Former Congressman Bob Barr has filed formal objections to CAPPS II , the Passenger Profiling System. Barr calls the proposed profiling system unconsitutional, unfair and ineffective.

Barr, who occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Privacy and Freedom at the American Conservative Union, headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, submitted six pages of reasons why the proposed system violated provisions of the U.S. Constitution, including citizens' right to privacy. Barr also included in his objections, recommendations that other, less intrusive and constitutional steps by the government would be more likely to identify terrorists than the vast database of information on the travelling public, whose only "crime" leading the government to gather evidence against them, was that they needed to travel by air.

Way to go, Bob. Nice to have you on our side on this one.

From the Bill of Rights Defense Committee newsletter:

Please ask your House member and Senators to demand that Attorney General Ashcroft abandon his taxpayer-funded, politically motivated tour (which can no longer be labeled a "charm offensive") and engage in productive dialogue with Congress and others to fix the Patriot Act and other regulations enacted since September 11, 2003. See the letter to the GAO (PDF) from Rep. John Conyers Jr. and Sen. Patrick Leahy, ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, respectively.

Also, there will be a grass roots conference on civil liberties and anti-terror legislation Act in Silver Springs, MD on October 18-19. Details here. Confirmed speakers & panelists include Laura Murphy, Ralph Neas, Nancy Chang, Grover Norquist, Alec Baldwin and more.

We have been getting emails of journals from some of the Freedom Riders on the bus tour to DC. If you haven't been following the tour, designed to gain support for Immigrant rights, go here. The news reported the other day that border agents stopped some of the buses and detained the occupants for hours. Here is an unedited first hand account beginning with the stopping of the bus:

Back in 1997, then-Senator John Ashcroft had a different view of government surveillance. How do we make him rediscover his inner child?

[Senator Ashcroft takes issue with administration views on the Internet
and the use of encryption technology.]

The Clinton administration would like the Federal government to have the capability to read any international or domestic computer communications. The FBI wants access to decode, digest, and discuss financial transactions, personal e-mail, and proprietary information sent abroad -- all in the name of national security. To accomplish this, President Clinton would like government agencies to have the keys for decoding all exported U.S. software and Internet communications.

This proposed policy raises obvious concerns about Americans' privacy, in addition to tampering with the competitive advantage that our U.S. software companies currently enjoy in the field of encryption technology. Not only would Big Brother be looming over the shoulders of international cyber-surfers, but the administration threatens to render our state-of-the-art computer software engineers obsolete and unemployed.

There is a concern that the Internet could be used to commit crimes and that advanced encryption could disguise such activity. However, we do not provide the government with phone jacks outside our homes for unlimited wiretaps. Why, then, should we grant government the Orwellian capability to listen at will and in real time to our communications across the Web?

A group of passengers has sued Jet Blue Airways in court in Utah for disclosing passenger data.

The suit, filed Monday, follows JetBlue's acknowledgment last week that, in violation of its own privacy policy, it had given information from about 5 million passenger records to Torch Concepts of Huntsville, Ala. Torch produced a study, "Homeland Security: Airline Passenger Risk Assessment," that was purported to help the government improve military base security. The class-action lawsuit, filed in Utah's 3rd District Court, alleges fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of contract and invasion of privacy.

Meanwhile, EPIC has filed a complaint against the company alleging deceptive trade practices with the FTC.

We've never flown Jet Blue but everyone we know who has says it's the best of the low cost airlines. The company has apologized for the data release, and stated that it provided "name, address and phone number, along with flight information, but absolutely no payment or credit card information."

The lawyer for the plaintiffs in the Utah suit has said,

"We got the sense that Mr. Neeleman wanted to make this right, so we commented in our lawsuit that we wanted to pursue the matter, but not in a way that would damage the financial viability of the company. It's a good company," McConkie said.

Then why seek compensatory damages? Why not seek a permanent injunction preventing them from doing it again? Between compensatory damages and legal fees to defend the lawsuits, Jet Blue will suffer.....which usually means airfares will rise, and that hurts the consumer. Bad move.

900 immigrants are boarding buses for a national Freedom Ride to raise the country's awareness on problems facing immigrants in the U.S.

Taking a page from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride kicked off Saturday in 10 cities throughout the country, with 18 buses making planned stops in more than 100 communities.

Participants plan to hold rallies calling for improved workplace protections and recognition of immigrants' civil rights, regardless of their legal status. Buses are leaving from Seattle; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; Houston; Minneapolis; Chicago; Miami; and Boston.

Destinations include Washington, D.C., for meetings with members of Congress on Oct. 1, and New York, where organizers hope to draw 100,000 supporters to an Oct. 4 rally.

JetBlue Apologizes for giving away its passenger records.

David Neeleman, chief executive of the New York-based carrier, said in an e-mail to customers that JetBlue made a mistake a year ago when it agreed to a Defense Department request to provide the data to Torch Concepts Inc. of Huntsville, Ala., for a project said to involve military base security.

