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Chertoff: We're Closing that Boarding-Pass Loophole: Via Threat Level
There’s a hole in airline security big enough to get Osama bin Laden himself onto a domestic flight, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff acknowledges, but that’s no reason to ditch watch lists or ID checks at the airport, he says.
Chertoff told Threat Level in an interview last week that the government was aware of, and patching, the so-called boarding-pass loophole, which just came back into the public eye after a recent Atlantic magazine story where a reporter got though security using a fake boarding pass.
That loophole lets a known terrorist who is on a government watch list board a plane without needing a fake ID. All that’s needed is a home computer, a printer and a little skill at HTML.
“On the issue of switching boarding passes, that is a loophole we are aware of,” Chertoff said. read more »
Laptop Search Hit Rate: Only 1.4% - Via CDT - PolicyBeta:
The overwhelming majority of laptop searches at the border turn up no evidence of crime, according data presented by Deputy Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Jayson P. Ahern.
At a panel discussion on October 20, Ahern revealed that of the 169 laptops searched at the border in August 2008, only two were seized – a mere 1.4% “hit rate.” Another 10 computers were “detained” for further analysis, such as language translation and decryption, to determine whether they contain evidence of crime.
Under Customs’ laptop search policy– first revealed on July 16, 2008–computers, other digital media, and documents can be searched at the border with no individualized suspicion at all, and can be seized as evidence only when a Customs agent determines that there is probable cause. The policy permits agents to conduct the search without having either evidence of wrongdoing or even approval of a supervisor. It authorizes Customs agents to copy the contents of a laptop or other digital medium and send it to a distant location where persons unseen and unknown to the traveler decrypt and translate data in the laptop, and it permits Customs to “detain” the computer for weeks or for months while this occurs. read more »
The Watch List is Short, But Is It Useful? - Via Threat Level:
There are 250 Americans on the No-Fly list.
That's the good news.
The bad news? There's 250 people in America who the federal government believes are too dangerous to let onto a plane, but who aren't dangerous enough to arrest. read more »
Feds to Take Over Airline Watch Lists in 2009 - Via Threat Level:
U.S. airline passengers will soon have to give their date of birth and gender when buying a plane ticket, as the government prepares to take over terrorist watch list screening starting in early 2009, Department of Homeland Security officials announced Wednesday.
Under the so-called "Secure Flight" proposal -- which has been six years and numerous privacy scandals in the making -- airlines will submit travelers' personal information to DHS, which will compare the information against terrorist watch lists and then send the results to the airlines. Previously, airlines have performed the screening autonomously.
The government hopes that a centralized checking system will reduce the number of false matches on the list, which have notoriously included senators, nuns and anyone named David Nelson. read more »
DHS issues final rule for Secure Flight - Via Center for Democracy and Technology:
On Oct. 22nd, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a final rule for its Secure Flight program that will require all air passengers to provide full name, date of birth and gender. The DHS Transportation Security Administration will use the information to screen passengers against a watch list of potential terrorists, a function the airlines have been performing. TSA will retain passenger information for seven years, including travel itinerary, for anyone tentatively matched to a name on the watch list. TSA will retain that information even if it ultimately determines that the person flying is not the person on the watch list. Data on other passengers will be deleted after seven days.
(Read Original Article - Via Center for Democracy and Technology.)
ACLU Assails 100-Mile Border Zone as 'Constitution-Free' - Via Threat Level:
Government agents should not have the right to stop and question Americans anywhere without suspicion within 100 miles of the border, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday, pointing attention to the little known power of the federal government to set up immigration checkpoints far from the nation's border lines.
The government has long been able to search people entering and exiting the country without need to say why, which is known as the border search exception of the Fourth Amendment. read more »
Secure Flight Re-Engineering Welcomed but Watchlist Problems Remain Unaddressed - Via ACLU - Privacy:
WASHINGTON -- The American Civil Liberties Union today welcomed the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) improvements of the privacy protections in its Secure Flight program; however, the ACLU detailed significant problems that remain in the passenger prescreening program.
