The weaponization of travel blacklists
papersplease.org
papersplease.org
And the TSA and DHS have consistently asserted authority and exercised power — legally or not — to blacklist and surveil travelers without needing any suspicion of criminality.
Paradoxically, the same government fails to see the same distinction between an individual police officer following a person and a mass scale surveillance using electronic cameras everywhere with automated computer image analysis (the "machine gun" of 4th Amendment).
Consider the whole FISA system [1].
> (Glenn Greenwald): When it is time for the NSA to obtain Fisa court approval, the agency does not tell the court whose calls and emails it intends to intercept. It instead merely provides the general guidelines which it claims are used by its analysts to determine which individuals they can target, and the Fisa court judge then issues a simple order approving those guidelines. The court endorses a one-paragraph form order stating that the NSA's process "'contains all the required elements' and that the revised NSA, FBI and CIA minimization procedures submitted with the amendment 'are consistent with the requirements of [50 U.S.C. § 1881a(e)] and with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States'". As but one typical example, The Guardian has obtained an August 19, 2010, Fisa court approval from Judge John D. Bates which does nothing more than recite the statutory language in approving the NSA's guidelines. Once the NSA has this court approval, it can then target anyone chosen by their analysts, and can even order telecoms and internet companies to turn over to them the emails, chats and calls of those they target.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...
>The Quiet Skies [sic] program assigned officers from the Federal Air Marshals Service (one of the police agencies within the Transportation Security Administration) to accompany and surveil pre-selected airline passengers on flights and in airports.
Credit where credit is due!
You're right, but not for the reason you think. TSA is part of DHS, so it's a tautology.
US travel blacklists are now maintained by the TSC at FBI.
What the Trump admin did was political sleight of hand. Calculated specifically to please people who, because we make it intentionally complex, are unable to understand the full spectrum of our military, law enforcement, and intelligence infrastructure. Politically speaking, these kinds of people could be made to believe we got rid of travel blacklists. When in actuality, the lists today are even longer.
Slightly off topic, but this is one of the primary reasons independents will never win an election by the way. The liberals and conservatives can always say, "you're lying", and it would take longer than the average voter is willing to pay attention for an independent explain why they're not lying.
Depends on their respective impact.
She gets credit for being complicit in a violent overthrow of the Democratic government of the united States.
Go read the latest national security memo and ask yourself, if they carry that through as written will you feel safe to show up at the airport?
The violent overthrow stuff is reference to current attempts to send the US military into blue states against court orders, to drum up the insurrection act, to the violent arrests of children in their underwear as a publicity stunt, to ICE officers / bounty hunters ramming cars into pedestrians without recourse, to the slamming of non-violent bystanders into the ground, arresting elected officials violently for no reason, to the psychological violence of the rhetoric being broadcast ("Russ Vought is the reaper") along with Stephen Miller's rhetoric in general but specifically about how many 10s of millions of people don't belong in this country in his mind. Brown people is who he's talking about. They want ethnic cleansing and are openly blatant about it if you open your ears to exactly what they're saying. Sure they'll also deny it at other times, opportunistically, but if you listen to what they're saying in full, not just to denials, they're spelling it out.
Go listen to the leaked Russ Vought interview about his strategy and tell me that's not incredibly violent. Listen to Stephen Miller's rhetoric.
These guys are itching to arrest elected officials and political critics, and to go as far as they can to hurt and punish people who push back against the state that they're hell bent on forcing into existence.
If you haven't seen these things I urge you to pay attention.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Do you mean besides January 6? (You know, all those people that were convicted but were pardoned when Trump return to office. Also: have you noticed that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers have stopped marching ever since the ICE raids started?)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Capito...
Or perhaps the fake electors?
Care to elaborate what is this in reference to? Especially the "violent" part. Please do not simply link to some news article in your response.
Maybe later I'll compile a list of videos but at the moment I ask you to do a little research yourself. I gotta work.
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Using the military against your political enemies, by the way, is a genie that you can never put back in the bottle.
I am very tired of people who are more concerned with scoring points about 'look, both sides!' while turning a blind eye to the actual we-went-through-a-phase-change insanity of what's going on.
