[MEPs picket outside the plenary chamber to ask their colleagues to say “No” to the PNR agreement with the US. (Photo by greensefa, some rights reserved under Creative Commons license, CC BY 2.0)”] Last week — despite the demonstration shown above (more photos here) by Members of the European Parliament as their colleagues entered the […]
As we’ve noted previously, members of the European Parliament have been exercising their right to question the European Commission about the proposed agreement negotiated by the EC with the USA to give travel companies partial immunity from EU privacy law when they open their reservation (“PNR“) databases to the US Department of Homeland Security. Numerous […]
[The following complete article (27 pages) or a summary of the key points (3 pages) can be downloaded in PDF format. Additional analyses and critiques of the proposed EU-US PNR agreement have been published by, among others, the Identity Project, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a coalition of US and EU NGOs.] FROM THE DESK […]
Can you get your money back if you opt out of the TSA’s assault on your freedom? Yes, but airlines don’t want to admit that. (That’s nothing new.) You may have to put up a fight. Here’s what’s happening, and what you can do: With National Opt-Out Day coming up, travel journalist Christopher Elliott contacted […]
We’re pleased and excited to see the spontaneous outpouring of grassroots outrage at the latest TSA “Standard Operating Procedures”, which offer would-be air travelers a Hobson’s choice between forms of submission to secret rules, illegitimate authority, and invasion of personal privacy. TSA wants us to choose between a virtual strip-search (x-ray or similar photography through […]
We’re pleased to see that — perhaps as part of the fallout from publicity in Europe (see the links in these comments) for our lawsuit against the DHS — questions are finally being asked in the European press about the role of Computerized Reservation Systems (CRSs, also known as Global Distribution Systems or GDSs) in […]
Today the Government Accountability Office released a detailed report on the TSA’s “Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques” (SPOT) program, providing considerably more detail than the TSA itself has ever provided, confirming the lack of any evidence that the program has spotted any terrorists, and suggesting implicitly that the DHS has been keeping yet another set […]
Today the Department of Homeland Security received its most significant rebuff from any democratically elected body since the DHS was created after September 11, 2001. In response to a recommendation from the Council of the European Union (the EU member national governments) for approval of the “interim” agreement under which the DHS obtains all airline […]
We’ve been having a hard time keeping up with events over the last few weeks. Every time we think the keystone cops from the Department of Homeland Security can’t come up with anything dumber to do, they prove us wrong. At this point we’re not sure who is most deserving of derision: (1) the would-be […]
Today the Acting Director of the TSA is scheduled to appear before a Congressional subcommittee to testify about the posting of an unredacted version of the TSA’s “Screning Management Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)” on a government website. (Confirmation of President Obama’s nominee for TSA Director has been held up by questions about whether he […]