates and vehicle movements (using cameras near borders and optical character recognition software), linking them to individual ATS records, and using them to generate “risk” scores and watchlist messages — which are then passed on to the TSA.  TSA is using this data, just (slightly) indirectly. According to the latest System Of Records Notice for ATS, published in the Federal Register in 2012, “ATS maintains the official record for … the combination of license plate, Department of Motor Vehicle (DMV) registration data and biographical data associated with a border crossing”.
  • “[W]e rely on the same security information passengers have been required to submit at time of booking for many years…. [T]he info we rely on is the same info that passengers have provided for years when they book their flight.” Actually, we didn’t used to have to provide our ID number, date of birth, or gender in order to make an airline (or Amtrak train, or Greyhound bus) reservation. It used to be possible to hold airline reservations in “dummy” names, or with no names at all. The TSA relies on information that has only been required since the creation of the TSA. And in the past, we “provided” that information, if at all, only to airlines and travel companies. Prior to the creation of the TSA, we never had to provide any information to the government to book a flight.  (Unless we were traveling in a foreign country where a foreign government agency like the Stasi required us to show our ID cards or permission papers to book a flight.)
  • “Anyone who has never traveled outside the United States would not have a passport number on file and would therefore not be subject to the rules that the agency uses to determine risk.” Nonsense. Many people have our passport numbers on file with the TSA because we’ve used our passports as ID for domestic flights.  Many people have no government-issued ID except a passport.  Despite the State Department’s moves to make it more difficult to get a passport, the REAL-ID  law sometimes makes it even more difficult to get a drivers license or other state-issued ID than to get a passport.
  • “We are not expanding the type of information we use.” If that were true, why would the TSA have published formal notices in the Federal Register of new systems of records and new uses for existing systems of records?  They don’t publish these legal notices just for fun. Either (a) the TSA has already been illegally collecting and/or using this data without proper notice, in violation of the Privacy Act (as DHS did for years with the Automated Targeting System), (b) the TSA is doing what is says in the notices it is doing, and collecting and using new information in new ways, or (c) the TSA plans to do so in the future, and wants to be able to say, if someone later complains, “But we gave you fair notice that this was what we were going to do. If you wanted to object, you should have done so back in 2013 when we published that notice.”
  • “[W]e are not using any new data to determine low risk passengers.” Applicants for the TSA’s Pre-Check program — i.e. people who want to be relieved of suspicion-by-default and the associated more intrusive search each time they travel — are being required to provide information that the TSA has never before requested, including fingerprints, other biometric information, and authorization for checks of criminal, financial, and other government and commercial records.  If the TSA isn’t using any of this new data, why is it compiling it? More than likely, this new data is being or will soon be used — and retained for possible additional future uses for an unknown range of purposes.

[TSA Pre-Crime graphic from Leaksource]

Oct 10 2013

TSA proposes arbitrarily individualized surveillance-based searches

In the latest version of TSA’s endless series of “trusted traveler” (or “less mistrusted traveler”) schemes, the agency is currently proposing to impose more intrusive searches on any traveler who doesn’t “voluntarily” enroll in the TSA Pre-Check program and authorize the TSA to create a new permanent file with everything from your fingerprints to any “other information provided by … government agencies or other entities”.

These files would be exempted from the normal requirements of the Privacy Act that records used as the basis for decisions about individuals’ exercise of our rights be made available to us and be limited to information that is sufficiently accurate, complete, and relevant to form a legitimate basis for such decisions.

The proposal is contained in a package of three regulatory filings (one new and one revised “System of Records Notice” and a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” proposing Privacy Act exemptions) published last month in the Federal Register.  All three have to be read in combination to appreciate their full implications.

The deadline for public comments on two of these proposals is today, and for the third is tomorrow. We filed consolidated comments today objecting to all three of these proposals:

Read in combination, this new and revised SORN and these proposed regulations describe a system in which an essentially unlimited range of personal information collected from an essentially unlimited range of sources, and known to include inaccurate and irrelevant information, would be (or perhaps already is being) compiled into the “TSA Pre-Check Application Program” system of records.