...The airline said the study had nothing to do with the government's planned CAPPS II passenger profiling system, which uses a massive secret database of information to assess individuals' security-threat levels.

Too little too late? Here's more:

Details of the study and JetBlue's involvement were reported Thursday by Wired.com, which credited privacy activist Bill Scannell for bringing attention to the issue on his Web site. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that by violating its privacy policy, JetBlue could be sued for "deceptive trade practices."

Torch said the intent of the study was to guide the Pentagon on a project for military base security. But Richard Smith, an Internet privacy consultant, said the study was a prototype for a system being developed by the Transportation Security Administration. The system, ordered by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks, will check such things as credit reports and compare passenger names with those on government watch lists.

This just in via email:

News Advisory

Contacts:
Aarti Shahani, Families for Freedom, 212.898.4121
Benita Jain, Immigrant Defense Project, 212.898.4134

KIDNAPPED AT FEDERAL PLAZA

Immigrant Families Expecting Greencards & Citizenship Get Deported Instead

WHAT:
Immigrant families are facing a deportation crisis. In the last month immigrant advocates have received emergency calls from New Yorkers whose loved ones - on the road to obtaining a greencard or citizenship - were deported from Federal Plaza after responding to government appointment letters. Others who are not being deported immediately are being shipped away as far as Louisiana without seeing a judge. Devastated and enraged, the relatives left behind will return to the site to speak out against the rapid-fire detentions and deportations that have broken apart their homes.

WHO:
MARIANA TAPIA, cousin of 19-year-old Juan Jimenez, who was deported to the Dominican Republic 16 hours after reporting to Federal Plaza for citizenship.

GEORGIANA FACEY, U.S. citizen whose husband was deported to Jamaica. She is left to raise 4 children alone in Brooklyn.

Many others.....

Cheers to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has reversed himself and issued an order preventing police and city workers from reporting a person's immigration status to federal officials in the abscence of a criminal or terrorism investigation:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday signed an executive order prohibiting police officers or other city employees from reporting a person's immigrant status to federal officials - unless a crime or terrorism investigation is involved.

Executive Order 41, set in motion yesterday at a City Hall bill-signing ceremony, allows city employees to ask about a person's immigrant status only in cases where it's needed to ascertain his or her eligibility for public services.

Even then, under the new order, immigration information will be considered confidential except when relevant to a crime investigation. A person's sexual orientation and those who have been victims of domestic violence or sexual assault will also remain confidential, the directive reads.

"At its core, Executive Order 41 is a clear and unequivocal invitation to all law-abiding New Yorkers to come forward without fear or apprehension and avail themselves of the services that keep us all healthy, safe and prosperous," Bloomberg said.

This comes from Time Magazine, not the Paranoid Conspiracy News:

Radio-frequency identification — with track-everything-anywhere capability, all the time — is about to change your life.

In the not-so-distant future, RFID systems may monitor your money (to halt counterfeiters), your passports (to stop terrorists), the freshness of your food (to pinpoint spoilage), even your medicine intake (did you swallow that pill?).

Someday even you may carry an RFID. In Gulf War II, the Navy tracked wounded soldiers "like FedEx tracks packages," cutting down on battlefield confusion. Tag, you're it.

This is scary stuff. Read the whole thing, even though it's long. Make sure you remember the term--RFID. The fact that Corporate Amercia is throwing hundreds of millions at this new successor to the bar code, is particularly frightening.

The next time you think about buying or selling on Ebay, consider this article detailing how easy EBay make it for law enforcement to obtain information on you. According to Joseph Sullivan, director of the "law enforcement and compliance" department at eBay:

"We don't make you show a subpoena, except in exceptional cases," Sullivan told his listeners. "When someone uses our site and clicks on the `I Agree' button, it is as if he agrees to let us submit all of his data to the legal authorities. Which means that if you are a law-enforcement officer, all you have to do is send us a fax with a request for information, and ask about the person behind the seller's identity number, and we will provide you with his name, address, sales history and other details - all without having to produce a court order. We want law enforcement people to spend time on our site," he adds. He says he receives about 200 such requests a month, most of them unofficial requests in the form of an email or fax.

The meaning is clear. One fax to eBay from a lawman - police investigator, NSA, FBI or CIA employee, National Park ranger - and eBay sends back the user's full name, email address, home address, mailing address, home telephone number, name of company where seller is employed and user nickname. What's more, eBay will send the history of items he has browsed, feedbacks received, bids he has made, prices he has paid, and even messages sent in the site's various discussion groups. [link via What Really Happened]

In what the Homeland Security Agency describes as a "pilot program," Connecticut officials are arresting everyone who has been ordered deported.

Typically, an illegal immigrant who a judge has ordered deported but who has not committed another crime has been allowed to remain free while the order is appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. Under the pilot program, immigrants are detained as soon as a deportation order is issued, although they can post bail. "We're trying to make the judges' final decisions mean something more," Bentley said.

Marshall Fitz, associate director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said it is unfair to group illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes with those who have not. "These people have not been judged to be criminals," Fitz said. "This is a blanket policy."