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TSA is Tracking Regular Travelers Like Terrorists in Secret Surveillance Program

posted by chromas on Monday July 30 2018, @06:02PM   
from the security-theater-vs-the-fourth dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.

The previously undisclosed program, called "Quiet Skies," specifically targets travelers who "are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base," according to a Transportation Security Administration bulletin in March.

The internal bulletin describes the program's goal as thwarting threats to commercial aircraft "posed by unknown or partially known terrorists," and gives the agency broad discretion over which air travelers to focus on and how closely they are tracked.

[...] But some air marshals, in interviews and internal communications shared with the Globe, say the program has them tasked with shadowing travelers who appear to pose no real threat — a businesswoman who happened to have traveled through a Mideast hot spot, in one case; a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, in another; a fellow federal law enforcement officer, in a third.

Since this initiative launched in March, dozens of air marshals have raised concerns about the Quiet Skies program with senior officials and colleagues, sought legal counsel, and expressed misgivings about the surveillance program, according to interviews and documents reviewed by the Globe.

"What we are doing [in Quiet Skies] is troubling and raising some serious questions as to the validity and legality of what we are doing and how we are doing it," one air marshal wrote in a text message to colleagues.

Source: http://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/graphics/2018/07/tsa-quiet-skies/?p1=HP_SpecialTSA [Ed Note: Not available for all browser modes]

Also at CNN, Fortune, The Verge, and The Hill.

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Original Submission

• Re:Classic national security state thinking (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @05:21AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @05:21AM (#715085)

  A 1999 article [mises.org] warned:

  What is directly and immediately responsible for the current bull market is a sustained and rapid increase in the demand for stocks. This increase in demand in turn has been the result of the repeated pouring into the market of large sums of new and additional money, created by the banking system under the umbrella of the Federal Reserve System and related government intervention.

  What this means is that stock prices have been rising on the foundation of nothing more than an increase in the quantity of money.

  A 2004 article [newyorker.com] warned:

  [...] the consequences of the Fed's cheap-money policy have largely escaped attention. Tempted by unprecedentedly low interest rates, Americans have taken on unprecedented levels of debt, particularly in the realestate market, which has replaced the stock market as the favored vehicle for get-rich-quick schemes. For many families, the soaring value of their home offset the slump in their stock portfolio, but, with one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan selling for more than half a million dollars, and with California banks being forced to introduce forty-year mortgages so that their customers can afford to buy a house, even some of Greenspan's colleagues are concerned that one bubble has given way to another.

  Eventually [nytimes.com] the warnings were heard.

  Parent

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