These records would be used – either according to criteria which are illegally being kept secret, or in an entirely arbitrary manner at the “discretion” of the TSA – to determine who is and who is not deemed “eligible” to exercise the right to travel without being subject to unreasonable searches.

The results of that decision-making would be incorporated into the “Secure Flight” system of records, and used as part of the basis (also either pursuant to secret rules or entirely arbitrarily) for deciding to issue or withhold the issuance of individualized “boarding pass printing results”, including instructions to TSA staff and contractors as to the degree of intrusiveness of the search to which each would-be traveler is to be subjected as a condition of exercising our right to travel.

Maintenance and use of these systems of records in the manner contemplated by these SORNs and the proposed exemptions would violate the 1st, 4th, and 5th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the presumption of innocence, due process, the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), the Privacy Act, and Article 12 (Freedom of Movement) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR.

These records should be expunged, and the proposed regulations should be withdrawn….

We also point out that the TSA is only pretending to give the required consideration to public comments:

According to the “TSA Pre-Check Application Program” SORN published on September 10, 2013, “The Secretary of Homeland Security has exempted certain records from this system from the notification, access, and amendment procedures of the Privacy Act because it may contain records or information related to law enforcement or national security purposes.”

This claim was, and is, false. As of the date of the SORN, no such exemption had even been proposed: the NPRM proposing such an exemption, and requesting public comments (such as this one) concerning that proposed exemption for consideration by the DHS, was not published until a day later, on September 11, 2013. Even now, the Secretary has promulgated no final rule for such an exemption. Nor could he or she promulgate any such final rule, consistent with the Administrative Procedure Act, unless and until the current period for public comment on the proposed exemption rule has concluded and the comments submitted (including these comments) have been considered by the DHS.

The false claim that “The Secretary of Homeland Security has exempted certain records from this system from the notification, access, and amendment procedures of the Privacy Act”, when in fact the Secretary has not done so, appears to be intended to mislead individuals about what rights we have, and to dissuade us from attempting to exercise our rights.  In addition, by stating the outcome of the current exemption rulemaking as a fait accompli, it constitutes prima facie evidence of bad faith in the consideration of public comments. It is not enough for an agency to accept submissions of comments from the public to the circular file, after making a decision. An agency must give genuine consideration to public comments before deciding whether to finalize, modify, or withdraw a proposed rule.

You can read our complete comments here. You can submit comments at Regulations gov (here, here , and here) but your comments won’t be processed or visible online until after the DHS Privacy Office re-opens.

[TSA Pre-Crime graphic from Leaksource]

Oct 10 2013

US government thinks human rights are not essential

Representatives of the US government were scheduled to appear next week for public, in-person questioning in Geneva by the UN Human Rights Committee, as part of the UNHRC’s periodic treaty-mandated review of US implementation of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

Each party to the ICCPR, including the US,  is required by Article 40 of the treaty to report to the UNHRC, “whenever the Committee so requests”, on “the measures they have adopted which give effect to the rights recognized herein and on the progress made in the enjoyment of those rights.”

We were looking forward to next week’s session, at which the UNHRC was scheduled to consider issues we had raised in our submissions to the UNHRC, including US violations of Article 12 (Freedom of Movement) of the ICCPR and US failure to consider, respond to, log, or report on complaints of human rights treaty violations.

Today, however, the US requested and received a postponement until March 2014 of its appearance before the UNHRC, “due to the ongoing government shutdown.”

But the US government is not, of course, shut down.

Agencies, departments, and contractors deemed “essential”, including police, prisons, surveillance agencies, and travel “screeners” (searchers and interrogators), remain on the job. These “essential” operations include, of course, many of those engaged in human rights violations.

The real meaning of the US request for postponement of the review of its human rights record by the UNHRC is that the US does not consider compliance with international human rights treaties to be “essential”.

The government continues to violate our human rights during the “shutdown”. What have been shut down are any mechanisms for accountability, oversight, or enforcement of human rights treaty obligations.

This is nothing new or surprising, but it is nonetheless appalling. Human rights are essential. Compliance with treaties is as essential as compliance with any other provision of the US Constitution.

