A panel of the 10th Circuit US Court of Appeals has ruled, in the case of Mglej v. Gardner, that it is “clearly established law” that police in Utah may not require suspects (or anyone else they detain, except operators of motor vehicles) to show ID documents, and therefore that the Garfield County Sheriff who […]
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 […]
Playing out the endgame we predicted last year of a two-decade campaign by the US government to establish a global regime of government surveillance of air travelers, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has adopted an amendment to the Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation that will require each of the 193 state parties to that […]
Are parking garages and toll roads spying on innocent motorists for Federal police? Reversing a decision made in response to public pressure in 2014, US Customs and “Border” Protection (CBP) plans to pay a commercial aggregator of license-plate reader data to track vehicles that aren’t near any US border or in the “border zone” within […]
Oral arguments have been scheduled by two different Federal District Court judges for this Thursday, July 2, 2020, on motions for temporary restraining orders against enforcement of separate state health orders mandating 14-day quarantine of all people arriving in New York or Hawaii from out of state. Corbett v. Cuomo will be argued at 2 […]
We are pleased that legislation has been introduced in Congress to end “qualified immunity“, one of the main judicial theories that has enabled Transportation Security Administration checkpoint staff to violate travelers’ rights with de facto impunity. H.R. 7085, introduced yesterday in the House of Representatives, is a simple and straightforward bill to end qualified immunity: […]
Judge William Bertelsman of the U.S District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky at Covington has issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Kentucky state authorities from enforcing a “Travel Ban” order issued by Gov. Andy Beshear that prohibited most travel into or out of Kentucky, and required anyone crossing the state line to self-quarantine for […]
Providing the rest of the USA with an object lesson in how not to react to a pandemic, Dare County, North Carolina, has established checkpoints on all roads crossing the county borders, at which travelers must show their papers to enter the county. Pursuant to a series of emergency declarations issued by the Dare County […]
The New York Times published a lengthy but deeply flawed report last week, “Airlines Refused to Collect Passenger Data That Could Aid Coronavirus Fight.” Here’s the lede: For 15 years, the U.S. government has been pressing airlines to prepare for a possible pandemic by collecting passengers’ contact information so that public-health authorities could track down […]
In December 2019, the elected Port of Seattle Commission voted to develop public policies and criteria for deciding whether to approve use of facial recognition or other biometrics to identify travelers at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) and the Seattle cruise port. This is a positive step — but only if the Port follows through […]