RSS feed now has full articles instead of excerpts

If you don't know or care what an RSS feed is, you can ignore this entry. Those of you who care about this already know who you are.

Since I (and some of my readers) sometimes use slow connections to the Internet, especially while travelling -- from mobile phones to Third world cybercafés with a dozen terminals sharing a dial-up connection over a noisy phone line -- I've tried to keep my Web site optimized for low bandwidth. In that spirit (and because it was the default in my blogging tool, MoveableType) my RSS feed has contained only short article excerpts.

By popular demand, I've changed the RSS templates to include the full text of the most recent articles in this blog. I'm assuming that people who use RSS readers probably do so over relatively fast connections, and aren't paying by the byte for data transfer (although RSS excerpt feeds could actually be a boon to browsers with slow or expensive connections).

If you don't like it (or if you have problems with the RSS feed or anything else on this site), please let me know.

By the way, if one of my readers familiar with CSS and MoveableType templates wants to volunteer their assistance, please get in touch. There are some improvements I'd like to make to the structure of my blog archives and indexes that I don't have the knowledge to make myself.

"Identity is Front and Center at the Airport"

Bruce Schneier and I are quoted extensively in Michael Pastore's lead story today at InsideID.com, focusing on the key concept that, "Security in American airports is essentially an identity issue." Excerpts:

Leading the fight against CAPPS II were the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and Edward Hasbrouck, a travel guru and author of the Practical Nomand travel books....

This month, despite it never being deployed or field-tested, the TSA declared CAPPS II dead -- sort of. While the program as it was originally conceived is no more and its name is destined for history, certain aspects of CAPPS II may rise again in a future program, maybe even the Registered Traveler Program.

"A lot of this stuff never goes away," says Schneier, who has written a number of books on security, including Beyond Fear and Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World . "It just changes its name."

Hasbrouck's opposition to CAPPS II began out of consumer advocacy. Most consumers aren't aware of the amount of data in travel records; not only where and when people travel, but where they stay, who they contact, and intimate details like the number of beds they request and information on medical conditions. That is changing now thanks to the uproar around CAPPS II. "What we've seen over the last 18 months is that travel data has moved into the inner circle of personal data that must be kept private, along with medical and financial data," Hasbrouck says.

That industry collects the data was not a shock to Hasbrouck and others, but it was the compulsory giving of that data to the government that seemed to threaten the Constitution. Hasbrouck also says that in following the development of CAPPS II, he noted a transformation in late 2002 and early 2003 when the program moved from the Department of Transportation to the TSA, where it became a "black" (secret) project. It went from a well-intentioned security program, allbeit one conceived in post-Sept. 11 panic Hasbrouck says, to something else entirely.

"Collecting lifetime dossiers on people's travel is not a security program," he says. "It's a surveillance program."

Critics of the two identity-based programs agree they were never going to provide effective security. "A lot of it is security theater," says Schneier....

In its report, the Sept. 11 Commission mentioned the amount of money being spent on security at the airport, and focused many of its recommendations on improvement to travel security -- specifically the security of travel documents -- that could implemented before a suspect arrives at the airport. "Over 90 percent of the nation's $5.3 billion annual investment in the TSA goes to aviation -- to fight the last war," the panel said in its report.

Hasbrouck agrees that the concern is disproportionate to the actual risk, and wonders why the government doesn't take such steps to protect Americans from drunk drivers, a group that kills more people in the United States than terrorists and who are more easily identified because many have a proven history of driving drunk....

"I don't think you can make a rational case for spending billions of dollars to make the safest mode of transportation safer," he says.

CAPPS-II overseer finally gets the spotlight

In November 2003 I reported on the skeletons in the closet of Stephen Thayer, who has been acting director of the Transportation Security Administration's Office of National Risk Assessment (ONRA) since the retirement in February 2004 of former ONRA Director (and architect of CAPPS-II) Ben H. Bell, Jr. (I've also written previously about Thayer's past working relationship with TSA Privacy Officer Lisa Dean.)

Today, almost a year after his appointment, Thayer finally gets mainstream press scrutiny as the overseer of The Program Formerly Known As CAPPS-II.

I'm quoted in the full version of today's AP story in USA Today and a few other places -- "Edward Hasbrouck, a San Francisco travel agent who disclosed that CAPPS II contractors had obtained passenger data from JetBlue Airways, said Thayer 'has no apparent technical expertise'" -- although most papers seem to have run shorter edited versions without that line.

Preliminary injunction against MBTA bag searches denied

The motion for a preliminary injunction against searches MBTA passengers' baggage without warrants or particularized suspicion was denied this morning, after yesterday's oral argument , according to the AP.

No meaningful appeal is possible, since the issues had been narrowed (whether by the judge or by consent of the parties is unclear) to certain types of searches that the MBTA claims are limited to the vicinity of the Democratic Party National Convention this week, and the convention will be over (and those searches hopefully ended) before any appeal could be heard.

The MBTA has actually beeen conducting at least three different types of searches. Only the first of these three was considered in today's ruling, although all three were raised in the complaint:

1. Systematic searches of bags of all passengers on Orange Line trains and certain express busses passing through the otherwise-closed (except with credentials) area around the site of the convention this week in the Fleet Center. (These were the searches the judge today declined to enjoin.)
2. Random searches of every n-th person in a single-file line seeking to enter a station (before they have paid their fare) or board a bus. (These are the searches described in the MBTA Police General Order cited in the complaint.)
3. Selective, non-random searches of passengers, after they have entered paid areas and in some cases on moving trains. (These have been experienced by the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, as decribed in the complaint, as well as in other publicly-posted eyewitness accounts and in reports to legal observers monitoring the searches. They appear to have been based on appearance or behavioral profiling, the eumphemism for Israeli-style ethnic and racial stereotyping used by Massport and Mass. State Police consultant and former Ben-Gurion Airport (TLV) security director Rafi Ron , who is now apparently advising the MBTA as well. Ron retired from his job with the Israeli Airports Authority just before 11 September 2001, and started his new career as a freelance consultant just a few weeks later in Boston. Ron has been the leading advocate in the USA of collecting additional data on airline passengers as a tool to assist human, rather than robotic profiling and has based his consulting career on his claimed skill at uncovering would-be terrorists through review of data collected about them in advance, combined with personal "interviews" (interrogations). The one time I met Ron at an airline industry conference, he sneered -- quite literally -- at my question of whether concerns for civil liberties would justify any limitations on measures which might otherwise, to any degree, reduce the risk of terrorism. Anyone who would even ask such a question, he said dismissively, clearly doesn't understand the situation we are in.)

