The Federal civil rights trial in Ibrahim v. DHS — the first lawsuit seeking judicial review of a government “no-fly” order to make it to trial — began this morning in San Francisco with a surprise: When the case was called at 7:30 a.m., Elizabeth Pipkin and Christine Peek, pro bono lawyers for the plaintiff […]
This week Ellen Richardson, a Canadian citizen trying to fly from Toronto to New York to board a cruise ship bound for international destinations in the Caribbean, was denied permission to transit the U.S. by the DHS, on the basis of her history of clinical depression and her previous suicide attempts in Canada — none […]
[The TSA uses appearance profiles to decide whether to search you and/or your luggage, interrogate you, call the police, or allow you to fly. (Diagram from GAO report. Click image for larger version.)”] We’ve likened the TSA’s attempts to predict which travelers are would-be terrorists on the basis of their identities and profiles to the […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security held a hearing this week on How E-Verify Works and How it Benefits American Employers and Workers. Despite the boosterish title, the Subcommittee still heard testimony and received written statements that “E-Verify” doesn’t work, doesn’t benefit American employers or workers, and costs billions of dollars […]
In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Hestor Prynne was required to wear a prominent badge on her clothes, for life, to identify her publicly with the crime she had been convicted of: violating the sexual mores decreed as law by the fundamentalist religious and political leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Today a Federal court […]
Federal civil rights lawsuit for false arrest at TSA checkpoint U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit Argued March 17, 2015; decided December 22, 2015 Phillip Mocek v. City of Albuquerque, Albuquerque Aviation Police Department, Marshall Katz (in his official capacity as Chief of Police of the Albuquerque Aviation Police Department), Jonathon Breedon [TSA], […]
The obvious follow-up question to, Does an airline pilot have the right to refuse to let you fly?, is “What can you do if an airline pilot won’t let you fly?” Arijit Guha, one of the victims (his wife was also barred from the flight, merely for her association with her husband) in the incident […]