The Chaffetz amendment just passed in the House: 307 voted yea, 119 voted nay, 12 didn't vote. It's not over yet, of course, but this is really great. The amendment was attached to a TSA reauthorization bill.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently made some surprising changes to the way whole body imaging is to take place at airports across the nation.

Prior to the changes, the TSA had said that whole body imaging, aka ‘the virtual strip search’, would be used only as a secondary screening tool, and that even then, it would be voluntary. Passengers would still have the choice between going through a virtual strip search and a pat down search. That is about to change. The... read more

I just got finished going through airport security and again was confronted by the lameness that is airport 'security'.

The guy in front of me in line had gotten to the front of the 'pre-security line' - the line where the TSA checks your boarding pass and ID to make sure that they match. I pegged this guy as kind of absent minded professor type, and was not mistaken. He gave his boarding pass to the TSA agent, who then said loudly to him, "I don't know who you are". The absent minded p... read more

Here's the link: civil-liberties.tribe.net/

I'm going to bring that tribe back to life. There's so much going on regarding privacy and civil rights, so let's discuss.

Be sure to look at the statistics footnote - EPIC has a great page on how often FISA has been used over the years. It's an eye opener.

Background

FISA, 50 U.S.C. § 1801 et seq [1]., was passed in 1978 in order to provide the means for law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance, and later, physical surveillance, for foreign intelligence purposes. It also allows the US Attorney General to authorize emergency surveillance for 24 hours in the event of a lack of a judicial... read more