Although the motion for preliminary injunction was denied, the case -- and in particular the third category of searches in the list above -- can proceed on the merits, although no further hearing, much less ruling, is likely for months.

[Addendum, 28 July 2004: Reinvented.net has a copy of the decision on the motion for a preliminary injunction.]

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 4

Bahia López (Argentina) - San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina) - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - St. Petersburg (Russia) - Pushkin (Russia)

Argentina is a land of epic road trips, with all roads leading to Buenos Aires, where The Amazing Race 5 passes through for the fourth successive episode this week.

"Argentina is the mother of the open road. The road here cries out for a car, a tank of gas, and a wallet. It beckons as much as any American road, perhaps more, because the distances are as vast, and the country much emptier," my best beloved special correspondent, Ruth Radetsky, wrote me recently.

It takes the racers about as much time to get from Bariloche to Buenos Aires by bus as to fly from Buenos Aires to St. Petersburg, Russia. Some of them consult a travel agent to try to figure out the fastest flights, but they seem to have a harder time figuring out which is the best bus.

The Via Bariloche bus line that some of them take has the best service -- unquestionably the most comfortable public long-distance bus I've been on anywhere on the world -- but that doesn't mean it's the best choice in a race.

And there are lots of choices. Here's how Ruth Radetsky describes the situation earlier this month in another provincial Argentine city:

How to find a bus in Córdoba

The bus station is huge and modern, with about 55 bolleterias (ticket windows) and 70 andenes (platforms). Each bolleteria is a different compania. All the companias have different route systems. None of them know the others' route systems.

So you feel increasingly desparate, until you find the Información Turistica. You tell them where you want to go, and they tell you which companies have busses that go there, and which boleterias are for each company. Turns out there are 4 different companies that go from Córdoba to Rosario.

So you go to each boleteria, and ask the schedule and price, and whether there are seats, and whether the seats are semi-cama (about like Greyhound, but maybe a little better), coche-cama (better than business class on an airplane, with only 3 seats across which open to 180 degrees but not flat), or first class (3 seats across, privacy panels, flat seats -- better than the pictures I've seen of British Airways' intercontinental first class). All vary by line, and aren't posted anywhere.

Then, once you've decided what you want, you go back and find out the seat you wanted was sold since you asked, so you go to your second choice. You're not surprised, since it is the July 9th long weekend in a country where every town has an Avenida 9 de Julio.

You buy your second choice: 28 pesos, about 10 U.S. dollars, to go six hours in the front row seat semi-cama from Córdoba to Rosario, from the 2nd largest city in the country to the 3rd, half way to Buenos Aires. You have an hour after last class to make the bus, most of the trip will be in the daytime, and you'll get to your destination not too late at night.

Great! Now you figure you better buy your onward ticket, since you have to be in Buenos Aires Monday morning rested and ready to work, and it is still the July 9th weekend. You go back to the Información Turistica, and they don't know, they only know the busses from Córdoba. You can take pot luck when you get to Rosario, but you really do have to be in Buenos Aires, so that doesn't feel safe.

You go to the larger windows with lists of cities all over the country over their windows and you start asking. "No, we don't go there, try ... company." "Yes, but we don't have any seats, try ... company." "Yes, we have seats." "What's the schedule?" "Oh." It gets into the main bus station in Buenos Aires, Retiro, at 2 a.m. Scaarrry. "Why don't you try ... company." "Yes, we have seats. We leave at 2 a.m. No, it's semi-cama, not coche-cama." Ych. "Why don't you try ... company." "Yes, we have a bus, we have seats, we leave at 10:30 a.m. and get in at 4:30 p.m.", perfect. You ask for a ticket. "Go back to window 10, they'll sell it to you." "But I already asked there, and they told me they didn't have any daytime busses with seats." "They don't, we do." "But..." "They'll sell you a ticket on our bus."

And wonder of wonders, they do.

But at least there is a great network of long-distance busses that go everywhere, and there's certainly no monopoly. It could be a little easier to use....

This week in the reel world, the movie version of Che Guevera's Diarios de Motocicleta ("The Motorcycle Diaries"), depicting the travels of the icon of Argentine internationalism, premieres in Che's homeland. (Look for it theaters in the USA this fall.) In addition to the overland journeys through Latin America featured in the screenplay, Che's views were shaped by a trip around the world he took in 1959, with stops in Toledo (Spain), Egypt, India, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Hiroshima (Japan), among other places. Some of his snapshots from that trip are included in this online photo gallery , and more were exhibited in Montevideo in 2002 and published in book form in the exhibition catalog, fotos y che.

Just a few hours after I published my comments last week on the wages and working conditions for cruise ship workers (governed by the country in which the ship is registered, which is why they mostly fly Third World low-wage "flags of convenience"), the USA Department of State published its final regulations eliminating "crew list visas" for the crews of ships and aircrafts visiting seaports and airports in the USA. Henceforward sea and air crews -- unless they have previously applied at a consulate or embassy outside the USA, paid a minimum visa fee of US$100 per person, been fingerprinted, been photographed, been interviewed by a diplomatic officer, waited for approval of their visa, and returned to the same consulate or embassy to pick up their visa, all of which are essentially impossible for most seamen and air crews -- will be unable to leave their vessels while in USA ports, leaving them effectively confined onboard even while docked at seaports or on the ground at airports in the USA. Just one small step to improve the working conditions, and the impression of the USA, of those already at the bottom of the heap.

Applications are now being accepted through 11 August 2004 for contestants/cast members of "The Amazing Race 7". Get your audition video in right away -- or just buy yourself a ticket and do it on your own!