Unfortunately, this is typical of the way that decisions have been made as to which government functions are “essential”.

For example, the TSA and DHS offices responsible for responding to Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests have been closed for the duration, even though FOIA mandates, and provide statutory deadlines for, responses to these requests. Meanwhile, TSA and DHS press offices, who perform no statutorily mandated function, remain open. Propaganda has been prioritized over both the substance of transparency and compliance with the law in making decisions about which offices will be kept open.

The postponement of the UNHRC’s review of US compliance with the ICCPR will give the Department of State more time to respond to our complaint of violations of the ICCPR by the State Department, and our FOIA request for State Department records related to complaints of human rights violations.  That request and complaint have been pending for more than two years. Shortly before all FOIA offices were shut down, however, we were told by the State Department that it doesn’t expect to complete its response to our FOIA request until 2015. That’s too late, conveniently, for it to be considered by the UNHRC in its review of the US human rights recrod, even at a postponed 2014 session.

Sep 29 2013

How the NSA obtains and uses airline reservations

A front-page report in today’s New York Times based on documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden confirms that the NSA, like the DHS, uses airline reservation data as part of its profiling and social network analysis of US citizens and foreigners. Today’s report also raises new questions, and suggests some answers, as to how the NSA obtains and uses this airline data.

The Times’ report today on NSA social network analysis mentions that:

The [NSA] can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including … passenger manifests…,  according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such “enrichment” data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners….

[T]he N.S.A. correlates 164 “relationship types” to build social networks and what the agency calls “community of interest” profiles, using queries like “travelsWith“.

In their most basic form, passenger manifests list each passenger individually and do not indicate which passengers were traveling together.  At a minimum, either “Advance Passenger Information” (API) data, some other source of “enhanced” passenger manifest data, or complete Passenger Name Records (PNRs) would be needed to identify which passengers on a given flight had reservations in the same PNR (a single PNR can contain the reservations for an entire party or group traveling together) and thus who “travelsWith” whom.

We’ve long known that the DHS collects API and PNR data about US citizens and foreigners alike, compiles this data in its Automated Targeting System and Secure Flight databases, and mines this data both to target individuals (including journalists and activists) and for social network analysis (correlating e.g. telephone numbers and airline reservations) to identify and target new suspects on the basis of their association with current suspects (i.e. as a suspicion-generating or guilt-by-association system).

A typical PNR like the one shown above (from a DHS Automated Targeting System dossier; click the thumbnail for a larger image) includes a timestamped IP address (line 5 of the “remarks” in the example above), email address, home address, credit card number, mobile phone number, etc., so it can readily be correlated with Internet, communications, and financial records.

The NSA would presumably have been interested in flights worldwide, including flights within parts of the world far from the USA, while the DHS claims to collect PNR data only for flights to, from, within, or via the US.  But we know that the DHS can, and sometimes does, collect PNR data about flights elsewhere.

As we reported in 2007, and as was mentioned in a front-page story in the Washington Post based on our research, ATS records released by DHS in response to our requests (you can request your own ATS file using the forms here) confirmed that the DHS already had “root” access to the computerized reservation systems (CRSs), so that the DHS could retrieve any PNR in those CRSs, even if it didn’t include any US flights.

The “smoking gun” confirming DHS root access to CRSs was this PNR for someone who traveled from San Francisco to Berlin (TXL) on United Airlines and a United/Lufthansa codeshare flight, stayed in Berlin for six days, continued from Berlin to London (LHR), stayed in London for another six days, and then returned to SFO on United:

The portion of the journey from Berlin to London via Prague was on Czech Airlines (OK), an airline which does not (and did not then) fly to, from, or via any point in the US. Additional details in the PNR showed that a separate ticket was issued for the OK flights, which did not connect to flights to or from the US.  A CRS user with a United Airlines user ID and privileges would not have been able to see these flights. Only a user with an ID from the travel agency that made these reservations, or a user with “root” privileges (such as a user with an ID from the CRS company), would have been able to see all of the data that the DHS was able to see and import into ATS.