The last two hundred years was built on a bargain of the military staying out of politics in exchange for the military not being used politically.
This year, MAGA sent a giant fucking wrecking ball through that.
Just wait a year or two and it will become totally normalized.
Remember those Cristie's stuffers which went to prison for closing bridge for several days in the city which went Democratic? It was just few years ago that such political retribution was considered a Bad Thing. Today it is just a new normal in politics.
Yeah because they got released from prison ... When there's no punishment for bad behavior it normalizes it.
This is what's happening now: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-commo...
And this: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:4q6ctl7...
Here's a good overview, please take a look at the sources if you don't trust Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A...
Tell that to yourself while in a holding cell for 24 hours waiting for your ID to be "verified". Police have long used temporary detention to intimidate and spite people, but at least there had to be reasonable suspicion to make an arrest in the first place, and theoretically victims have resort to a civil rights tort claim. But a recent SCOTUS emergency docket decision has effectively given ICE a pass to arrest people on a whim.[1] And it's much more difficult to press civil rights claims against Federal agents; in fact, it may even be impossible to sue ICE agents for false arrests, no matter how egregious.[2]
[1] See the Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo stay at https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf. Note that in his concurrence Kavanaugh wantonly mischaracterizes the district court order, then in passing dicta lazily tries to cover his ass by suggesting the rule he just rejected is actually the existing rule. One can only hope the other justices in the majority had different rationales for their decision, and weren't as confused or malicious as Kavanaugh. Sotomayor's dissent is at page 11 (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf#...)
Gabbard et al were targeted by Quiet Skies. It was mentioned many times during the campaign and during the administration. I don’t think Noem is Machiavelli; the administration clearly signaled an intent to end this and it doesn’t surprise me that they did so and I think there were valid reasons given and I accept that anything politicians do may ALSO have a political goal in mind but doesn’t make their stated reasons insincere.
Literally from the article: "News reports, presumably based on DHS statements, described Quiet Skies as a “Biden-era” program even though its largest expansion came in 2018 during the first Trump administration. And according to the TSA’s press release last week:".
There's no way a program expanded during Trump1 just disappears in Trump2. Everything Trump2 is doing is just a continuation from Trump1.
"Quiet skies" pales in comparison to what they're cooking up: https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/trumps-nspm-7-labels-commo...
And this: https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:4q6ctl7...
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:4q6ctl7...
And this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpXX8HPh6nQ
It's a takeover: https://climate-reporting.org/undercover-in-project-2025/
No? Policies like perestroika were fully state-driven and never framed themselves as a takeover, violent or otherwise. Glasnost was welcomed by the public after decades of obvious federal coverups.
All you have to do is be transparent.
More like we're lucky that in blind fury they lashed out and actually crumbled something that was terrible to begin with. A broken clock and all that.
You do realize, do you not, that the US travel blacklist is now maintained by TSC instead of being a major feature of TSA right?
I mean you don't actually believe we would get rid of that function do you?
Hitler's only contribution was killing the great-great-great-grandfather of the time machine, assuring his own birth, but also preventing the worst tourist industry ever developed.
> redacted ate sandwich
> redacted and UNK1 purchased head phones
> redacted and UNK1 used their phones to scroll through news
> UNK1 opened settings app and top of phone showed 'redacted iPhone'
All that work being done manually is one thing -- it would be limited to high profile targets. But with AI, its concerning that this kind of detailed transcript could be scaled to mass surveillance.
For the politicians who are putting this structure into place, 9/11 is a convenient excuse to pin all of this on.
But in reality if 9/11 didn't happen, then any myriad of other things would be used in it's place to justify this.
Just look at things like the chat control proposal in the EU. Which "9/11" is that based on? None, and they don't need one.
But it seems to spend most of its time and evidence on what seem to me to be totally fine surveillance. It's not a 4th amendment violation for a police officer to be in a public place and pay attention to the public movements of suspects. You don't need a search warrant to write down "so and so went to the bathroom" You don't even need any police powers. I'm pretty sure any random person could make a log of what they can see someone on an airplane they were on did during the flight. What abuse of power is supposed to be involved here?
Also see numerous typos in the article, including a mention of 'Quite Skies'.