Federal judge takes MBTA passenger searches "under advisement"

Suspicionless Searches vs. Different Times
(from Reinvented.net, reporting on this hearing )

It's unclear from this account whether the discrepancies between MBTA claims about "random" searches at the entrances to MBTA "paid" areas, and the reality of searches of passengers already in paid areas or even on moving trains , was discussed at today's hearing. According to an AP report in today's Boston Globe and elsewhere, "MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo said the bags aren't opened. Instead, they are run through a machine that detects if explosives are inside. Pesaturo said so far no one has objected to having their bags inspected." Each of those claims by Pesaturo is contradicted by multiple eyewitness accounts, including those of the named plaintiffs in the Federal complaint.

Once briefing and argument is completed and a matter is "taken under advisement" by a Federal District Court judge, there is no specific requirement for when they will issue a ruling. It could be in minutes, hours, or months. In the present circumstances, however, I would expect some sort of ruling within 24 hours on the request for a preliminary injunction.

[Addendum, 28 July 2004: Boston Globe report on the hearing.]

The Amazing Race 7 applications open through 11 August 2004

CBS-TV has quietly posted an application form and instructions for would-be contestants on "The Amazing Race 7" on a new section of the CBS Web site for "The Amazing Race".

The application form is dated 21 July 2004, and the instructions specify that applications, including audition videotapes, must be received by 11 August 2004 (although the producers reserve the right to change and/or disregard and or all of the "rules"). Previous applicants need not re-apply, and aren't allowed to submit new material unless they have a new partner.

According to the application instructions, the current plan is for casting interviews to be conducted in September and october, with filming to begin "around" November 2004. That strongly suggests that the producers and/or CBS want to be prepared to start broadcasts of "The Amazing Race 7" shortly after the December 2004 conclusion of "The Amazing Race 6".

[Addendum, 3 October 2004: Applications have closed for The Amazing Race 7 , but click here for my advice on how to apply for The Amazing Race 8 and future seasons.]

Hearing tomorrow on challenge to MBTA dragnet

U.S. District Court Judge George A. O'Toole has scheduled an emergency hearing tomorrow, Tuesday, 27 July 2004 on the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction against unwarranted searches without probable cause of passengers on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) public transit system.

The case filed today is American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, et al. v. MBTA (CA04-11652).; the "et alia" includes the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and several individual MBTA riders.

Tomorrow's hearing will be at 2 p.m. in Courtroom 9 on the 3rd floor of the Joe Moakley Courthouse on Fan Pier in South Boston, just across the Fort Point Channel (on foot, take the Old Northern Avenue Bridge) from the South Station area and the downtown waterfront.

With 15,000 journalists assembled within a half hour's walk of the courthouse, it will be interesting to see how the assertion of the Constitutional right of the people peaceably to assemble -- in the midst of a political party and press assembly-- gets reported.

To those who have asked: I'm not in Boston this week, although I'm an Eastern Massachusetts native and have been following events there closely through reports from family and friends.

There is at least one world traveller and reader of this blog on the scene, however: the thoughtful Peter Rukavina of Reinvented.net , who I've mentioned before in this space, is one of the bloggers who have been credentialled as news media to cover the Democratic Party National Convention (although for some reason even he can't fathom he seems to have been categorized as his own wire service, rather than as a blogger). He's a fan of my columns on The Amazing Race (hope he doesn't miss tomorrow night's episode, or at least is taping it), and devotes a section of his blog to reviews of around-the-world travelogues.

Thus far, his dispatches have focused on the difficulty of getting to Boston from Charlottetown, P.E.I. (Prince Edward Island, Canada). People in bigger cities sometimes forget that it often takes longer to get between secondary cities in the same region of North America, or elsewhere, than between the biggest cities on opposite sides of the world. Residents of the largest population centers have been the big winners (after the airline industry) from airline deregulation, at the expense of people in smaller cities and rural areas.

[Addendum: Reinvented.net is on the story with copies posted of the complaint and motion for a preliminary injunction against the MBTA. (Thanks, Peter!). Look for a report on the hearing in the Reinvented blog. If you are going to the hearing, be forewarned that PDA's cell phones, camera, laptops, etc. all must be checked at the entrance, and the guards at the Federal courthouses in Boston have a history of hostile over-reaction to people they perceive as "protesters" attending court hearings. So be prepared for the possibility of delays getting into the courthouse if a crowd shows up, and get there as early as you can. Meanwhile, the Boston Independent Media center has a report by a T passenger of being stopped and searched after going through the turnstiles, apparently on the basis of their appearance, further confirming the allegations in the complaint and contrary to claims by the T that searches would be conducted at T entrances (where those declining to consent to search could still leave without having paid) and would be strictly random, chosing every n-th person from a single-file line.]

"How to Travel Around the World" reviewed in the Chicago Tribune

The 3rd edition of The Practical Nomad: How To Travel Around the World (February 2004) is reviewed today in the travel section of the Chicago Tribune (registration and cookie acceptance required):

THE RESOURCEFUL TRAVELER

By Toni Stroud
Tribune staff reporter

Travel reference

The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World

Don't even try to finish this sentence: "I could never take a big trip around the world because ..." Edward Hasbrouck, travel agent, world nomad and author, has already refuted all your excuses in this third-edition bible to going global. "The Practical Nomad's" 618 pages, uninterrupted with photos, are deeply researched and thorough. This volume might have been either exceedingly dull or tailored to the backpacker and/or GI Joe niche -- plenty of similar books are. But instead, Hasbrouck brings a refreshing humility to the advice he gives: "One of my conscious goals for my first trip around the world was to learn the meaning of my ignorance.... I came back having been many places and learned may things, but with a much heightened sense of how much I don't know and never will." He writes with honesty, warmth and reassurance that 'round-the-world travel is something that ordinary people can do. In fact, it's hard to think of any world-travel scenario that isn't covered. Where to find Internet access, and when accessing it isn't a good idea; how, why and where you're better off renting a car with a driver; whether it's desirable to obtain a second passport or hold dual citizenship; understanding airline and travel-agent lingo; even a table of the Hebrew, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets are here. Hasbrouck has the answer before you even knew you needed to ask the question, and he does it all without passing judgment. And those reasons you thought you had for not taking a trip around the world? He tells you how to negotiate time off from work, take the kids with you, plan your budget and stop worrying about culture shock and language barriers. "The Practical Nomad" isn't just informational, it's inspirational.