So could the NSA have obtained its copies of PNR and/or API data from DHS, or by using the root-user credentials that CRS companies had provided to the DHS?  Maybe.  Since neither DHS nor the CRSs keep logs of who accesses their respective copies of PNR data, there’s no way to know for sure except through leaks or the testimony of whistleblowers.

But we suspect that the NSA has some way to obtain PNR and/or API data independent of the DHS.

Read More →

Sep 17 2013

How airline reservations are used to target illegal searches

One of the most detailed pictures to date of how the US government uses airline reservations to target illegal searches is provided by documents released recently by the US government as part of an agreement to settle a lawsuit brought by David House, an activist with the Pvt. Manning Support Network.

Mr. House was detained and searched and had his electronic devices confiscated and copied by DHS personnel at O’Hare Airport as he was re-entering the US after a vacation in Mexico in 2010.

The government learned of Mr. House’s travel plans through their systems for real-time monitoring and mining of airline reservations:

The ACLU analysis of the documents released to Mr. House, and reports by the New York Times and the Associated Press,  focus on the DHS seizure and copying of the data from Mr. House’s electronic devices. An article in Mother Jones highlights the technical ineptness of the government’s attempts to analyze the data seized from Mr. House. (It took DHS “experts” more than a month, for example, to realize that a portion of the data dump from Mr. House’s netbook was a Linux partition.)

But as discussed below, more is revealed by these documents about DHS access to, and use of, airline reservations.

The documents released to Mr. House may also help explain how David Miranda, the domestic partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained and searched last month while changing planes at Heathrow Airport in London.

And in that context, they may also suggest an explanation for why Mr. Miranda was detained and searched in the UK, and Mr. House in the US, but Mr. Greenwald himself has not been detained or similarly searched when he travels to the US.

Read More →

Sep 10 2013

9th Circuit considers Constitutionality of ban on Internet anonymity

Last year, we reported on a Federal district court hearing on the Constitutionality of portions of the law enacted by California’s Proposition 35, which requires California residents who have been convicted of certain sex-related crimes to register with the local police, annually and within 24 hours of any addition or change, for the rest of their lives, “A list of any and all Internet identifiers established or used by the person [and] A list of any and all Internet service providers used by the person… For purposes of this chapter, (a) “Internet service provider” means a business, organization, or other entity providing a computer and communications facility directly to consumers through which a person may obtain access to the Internet…. (b)  “Internet identifier” means an electronic mail address, user name, screen name, or similar identifier used for the purpose of Internet forum discussions, Internet chat room discussions, instant messaging, social networking, or similar Internet communication.”

The challenge to this portion of the law, being argued by Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California on behalf of as-yet-anonymous clients who would be subject to this registration requirement, is a crucial test of the right to anonymity on the Internet.

It’s easy to say, “This only affects sex offenders.”

But restrictions on First Amendment rights are always imposed first on the most stigmatized groups of people, whether the villians du jour are serial killers, perverts, Communists, or Jews.  Once they are accepted by the public as applied to those disfavored classes, these measures can gradually be expanded until everyone has to register with the government, carry government-assigned credentials identifying them and/or their group affiliation (Star of David, pink triangle, etc.), or comply with other restrictions that have come to be accepted  as merely “administrative” rules for how they can exercise their rights, and are no longer considered substantive restrictions on rights.

Judge Thelton Henderson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California had issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the state form enforcing this part of the law. Following the hearing we reported on, Judge Henderson converted that order into a preliminary injunction.  Both the state of California, and the sponsors of the ballot initiative (as “intervenors” in the court case) appealed to the Circuit Court before the District Court could resolve the issue of whether to make the injunction permanent.

Today a three-judge panel of he 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on whether to let the preliminary injunction remain in force while the District Court proceedings continue.

Today’s hearing focused on whether the provisions of Prop. 35 requiring registration of Internet service providers and “identifiers” chill the exercise of free speach and are overbroad, i.e are not “narrowly tailored” to restrict no more activity protected by the First Amendment than is necessary. (The vagueness of the terms “Internet service provider” and “Internet identifier” was raised in the briefs, but barely mentioned at argument.)

