The Identity Project is featured along with our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the latest report from Reason.TV, Is Silicon Valley Building the Infrastructure for a Police State? New AI tools could empower the government to violate our civil liberties. If you have ten minutes to watch the video, it’s a good introduction […]
Today The Identity Project and eight other civil liberties and human rights organizations filed comments with the US Department of Homeland Security objecting to both the creation and the exemption from the Privacy Act of the latest DHS system of social media and travel surveillance records, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Intelligence Records System (CIRS). Our comments were co-signed […]
Is the U.S. government monitoring social media? Yes. Since December 2016, all visitors to the U.S. under the “Visa Waiver Program” (VWP) have been asked to identify the social media IDs they use to the Department of State on the online ESTA form. In several recent notices in the Federal Register, and in official statements […]
Invoking memes that we’ve seen and warned about before under both Democratic and Republican administrations, President Trump has attributed the latest version 3.0 of his “Muslim ban”announced today (proclamation, FAQ, explainer) with the need to comply with ICAO and INTERPOL standards for passport issuance, “identity management”, and data sharing about travelers — as though US immigration […]
A Federal judge has ruled that yes, he can review the Constitutionality of Federal blacklists (euphemistically but misleadingly labeled “watchlists”). That should be an unsurprising finding. But “pre-crime” and predictive policing programs, including decisions to put people on blacklists that are used to control what they are and aren’t allowed to do, have largely operated in […]
The Department of State has requested “emergency” approval from the Office of Management and Budget for a new questionnaire which some applicants for U.S. visas would be required to complete. The questions on the proposed new “long form” for disfavored visa applicants would include: Travel history during the last fifteen years, including source of funding […]
San Francisco and Silicon Valley are among the centers of opposition to President Trump and his fascism, especially as it relates to restrictions on movement, border controls, immigration, and asylum. Bay Area technology companies and their better-paid classes of employees like to think of themselves as building a better world that reflects the distinctive values […]
“If you have a current valid visa to travel, we welcome you. But unregulated, unvetted travel is not a universal privilege.” (US Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, March 6, 2017) Taking his words literally, Secretary Kelly got it half right. But fundamentally, he got it all wrong, in his statement today on the #MuslimBan 2.0 […]
Our work is cited in an article today by Kaveh Waddell in The Atlantic, “How Long Can Border Agents Keep Your Email Password? Some data gathered from travelers going through customs can stay in a Homeland Security database for 75 years.” The article in The Atlantic highlights several recent incidents in which international travelers have […]
[Sign carried by Dan Malashock at San Francisco International Airport, January 29, 2017. Photo by Ruth Radetsky.] Since the start of our work against restrictions on freedom to fly, well before September 11, 2001, we’ve been wondering what further outrage it would take to provoke mass protests at airports, and when that would finally happen. […]