NLG to challenge MBTA searches

Press release today from the National Lawyers Guild, Massachusetts Chapter (reproduced here in full as not yet available on the NLG chapter Web site):

Contact:
Michael Avery, NLG [National] President, 617-335-5023
Urszula Masny-Latos, Director, NLG Massachusetts Chapter, 617-227-7335

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD FILES LAWSUIT TO CHALLENGE MBTA SEARCH POLICY

Boston -- The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) will be filing suit on Monday, July 26, 2004, together with the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and members of the American Friends Service Committee to enjoin the MBTA [Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority] bag search policy.

The challenge will be based on the fact that the policy violates the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution by permitting searches of private possessions without any particular information that the person searched is suspected of criminal activity. The MBTA policy provides for routine searches of bags and packages, including physical and visual inspection of people's possessions in addition to electronic inspections and dog sniffs.

NLG national president Michael Avery said, "There is no way the MBTA can implement this policy in a constitutional manner. This is an unwarranted  invasion of personal privacy on a daily basis for "T" riders. There is simply no justification for creating security checkpoints that become part of the fabric of American society."

[Addendum, 23 July 2004: The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald report today on the first checkpoints and "random" searches yesterday at T stations. "MBTA Police Chief Joseph Carter said no one refused to have bags swabbed for screening and, in fact, many riders wanted to volunteer."]

False, incomplete "Privacy Statement" on PNR access by USA Homeland Security Dept.

The USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a Customs and Border Protection Privacy Statement For PNR Data Received in Connection with Flights Between the U.S. and the European Union that grossly misstates the actual content and usage of the data in passenger name records (PNR's), and misleadingly fails to mention critical aspects of PNR data and how it is handled.

The "Privacy Statement" was posted without comment, explanation, or any press announcement on the Web page of the DHS Privacy Office , but appears to be intended to satisfy clause 36 of the Undertakings made by the DHS to induce the European Union to approve access by the DHS to PNR data from the EU:

36) CBP [the DHS Bureau of Customs and Border Protection] will provide information to the traveling public regarding the PNR requirement and the issues associated with its use (i.e., general information regarding the authority under which the data is collected, the purpose for the collection, protection of the data, data sharing, the identity of the responsible official, procedures available for redress and contact information for persons with questions or concerns, etc., for posting on CBP's website, in travel pamphlets, etc.).

What's wrong with the claims in the DHS "Privacy Statement"?

• "2. Who is affected by the program? All persons traveling on flights to, from or through the United States will be affected by this program."
  Actually, PNR's also contain, and the DHS has access to, data on many more people than just travellers on those flights. PNR's contain personally identifiable data, protected by the EU Data Protection Directive and other countries' laws, concerning:

1. Travel agency and airline staff (identifiable from the unique "Agent Sine" in the audit trail or "history" portion of the PNR for each addition, deletion, or change to PNR data);
2. People who make reservations for others, such as personal assistants, business associates, family members, etc. (identifiable from the "Received From" field in each entry in the PNR history);
3. People for whom reservations were made (with or without their knowledge), but who aren't on those flights because they never bought tickets, cancelled or changed their reservations, etc. (identifiable because even totally cancelled PNR's are still displayed in , and retrievable from, the "passenger manifest", and because cancelled names and other details can never be deleted from the PNR history);
4. People who pay for tickets for others, even if they aren't travelling themselves (identifiable from "Form Of Payment" details in PNR's); and
5. Friends, relatives, business contacts, and hosts or contacts of travellers (identifiable from "Local Contact" and "Reconfirmation" data in PNR's).
   

• "3. What information will CBP receive? CBP will receive certain PNR data concerning persons traveling on flights to, from, or through the U.S."
  Actually, when the CBP requests a PNR, they receive all data in the PNR, not just "certain" data. The DHS claims it will only use certain data, but a self-limitation on what data it uses is fundamentally different from a technical or policy limitation on what data it receives in response to "pull" queries.
  
  
• "Airlines and central reservation agencies create these PNR files in the reservation and air carrier departure control systems for each itinerary booked for a passenger."
  Actually, most PNR's are created by travel agents and agencies. That's significant because the transfer of PNR data from the EU to commercial entities in the USA, particularly from travel agencies and airlines in the EU to airlines and CRS's in the USA, is not covered by the "Undertakings" or the adequacy decision and the purported (but unratified) DHS-EU agreement based on them, and remain subject to enforcement action for violation of the EU Data Protection Directive, the privacy clause of the EU Code of Conduct for CRS's , and EU national data protection laws.
  
  
• "The PNR data contain a variety of information provided routinely by a customer.... The PNR may include other information voluntarily provided by a customer during the booking process."
  Actually, most of the data in the PNR is entered (either manually or automatically) by travel agencies, airlines, and other suppliers of travel services (hotel and car rental companies, etc.), and is not "provided by a customer", even if the customer is the same as the traveller. Even when information is voluntarily provided by the traveller to the airline or travel agency, there is a distinction the DHS fails to recognize between voluntarily providing it to e.g. the travel agency, and consenting to have it entered in a PNR. Travel agencies vary widely in which customer information they enter in PNR's, and which they store independently. Airtreks.com where I work, for example, puts as little customer information as possible in PNR's. But I know of no Internet travel agency that discloses which customer information will be entered in PNR's, at what point in the booking and purchasing process this will (irrevocably) be done, in which CRS the information will be entered, or in most cases even the fact that data will be entered in a CRS. Of course, this flagrantly violates the privacy policies of some of these travel agencies, including the largest, Expedia.com (note that you have to agree to accept cookies before you can even read their privacy policy -- which they don't follow anyway -- to see if you want to accept their cookies). But in the USA those policies usually state that they aren't part of the contract, and are effectively unenforceable in the absence of a Federal travel privacy law.
  