“The Department of Homeland Security has made substantial changes to the Secure Flight program in response to the concerns expressed by the civil liberties community,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Program. “DHS will neither use commercial data to conduct background checks on travelers nor create a risk score for passengers through Secure Flight. DHS also is minimizing data collection to only necessary data elements and greatly reducing the length of data retention by expunging information on most travelers after seven days.” read more »
The Things He Carried - Via The Atlantic(November 2008) :
Airport security in America is a sham—“security theater” designed to make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. Smart ones can get through security with fake boarding passes and all manner of prohibited items—as our correspondent did with ease.
[...]
I could have ripped up these counterfeit boarding passes in the privacy of a toilet stall, but I chose not to, partly because this was the renowned Senator Larry Craig Memorial Wide-Stance Bathroom, and since the commencement of the Global War on Terror this particular bathroom has been patrolled by security officials trying to protect it from gay sex, and partly because I wanted to see whether my fellow passengers would report me to the TSA for acting suspiciously in a public bathroom. No one did, thus thwarting, yet again, my plans to get arrested, or at least be the recipient of a thorough sweating by the FBI, for dubious behavior in a large American airport. Suspicious that the measures put in place after the attacks of September 11 to prevent further such attacks are almost entirely for show—security theater is the term of art—I have for some time now been testing, in modest ways, their effectiveness. Because the TSA’s security regimen seems to be mainly thing-based—most of its 44,500 airport officers are assigned to truffle through carry-on bags for things like guns, bombs, three-ounce tubes of anthrax, Crest toothpaste, nail clippers, Snapple, and so on—I focused my efforts on bringing bad things through security in many different airports, primarily my home airport, Washington’s Reagan National, the one situated approximately 17 feet from the Pentagon, but also in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago, and at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport (which is where I came closest to arousing at least a modest level of suspicion, receiving a symbolic pat-down—all frisks that avoid the sensitive regions are by definition symbolic—and one question about the presence of a Leatherman Multi-Tool in my pocket; said Leatherman was confiscated and is now, I hope, living with the loving family of a TSA employee). And because I have a fair amount of experience reporting on terrorists, and because terrorist groups produce large quantities of branded knickknacks, I’ve amassed an inspiring collection of al-Qaeda T-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls (really). All these things I’ve carried with me through airports across the country. I’ve also carried, at various times: pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste (in my front pocket), bottles of Fiji Water (which is foreign), and, of course, box cutters. I was selected for secondary screening four times—out of dozens of passages through security checkpoints—during this extended experiment. At one screening, I was relieved of a pair of nail clippers; during another, a can of shaving cream. read more »
Bill Would Rein In Laptop Searches at the Border - Via Center for Democracy and Technology:
Random, intrusive searches of the contents of laptop computers at the border would be outlawed by legislation introduced on September 26 by Senators Feingold, Cantwell, Wyden, and Akaka. The Traveler's Privacy Protection Act (S. 3612) would require U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officials to have a "reasonable suspicion" of a crime before they could search a laptop computer and other data storage devices; a court order based on probable cause would be needed to seize a device. Travelers could be present while electronic devices were searched, discriminatory searches would be barred, and strict time limits for searching would be imposed. The bill, which limits its protection to residents of the US, would displace recently-disclosed Customs policies permitting suspicionless laptop searches at the border that could last for weeks. September 29, 2008
Text of Bill S. 3612 [PDF] September 26, 2008
(Read Original Article - Via Center for Democracy and Technology.)
New Border Search Policy Far Broader, New Documents Reveal - Via Threat Level:
Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff likes to point to the recent publication of the Border Patrol's policy on examining laptops and documents at the border as an example of the new openness that his department is striving for.
But the new policy itself -- allowing border agents free rein to read and sift through traveler's papers and laptops -- turns out to be a much further departure from past policies than previously known, according to new documents wrested loose from the government by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Asian Law Caucus via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The old policy (.pdf) -- largely established in 1986 -- included a heading in bold reading: Customs Officers Should Not Read Personal Correspondence.
