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

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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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @10:40AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @10:40AM (#715126)

    There were clear examples (from Hawaii) of Japanese-Americans acting in favour of Japan. Sequestering that group in a huge fucking war like WW2 was obviously needed and not doing it would have been bloody stupid. Stealing their property while they were detained was wrong and should have been compensated.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @03:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 31 2018, @03:41PM (#715227)

    There were clear examples (from Hawaii) of Japanese-Americans acting in favour of Japan.

    And you're such a reprehensible piece of garbage that you think that this somehow justifies or gives the government the power to suspend due process rights and place everyone who happens to be Japanese-American in fucking camps? The government had no Constitutional authority to do this. None! The Constitution is the highest law of the land, and you are literally saying it was okay for the government to violate it on a massive scale.

    You don't believe in freedom. Move to North Korea, you authoritarian coward.

  • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:48PM

    by darnkitten (1912) on Tuesday July 31 2018, @11:48PM (#715444)

    My Grandma was 2nd-generation German-American: her parents neither spoke nor read English, and lived in a German "colony" in Texas. She and her siblings spoke German amongst each other and at home. Grandma worked as a Harvey Girl, on the railroad, and, railroads being vital for national defense, was investigated by the FBI (understandably), because she wrote her parents in German, and was reported for doing so. Neither she nor any German family she knew were rounded up and placed in internment camps.

    There were clear examples (from Hawaii) of Japanese-Americans acting in favour of Japan.

    And yet, despite comprising 40% of the population in Hawaii (over 150,000), only a few thousand (between 1,200 and 1,800) were detained, as opposed to the mainland, where not a single Japanese national or Japanese-American was found guilty of sabotage, the government rounded up around 120,000 out of a population estimated between 125,000 and 180,000 (Koreans and Taiwanese were often considered ethnically Japanese, and anyone with as little as 1/16th Japanese (Yonsei, having at least one Japanese great-great grandparent), or as one commander put it, having "one drop of Japanese blood..."), was considered Japanese for the purposes of the Executive Order.

    The US also had the German-American Bund, the FLNA, Father Coughlin, the Silver Shirts, etc., etc. We had German and Italian saboteurs. We had German- and Italian-Americans in enemy uniforms, fighting on the side of the enemy. Again--German and Italian internment camps? mass round-ups of families? uncompensated confiscations? Not so much. 11,000 Germans (including German Jews) out of 12 million with at least one native-German parent, and 3,000 Italians out of over 5 million, including 600,000 "enemy aliens".