  
• "4. Who will have access to the information? CBP will have access to PNR data from flights between the U.S. and EU."
  Actually, the DHS has access to all PNR's of all airlines operating international flights to, from, or via the USA. Whether or not one believes the DHS claims that they won't access PNR's not associated with USA flights, the fact is that they have the ability to access them (and I've previously reported that they've used that ability, as a sufficiently competent and through audit would show).
  
  
• "5. How will the information be protected? CBP will keep PNR data secure and confidential, consistent with applicable U.S. law. Careful safeguards, including appropriate data security and access controls, will ensure that the PNR data is not used or accessed improperly."
  Actually, CBP doesn't keep, and won't keep, most PNR data, and has made no attempt to "ensure" that the airlines and CRS's that keep it will exercise any safeguards whatsoever over how it is used. Even if it wanted to do so, the DHS probably has no authority to require any safeguards in airline or CRS handling of PNR's unless and until Congress passes a new law to protect the privacy of reservations and travel records.

I've previously analyzed the inaccuracies and distortions in the "Undertakings" and their description of PNR data elements, to which the new DHS "Privacy Statement" refers those seeking further details.

All these lies and distortions aside, the latest DHS "Privacy Satament" is too little, too late. Too little, because the commercial entities in the USA that actually receive PNR data from the EU before the USA government, and retain it longer, remain subject to no privacy or data protection law whatsoever in the USA. Too late, because the CBP has already had access to this data for well over a year. Since personal data can be (irrevocably) entered in PNR's a year in advance of travel, a requirement that notice be provided prior to reservations (for which there is still no mechanism or requirement) would need to be put into effect at least a year before the flights for which PNR's would be accessed, not (as has happened) a year after those flights.

It's not entirely clear whether the falsehoods in the "Privacy Statement" are the result of incompetence or deliberate deception . But if the DHS Privacy Office were staffed or run by Privacy Protection Officers rather than Privacy Invasion Apologists, they'd stop publishing soothing nonsense like this and get to work lobbying Congress to pass some real travel privacy protection legislation protecting PNR data in both commercial and government hands.

Citizens and residents of Canada or the European Union obviously aren't going to find out from the DHS what has really been done with your personal data once it's been sent to the USA. If you want to know, you can and should request copies of your travel records -- including archived PNR's from your past air travel -- as well as a report on who has been given access to your data, from each airline or CRS that might have information about you. It's particularly important to make such requests of the four major global CRS's, not just airlines.

Ask each of the four major CRS's for complete copies including the "history" (audit trail) of all PNR's in their system, whether in live or archival storage and whether created by travel agencies or airlines, that contain personal information about you. Ask for a complete log of what portion of each of those PNR's has been provided to what commercial or governmental entities, under what if any contractual restrictions on its use or further dissemination by them. Make sure your request to the Amadeus CRS includes its Airline Automation, Inc. subsidiary in the USA, which has the most diverse PNR archive and has been a major provider of data for both government and commercial passenger profiling tests.

(If anyone tries this, please let me know what happens: CRS's have told me that no one has ever made a request like this, so they haven't yet had to figure out how to respond.)

ACLU asks Ridge, "Is CAPPS-II Dead?" and "What's Next?"

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a letter yesterday to Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, asking:

1. is personal information collected for CAPPS II testing purposes being retained, and if so for what purpose and in what form will it be retained?;
2. has any other data from Passenger Name Record (PNR) files been collected or used in the testing of CAPPS II and, if so, what use was made of that data and will it be maintained beyond the testing period? and
3. what data does TSA intend to collect from future passengers, and what does it propose to do with it?

The ACLU letter asks all the right questions (especially #3). But I won't hold my breath for an answer -- not that I'd believe it anyway, given the record of DHS lies and lies and lies and more lies about CAPPS-II and other uses of PNR data .

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 3

San Antonio de Areco (Argentina) - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - San Carlos de Bariloche (Argentina) - Villa Catedral (Argentina) - Cerro Catedral (Argentina) - Bahia López (Argentina)

The Amazing Race has rarely spent as long in one country or region as it has in Argentina this season, with one episode entirely in Argentina; two others partly in Argentina and partly in the most closely linked of its neighbors, Uruguay; and of course at least part of a fourth episode, starting from San Carlos de Bariloche, in Argentina again next week.

I talked last week about why this region deserves its current boom in tourism. If you are looking for more guidance to the places The Amazing Race 5 went this week, Wayne Bernhardson's Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires (2003) is scheduled to be followed by Moon Handbooks Argentina covering the entire country in November 2004, and a more detailed regional Moon Handbooks Patagonia in 2005. (In the meantime, try the Rough Guide to Argentina if you're going beyond B.A.)

But I wouldn't want to be accused of blind boosterism, and as usual what's featured in the tour brochures is only part of the story. Like the national art form, the tango, travel in Argentina and Uruguay today (the most famous cantante de tango , Carlos Gardel, is claimed by both countries) has beauty and allure, but with an undertone of melancholy.

So many ironies.

One of the most eloquent depictions of the vibrant café society on both sides of the Río de la Plata that I've found in English translation is Eduardo Galeano's Days and Nights of Love and War -- which depicts the members of that artistic and intellectual community as their paths of exile crossed and recrossed in one country after another in flight from a succession of military juntas. Galeano himself, now celebrated as one of the great voices not just of his country but of all the global South, found his writings suppressed in his homeland, and himself driven into exile (along with as much as 10 percent of the population of Uruguay) for almost two decades.

The most famous film about Uruguay, Costa-Gavras' State of Siege (based on a real incident in which the Tupamaros kidnapped, interrogated, and killed the CIA's leading trainer of Latin American torturers, the former police chief of, yet more ironically, one of the centers of American Quakerism, Richmond, Indiana), could not, of course, be filmed in Uruguay under military rule. Instead, it was shot in Chile -- shortly before the elected socialist administration of President Salvador Allende was overthrown in the CIA-backed military coup that Costa-Gavras would later depict in another of his movies, Missing .