The U.S. Customs Service must guard the rights of individuals being inspected to ensure their personal privacy is protected. Therefore, as a general rule, Customs officers should not read personal correspondence […]
The new policy? It doesn't even mention personal letters as a special category. read more »
Internal DHS Documents Detail Expansion of Power to Read and Copy Travelers' Papers - Via EFF.org Updates:
San Francisco - Recently obtained documents show that last year the Department of Homeland Security quietly reversed a two-decades-old policy that restricted customs agents from reading and copying the personal papers carried by travelers, including U.S. citizens. The documents were made public today by the Asian Law Caucus (ALC) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which sued the government under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain policies governing the searches and questioning of travelers at the nation’s borders.
The documents show that in 2007, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) loosened restrictions on the examination of travelers' documents and papers that had existed since 1986. While CBP agents could previously read travelers' documents only if they had "reasonable suspicion" that the documents would reveal violations of agency rules, in 2007 officers were given the power to "review and analyze" papers without any individualized suspicion. read more »
New bill would tighten rules for DHS border laptop searches - Via Ars Technica:
Customs and Border Patrol agents can grab your laptop, BlackBerry, or external hard drive without needing so much as a reason, but a new bill introduced last week to Congress would at least put some limits on how border searches could be done.
"I was deeply concerned to learn about the lack of protections individuals' have when their electronic equipment is randomly seized," said Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA), who introduced the bill. "With the passage of the Border Search Accountability Act of 2008, Americans will be able to travel with more peace of mind knowing that their data will be further protected and that there are stringent accountability measures in place for safeguarding their personal information."
Note what her bill will not do—make searches more difficult. read more »
Feds Set to Take Over Airline Watch List Checking, Again - Via Threat Level:
In January 2003, the federal government proposed taking over the matching of airline passenger names against the government's list of suspected terrorists, since too many innocent people were being caught up in bad matches by the airlines.
In January 2009, the government plans to do just that, the Department of Homeland Security told Congress Tuesday -- saying that Secretary Michael Chertoff had just certified that the program works and protects people's privacy.
The current system has been dogged for years by sloppy name matches that have snared Sen. Ted Kennedy, a high-powered nun, small children and for a time, all men named David Nelson.
The latest version -- dubbed Secure Flight -- is far-removed from the version originally proposed in 2003. That program, known as CAPPS II, proposed to use fancy computer algorithms that would analyze commercial databases about potential travelers, in order to decide if a particular traveler merited a red, yellow or green terrorism score. That program was delayed many times after scandals over secret data-mining, Big Brother-like plans to use commercial data to rate passengers, and general mismanagement that forced Congress to repeatedly rein in the program. read more »
Terror watchlist "upgrade" is "imploding," legislator says - Via Ars Technica :
The database used to produce the government's terror watch lists is "crippled by technical flaws," according to the chairman of a House technology oversight subcommittee—and the system designed to replace it may be even worse.
In a letter to the inspector general at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week, Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC) complained that the National Counterterrorism Center's "Railhead" initiative, designed to upgrade the government's master database of suspected terrorists, "if actually deployed will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system in operation today."
Miller, who chairs the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, cited "severe technical troubles, poor contractor management, and weak government oversight," which he said had brought the Railhead program to the "verge of collapse." read more »
Preliminary Congressional Investigation Finds Watch Lists Plagued with Systemic Flaws - Via ACLU - Privacy:
ACLU calls for lists to be scrapped and for DHS to approach airline security in reasonable and effective manner
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: (202) 675-2312, media@dcaclu.org or (212) 549-2646, media@aclu.org
WASHINGTON, DC – In response to today’s Wall Street Journal article on the flaws found in the terrorist watch lists by a preliminary congressional investigation, the American Civil Liberties Union calls on all presidential candidates, as well as current President Bush, to pledge to put a moratorium on the use of the lists unless major overhauls are made. The investigation found the current database system beleaguered with flaws and technological hurdles. Not only that, but the program being designed to replace the current database is facing similar systemic difficulties, while the contractors hired for its creation are struggling to move toward completion. read more »
Limits Needed On DHS Border Crossing and Driver Information Databases - Via Center for Democracy and Technology:
In comments filed with the Department of Homeland Security today, CDT highlighted privacy concerns implicated by DHS' new system of databases to record personal information and border crossing history. CDT called on DHS to reduce the 15-
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