Early in the hearing, Judge Jay Bybee observed that, “We’re living in a post-Snowden world now, where we all have to wonder whether all of our communications are being monitored by the NSA.” It was an intriguing suggestion of how much judicial attitudes may have been reshaped by the actions of whistleblowers.

The law’s proponents argued that free speech would not be chilled because under the law the police would have only limited authority to make Internet identifiers public.

But Michael Risher of the ACLU pointed out that chilling effects result primarily from fear of official retaliation — such as by the police. Police don’t have to make registration information public to use it themselves against people who say things they don’t like.

“A registrant who wants to criticize the local police department in comments on a local newspaper’s website, but doesn’t want to face retaliation, will be chilled if they know that their identifier is on file with those local police…. Among the reasons for protection of anonymous speech is to protect against this sort of official retaliation.”  It’s easy for the police to make life hard for a registered sex offender, Risher pointed out.

The law’s defenders had a particularly hard time justifying the breadth of the registration requirement, which they conceded applied (at least as the law is written) to screen names or accounts used to post comments on websites from the New York Times to eBay, and to people whose crimes had nothing to do with the Internet.

“If I open an account so I can sell my bicycle on Craigslist, do I have to report that?”, Judge Bybee asked.

When counsel for the intervenors tried to justify the requirement for registration of Internet identifiers (but not pseudonyms used for other sorts of communications) by claiming that “sex crimes are moving to the Internet”, Judge Mary Schroeder shot back, “So is shopping. So what?”

We’re relatively optimistic that this panel of the 9th Circuit will allow the District Court’s preliminary injunction to remain in force. But it’s still up to the District Court to make that injunction permanent.

Sep 06 2013

Why did the NSA hack an airline reservation system (when CBP already has root access)?

The latest revelations about NSA attacks on encrypted electronic communications include this sentence buried in an article in yesterday’s New York Times (first noted today by the travel news website Skift):

But by 2006, an N.S.A. document notes, the agency had broken into communications for three foreign airlines, one travel reservation system, one foreign government’s nuclear department and another’s Internet service by cracking the virtual private networks that protected them.

It’s no surprise that the U.S. government was and is interested in monitoring airline reservations in real time as well as in mining historical airline reservation records.

But why did the NSA feel it was necessary to hack into airline and computerized reservation system (CRS) messaging, when the U.S. Customs and Border Protection division of DHS already had root access to reservations for flights worldwide stored in any of the four largest CRSs (including Amadeus, the only one not based in the USA), and was already extracting copies of all reservations that include flights to, from, via, or over the U.S. and compiling them into tits Automated Targeting System (ATS)?

  • Was the government interested in some airlines (who were these three?) that didn’t use one of the big four CRSs to host their reservations?
  • Was the government afraid that some airline or CRS (which one?) might pull the plug on CBP access, or restrict it to reservations for flights that actually touch the USA?
  • What was it about airline and CRS messaging that interested the NSA?  For what NSA purpose was the content of PNRs insufficient?

Whistleblowers, especially with airlines or CRSs or their contractors and suppliers, we need your help! If you know what was up with the NSA’s hacking of airline and CRS messaging, leave a comment or get in touch.

Sep 05 2013

How the TSA treats FOIA requesters it doesn’t like

The more we learn about the TSA’s handling of our Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the uglier it gets. The latest chapter in the TSA’s vendetta against us is described in a FOIA appeal we filed this week.

The DHS, which of course includes the TSA, has long had a department-wide policy requiring special political approval — and often delay — of all FOIA requests from media, watchdog, or activist individuals or organizations, which we know included requests from The Identity Project.

In addition, we have now obtained less redacted versions of internal TSA and DHS email messages (which were officially released to us only with the most incriminating portions blacked out) showing that the TSA’s Chief Privacy Officer engaged in a campaign of character assassination intended to persuade TSA FOIA staff that individuals associated with The Identity Project are lunatics and liars and hold particular opinions and beliefs as a result of which we and our requests should be ignored or not taken seriously.

(Click image for larger version.)