My partner and I arrived in Buenos Aires and immediately both thought, "We'd like to live here." But of course, if we'd lived there in our teens and twenties, I'd be dead now, and she'd be in exile: I for being an outspoken leftist, and she (less outspoken if no less leftist) for being a Jew. On the other hand, is that a reason not to visit now? I don't think so. It's a reason to try to learn, so we don't repeat the mistake in our country of letting threats to "security" panic us into giving up our freedom.

We felt very comfortable, and Buenos Aires felt very cosmopolitan. But we're white. In Buenos Aires, many people who look indigenous are referred to as "Bolivian", while people who look to be of African ancestry are referred to as "Brazilian". (Wayne Bernhardson adds that many Argentines also refer indiscriminately to all people of Middle Eastern ancestry, such as former Argentine President Menem, as turcos or Turks.) The implicit assumption, of course, is that people who aren't of European ancestry aren't really Argentine. It's not such a comfortable place for others -- but then, the USA isn't necessarily so comfortable either for members of ethnic and racial groups that aren't thought of as "real Americans".

Did we feel more comfortable in Argentina than in, say, India or China (where we enjoyed travelling, but sometimes found it difficult), because our racial "panic buttons" weren't being pushed? Or because we were less conspicuous as foreigners than in a place where most of the locals have skin a different color than ourselves? Or because the differences in standards of living between rich and poor weren't as great as they are in India (if indeed that's the case)? I suspect it's a bit of all of the above.

We went to Buenos Aires as tourists, and we saw the mothers of the disappeared still mourning in the Plaza de Mayo every Thursday at 3:30 p.m. We went to the annual commemoration, held again this week (with, for only the second time, the President in attendance), of the bombing of the Jewish community center in 1994. But Buenos Aires still has one of the world's largest and most active Jewish communities, and it remains an important part of the city's life.

And did we enjoy Argentina and Uruguay so much because the undervalued peso meant that, with U.S. dollars in our pockets, we could travel luxuriously yet cheaply? Almost certainly so, at least in part. But is that wrong? It's hard for me to say: living conditions for Argentine tourism workers, while difficult in the ongoing economic crisis (as they seem to be for all but the ultra-rich), are still better than the people living below the water line in the crew decks of cruise ships whose flags of "convenience" let them pay Third World wages even while competing for tourist dollars with hotels and restaurants that have to comply with USA labor laws. I had lunch on Saturday with some other travel writers on a cruise ship docked in San Francisco, with a ratio of staff to guests higher than almost any USA hotel. Was it a moral failing on my part not to demand that our host, the cruise line's publicist, tell us what the minimum wage is in the Bahamas, whose flag the ship flies? I don't know.

Confused? So am I. Seeing differences and contradictions is the joy of travel, and the dialectic through which we learn. (I'll be moderating a panel on "Travel as a path to peace, justice, and education" at the upcoming Peace and Justice Studies Association annual conference in October, in addition to a talk at National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington in September -- details to come.) That, too, is part of the interest of travel today in the Southern Cone.

Three seasons ago, during The Amazing Race 2 , I was travelling in Northern Ireland for a BBC documentary investigating whether Northern Ireland was "ready" for international tourism. My verdict was that it wasn't: people interested in visiting Northern Ireland, at least from the USA, are those who want to learn about the peace process that's still too recent and too fragile for most locals to be willing to discuss it.

People I met in Argentina and Uruguay are, for the most part, no more eager to discuss the legacy of "El Proceso" than people in Ulster are to talk about that of "The Troubles", but the civic healing has still gone much further, as discussed in Lawrence Weschler's A Miracle, A Universe (focusing on the restoration of democracy in Uruguay in the 1980's) and Marguerite Feitlowitz' A Lexicon of Terror (on Argentina through the 1990's).

Is tourism a zero-sum game? I'd like to think not -- but it can only avoid that fate if travellers/tourists act on what they learn through travel, in ways sufficient to offset the almost inevitable economic and ecological costs they impose (not least through air travel, which relies on non-renewable fossil fuel, and has no "ecological" form). I doubt that's what Expedia.com means when they say, as sponsors of the CBS broadcasts of "The Amazing Race 5", "Don't just travel. Travel right." But perhaps that's what they should mean.

Diplomatic protests at DHS orders against Pakistani-Americans

The recent orders from the USA Department of Homeland Security to its immigration inspectors to give "special" scrutiny at borders and ports to arriving Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans, including citizens of the USA of Pakistani "descent" like me (my mother was a child of American expatriates born in what is now Pakistan), continues to draw little comment in mainstream USA news and opinion media despite growing diplomatic protest from Pakistan, the first signs of objection from a member of Congress, and front-page coverage in South Asian-American publications.

The DHS order appears to be in flagrant violation of USA laws against government discrimination between classes of USA citizens on the basis of national origin. And one legal scholar I asked about it responded immediately that the inclusion of descendants, on the basis of ancestry, sounded like "corruption of blood", a feudal and common-law concept which was explicitly banned by the USA Constitution. ("No attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted.")

The story was first reported in the Los Angeles Times on 1 July 2004:

[T]he Department of Homeland Security has ordered its inspectors at America's largest airports to scrutinize all travelers of Pakistani descent -- including U.S. citizens -- in an effort to catch terrorist trainees who might try to enter the United States, officials said Wednesday.... [I]ts warning ... began circulating June 17.... A Homeland Security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the warning had been issued, but said it was confidential.

By 10 July 2004, following the first round of publicity in South Asian and South Asian-American news media, the DHS orders had become a topic of debate on the floor of Pakistan's national legislature, the Daily Times was reporting from Islamabad:

The Opposition on Friday urged the government to protest the US government's recent decision to screen all Pakistani citizens at American airports. Senator Professor Ghafoor Ahmed, on a point of order in the Senate, referred to the recent disclosure that the US government had started discriminatory screening of Pakistani citizens, including Pakistani students, at American airports, criticising the procedure.

