[Click image for full-sized version.] Heavily redacted records released by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) last month, more than six years after they were requested by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), give fragmentary clues to the answer to an important question: Just how many air travel blacklists does the US government have?
An interview with the head of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published this month by the U.S. Military Academy as part of a “View From The Foxhole” series provides an unusually revealing, and disturbing, picture of the expansion and globalization of surveillance and control of travelers. It also highlights the ways that policy is […]
Jana Winter has a detailed investigative report on the front page of today’s Boston Globe about a previously secret TSA program of illegal surveillance of innocent air travelers, “Quiet Skies”. According to the story in the Globe, based in part on descriptions and documents apparently leaked by dissident Federal Air Marshals, the “Quiet Skies” program […]
[Excerpt from proposed US visa application form as posted at Regulations.gov] Today the US Department of State published proposals in the Federal Register to expand its ongoing surveillance of social media, e-mail, and travel by applicants for immigrant and nonimmigrant (tourism and other temporary visits) visas: The Department is revising the collection to add several […]
Despite a “shell game” of changing program names, most recently “Visa Lifecycle Vetting”, the general intent of what the DHS and President Trump previously refered to as the “Extreme Vetting Initiative” is clear and has remained unchanged: To expand the ongoing unconstitutional warrantless and suspicious surveillance of refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, foreign residents, and US […]
Congress is currently considering multiple “immigration” bills containing provisions for “continuous screening” or “continuous vetting” of foreign residents, visitors, and would-be visitors to the US. As we have noted previously, “continuous screening” and “continuous vetting” are euphemisms for “continuous surveillance and control”. These so-called “immigration” bills would not be limited to foreigners. Many of them […]
The White House today announced the creation by executive order of a new “National Vetting Center”, led by the DHS, to coordinate efforts to surveill, profile, and control movement by U.S. citizens, residents, immigrants, and visitors. The “National Security Presidential Memorandum” was not made public, and the press release announcing it gives few details. So far […]
Senior officials of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) came to San Francisco last week to meet with representatives of the Identity Project and other civil liberties and human rights organizations regarding CBP “biometric entry/exit” schemes. These CBP programs, some of which are already in operation, involve taking digital mug shots of international travelers — […]
The latest so-called “Privacy Impact Assessment ” (PIA) made public by the US Department of Homeland Security, “CBP License Plate Reader Technology“, provides unsurprising but disturbing details about how the US government’s phobias about foreigners and drugs are driving (pun intended) the convergence of border surveillance and dragnet surveillance of the movements of private vehicles […]
Today The Identity Project joined 55 other civil rights, civil liberties, government accountability, human rights, immigrant rights, and privacy organizations in calling on the US Department of Homeland Security to abandon its Extreme Vetting Initiative. The essential goal of the DHS Extreme Vetting Initiative is to extend the bogus “pre-crime” prediction algorithms and methods based on “big data” […]