In the libelous internal TSA email message reproduced above, TSA Privacy Officer Peter Pietra had this to say about Edward Hasbrouck, a consultant to The Identity Project who has filed many of our FOIA requests (and asked questions of Mr. Petra and filed other FOIA requests for records related to Mr. Petra’s work):

Ed is crazy as a loon, and as rude and belligerent at [sic] Bill says…. He misrepresents any interaction you have with him, so be wary (even where there is video that contradicts his version of events). He also thought 9/11 was a govt conspiracy because the FBI investigated it instead of the NTSB.

This message was distributed to TSA FOIA officers including those involved in processing our FOIA requests. And it was sent — the TSA itself later found — with the intention of influencing their decisions.

Even if Mr. Hasbrouck held these opinions and beliefs (which he doesn’t — the allegations about his opinions and beliefs are pure fabrications by TSA staff), who we are or what individuals associated with our organization think or believe is irrelevant to our entitlement to access government records pursuant to FOIA.

Attempting to induce FOIA staff to base FOIA processing or decisions on their opinions of the requesters’ beliefs is among the most serious forms of possible misconduct by officials responsible for compliance with FOIA.

If there’s anything worse, it’s withholding requested government records in order to cover up offical misconduct. But that’s exactly what happened when we requested the email message above.

The TSA’s Chief FOIA Officer and FOIA Public Liaison, Yvonne Coates, redacted the libelous portions of the message on the grounds that they were part of the decision-making process (even though she knows that making FOIA decision on the basis of who we are or what we believe is forbidden by FOIA) and that disclosure of these portions of the message “would injure the quality of future agency decisions by discouraging the open and frank policy discussions between subordinates and superiors”:

(Click image for larger version.)

The dismal track record of DHS and TSA noncompliance with FOIA began with the creation of these agencies during the Bush administration, and has continued during the Obama  administration.  Our FOIA requests (like those of other requesters) have routinely been delayed or lost. Responses have been incomplete, improperly and excessively redacted, and almost always months or years later than the deadlines in the law.

Read More →

Aug 30 2013

International travel by air is a Constitutional right

In a preliminary ruling in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU three years ago on behalf of a group of people who have been prevented by the U.S. government from traveling by air, a Federal judge in Oregon has found (1) that international air travel is a Constitutional right, and (2) that a categorical ban by the government on the exercise of that right can only be issued in accordance with due process.

Those shouldn’t be surprising findings. But given that the U.S. government has never sought to follow normal legal procedures by asking a court to issue a no-fly injunction against an individual, and that none of the goverment’s extrajudicial administrative no-fly orders has ever been reviewed on its merits by any court, the latest ruling by District Judge Judge Anna Brown in the case of Latif et al. v. Holder is an important step toward bringing DHS controls on travel within the rule of law.

The ruling is the latest in a series of decisions which have finally begun to uphold the right of travelers to due process and juducial review of the restrictins on their movements. The decison in the Oregon no-fly case echoes similar findings in the past year by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Gulet Mohamed and by the 9th Circuit and the District Court for the Northern District of California in the case of Rahinah Ibrahim.

Read More →

Aug 22 2013

California considers “enhancing” drivers licenses with radio tracking beacons

California’s legislature is considering a bill to authorize adding radio tracking beacons to drivers licenses and state non-driver ID cards.

Each such card would broadcast a unique tracking number which could legally be intercepted by anyone with a suitable radio transceiver within range, and which would be linked to a national DHS database of drivers license, state ID card, and citizenship information.

The tracking beacons are designed to allow the tracking numbers on ID cards carried by travelers in motor vehicles to be read from outside their vehicles as they approach or pass through checkpoints.

Independent academic studies of actual ID cards issued by other states, using the same standards proposed for use in California, have found that they can sometimes be read from more than 50 yards away.

S.B. 397 has already been approved by the California Senate, and is now under consideration in the Assembly. Because it has been amended by the Assembly, it will need to be reconsidered by the Senate (to decide whether to accept the Assembly amendments) if and when it is approved by the Assembly.

To date, S.B. 397 has been largely unopposed in the California legislature, and it is likely to be approved unless legislators start hearing a groundswell of opposition from their constituents.

What excuse is being offered for this scheme? And what’s its real purpose?

Read More →