"US authorities have adopted a very insulting procedure of screening Pakistani citizens, students and Pakistanis who are naturalised US citizens," he added. He urged the government to protest this screening with the US government.

The INDOlink Web site for NRI's ("non-resident Indians", i.e. persons of Indian origin or ancestry not resident in India) reported that just such diplomatic protest was in fact made -- and that it was endorsed by at least one member of Congress:

Pakistan has lodged a strong protest with the United States State Department over an official memo that singles out Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans for extra scrutiny at US airports.

Ambassador Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, who lodged the complaint, had received an instruction from Islamabad last week to convey Pakistan's sentiments over the issue to the US administration.

Meanwhile, a prominent American lawmaker, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee , also said that the Department of Homeland Security should not have issued "a blanket advisory that targets an entire nationality including those who are US citizens."...

The Congresswoman also advised the Bush administration, ... "[W]e can not allow an entire group of people to be targeted without any evidence of wrongdoing".

Congresswoman Jackson Lee is the ranking minority member of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims , but it remains to be seen whether she will be able to put the question on the Subcommittee or Congressional agenda.

This Saturday, 17 July, the public clamor in Pakistan continued, with Karachi's largest newspaper, Dawn , reporting on renewed debate in the legislature:

The government told the Senate on Friday that it had asked the United States to review body search procedures recently introduced at major US airports for Pakistani visitors and denounced the move as a violation of human rights.

Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said he had made the demand to US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage during a meeting with him in Islamabad on Thursday and that the matter would be taken up also with US lawmakers to urge them to change the law allowing such procedures.

The minister made a strong statement on a point of order raised by Democratic Alliance parliamentary leader in the upper house Raza Rabbani who called the search procedures "most shameful" and virtual stripping of Pakistani visitors.

"Certainly what he said is right...," Mr Kasuri said about Mr Rabbani's objection to a memo issued by the US Department of Homeland Security to major airports in the country to carefully monitor all travellers of Pakistani origin, including US citizens, and added: "It is a wrong order, it is violation of human rights."...

Mr Kasuri, who did not say anything about Mr Armitage's response, assured the house that he would tell US lawmakers whenever he would meet them, to change the law providing for such body searches and that the Pakistani embassy in Washington would also be told to make similar approaches to US Congress members. He said the American embassy in Islamabad had also been informed about Pakistan's concerns over the procedures.

European privacy authorities respond to EU decision on PNR access by the USA

The European Union's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party -- the organization of national privacy protection officers from each EU member country -- has adopted an official response to the European Commission's finding and agreement to permit the USA government to access airline reservations from the EU, which are currently being challenged by the European Parliament in the European Court of Justice.

In the meantime, "the Working Party considers the following practical measures to be essential to keep encroachments on passengers' rights as minimal as possible:"

1. Airlines should replace the "pull" method of transferring data with the "push" method as soon as possible.... In the "pull" method used until now, recipients are given all data. It is then their duty to filter out and use only the data for which they have authorisation under an agreement. [I've previously reported that the USA department of Homeland Security is actually "pulling" data far beyond that supposedly authorized by the European Commission findings and agreement.]
2. Air passengers must be adequately informed of the data transfer.... [I]t is essential that air passengers always receive the same information regardless of which airline they use and where they acquire the plane ticket, including through travel agents. [In fact, passengers travelling today -- and having their reservations made available to the USA -- could have bought their tickets as much as a year ago, and could have made reservations months before that. Requiring notice prior to ticketing would require postponing government access to PNR's until at least a year after a system for providing ntoice is put into effect.]
3. The Working Party is pleased that the agreed data transfers relate only to air passenger data recorded and saved by the airlines, travel agents and other sales points for the purposes of processing tickets. The agreement does not obligate or authorise airlines to record other data. [Actually, the agreement explcitly includes Advance Passenger Information (API), which by definition is additional data collected at government order, not for the airlines' business purposes.]
4. The agreements between the Community and the United States provide for regular checks that the data protection rules which have been drawn up as a basis for recognition of the level of data protection are being complied with. The Working Party considers these checks to be particularly important. They are essential to analyse the practical consequences of the data transfers and thus to evaluate the extent of any encroachment on data protection. The Working Party is therefore very
   interested in the design, implementation and evaluation of the checks, and would appreciate to work together with the Commission in this respect. [This is indeed critical, since the first sufficently thorough and technically competent audit of the logs of DHS access to reservations form the EU will show that the USA has not complied with the purported agreement.]
5. In order to gain a clear and detailed insight into the practical steps involved in flight data transfers, the data protection supervisory authorities are planning to hold a joint event with the airlines in Rome in the near future. [Unstated is whether this event will be open to the public.]

Editorial calls for new travel privacy law

Editorial reaction to the latest changes in the CAPPS-II airline passenger profiling and monitoring system has varied, from USA Today's Good riddance to the Boston Herald's Al-Qaeda wins one in the war on terror .

Wired News features ex-National Security Agency agent Bill Scannell in The Man Who Helped Kill CAPPS II , also noting the role of my reporting in having "uncovered important details about the system". It might surprise some of my friends (and enemies, for that matter) that an ex-felon hangs out with ex-spooks, but I have a long history of cordial working relationships with ex-NSA agents in a wide variety of settings. They've all told me that my skills would be perfectly suited for the NSA, if my political views were different, which I take as an indication of the similarity between investigative journalism and intelligence analysis.

Perhaps the most significant editorial commentary on CAPPS-II comes today from the Baltimore Sun . Noting that, "Under the once-heralded Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, fliers would have been forced to provide airlines with additional personal information," the Sun opines that, "CAPPS II was a deeply flawed idea."

But the demise of CAPPS II should be celebrated cautiously....

Together, the CAPPS II fiasco and the GAO report -- not to mention the Defense Department's now stymied Total Information Awareness program -- underscore the threats to individual privacy posed by the rapidly increasing collection of data about our daily movements and transactions, the government's growing access to this private-sector data, and its use of sophisticated statistical techniques to plumb this material for investigatory purposes.

The problem here is that government data-mining -- particularly of commercial databases -- is flourishing in a legal environment providing insufficient privacy protection. There have been recent congressional calls for much-needed strengthening of the roles of federal privacy officers, but in the end, new legal protections will be necessary.

The Sun thus becomes the first major editorial voice to endorse the need for Federal travel privacy legislation . Let's hope that someone in Congress takes up that call.

[Addendum, 19 July 2004: I almost forgot to point out how the changes to CAPPS-II are being protrayed abroad, as in U.S. Simplifies Color-Coding of Air Passengers after months of Controversy (The Spoof, UK).]

"Throw Momma from the train" (reprise)

My entry, Throw Momma from the train? inspired my real momma , Marguerite Helen (who can't drive, and rides the trains a lot, including MBTA rapid treansit and commuter trains and Amtrak), to write a song. "It just kept coming into my head as I went to bed last night."

(To the tune of Charlie on the MTA )

Momma packed her bag
With the wheels right on it
And she pulled it into the station.
Then she bought her ticket,
She was all excited,
She was taking a trip on the train.

(Chorus -- sometimes with variations:)

But she knew one thing:
She would never consent,
She could not consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it;
I do not consent to a search.

When the train came in
Momma climbed right on it,
She settled herself in a seat.
She adjusted the backrest,
Put her feet on the footrest,
Her comfort was complete.

And she knew one thing:
She would never consent,
She could not consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it;
"I do not consent to a search."

Then she opened her bag
Found a brand new book,
Found a bottle of juice as well.
It was "real, pure juice"
So she sipped it proudly,
Oh, didn't she feel swell.

But she knew one thing:
She would never consent,
She could not consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it;
"I do not consent to a search."

She took out her famous
Peanut butter sandwich,
She began to bite and munch.
When the conductor came along
With a man in a trenchcoat,
And they disturbed her lunch.

She knew she'd never consent,
No, she'd never consent,
She would not consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

The conductor took her ticket,
Her round-trip ticket,
But he didn't give her the stub.
'Cause the trenchcoat man
Barged in between them;
He began to brandish a club.

She knew she'd not consent,
No, she'd never consent,
She would not consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

He said, " You're a Pakistani ,
You just might be a terrorist,
We must check your bag
And your purse".
She said, "No, you won't,
Don't you see my button?
I do not consent to a search."

Oh, I will not consent,
I would never consent,
I do not consent to a search.
I've a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

He said, "Put that juice
Right into this bucket;
Put the bottle in the recycle box.
Your sandwich goes right here,
It might have anthrax in it.
We'll seal it up with some locks."

She said, "I won't consent,
I would never consent,
I do not consent to a search.
I've a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

"Now we need to search
All the bags and baggage,
To prevent a terrorist act."
She said, "Son, you're violating
Rights I have and I'll
Never let you do that."

No, I will not consent,
I will never consent,
I do not consent to a search.
I've a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

"Then we'll take you off
To a special car
To protect the rest of the train.
If we lock you up,
Throw away the key,
We'll be safe from any pain."

But she did not consent,
No, she'd never consent,
She would not consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

They had taken her book,
So she took out her knitting.
Used her suitcase
For a knitting perch.
As she got madder
She just got more stubborn,
She would not consent to a search.

For she would not consent,
She would never consent,
She could not consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

Momma armed herself.
Took out bits of bone
That were laced with yummy drugs.
When a dog came to sniff
She fed him the goodies
'Twas a fair way to treat thugs.

When you will not consent,
When you cannot consent,
When you'll never consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

Then she checked her location.
She was nearing her station,
Her appointments she must keep.
She looked around the car,
Saw a safety scanner,
And her heart began to leap.

"Cause some do consent,
Yes, they will consent,
Think they must consent to a search.
They don't wear buttons
With it written right on them,
"I do not consent to a search."

When the trenchcoat came in
To make sure she was peaceful,
She scanned him front and back.
Said, "I have found
Contraband upon you.
Integrity you lack."

Why did you consent?
You should not consent,
No, never consent to a search.
Why not wear a button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search"?

"Out the window you go
For you can't be trusted
Not to do a terrorist thing."
Then she tossed him out.
All the passengers cheered.
The conductor began to sing.

She told them, "Do not consent,
No, never consent,
You should not consent to a search.
Wear these big red buttons
With it written right on them
"I do not consent to a search."

When they got to her stop
She climbed right off
And she pulled her suitcase away.
She had not been searched,
She would never be searched,
Not today or any day.

For she would not consent,
She did not never consent,
She would never consent to a search.
She wore a big, red button
With it written right on it:
"I do not consent to a search."

(Notice to humor-impaired TSA, DHS, and MBTA employees: This is a joke. This is only a joke. Neither I nor my mother actually advocate throwing anyone off a moving train. Always keep all portions of your anatomy entirely inside the doors and windows at all times while the train is in motion.)

CAPPS-II is dead. Long live CAPPS-II!

Hours after announcing that the CAPPS-II airline passenger profiling and monitoring system would be renamed and/or merged into other programs rather than implemented by its original name, the USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began floating trial balloons -- here and here and here and here and here and here -- as to what form the new CAPPS-II (not) will take.

Coke, new Coke, it's the same swill, so far as I can tell.

As expected, what's being dropped is the inessential and expensive real-time profiling, and the use of commercial data other than airline reservations. But the core of CAPPS-II -- the effort to ensure that all travellers are sufficiently identified that their reservations can be indexed into lifetime travel dossiers -- remains intact.

The Program Formerly Known As CAPPS-II may still require the same three directives as CAPPS-II to prohibit anonymous or unreserved travel and require specified identifying information for each passenger in their reservation:

The Capps 2 system was supposed to be based on passengers' names, addresses and phone numbers; the original proposal for the system would have required passengers to submit their dates of birth as well. The new system might still do that, according to the official.

This won't be for real-time profiling, the official leakers reassure us, which means that the only purpose of the new mandates will be to ensure that individual passenger name records (PNR's) can be indexed into comprehensive personal travel histories maintained by the four centralized computer reservation systems (CRS's) and made available to the government whenever it asks for them.

And did I mention that far more names will be placed on watch lists under CAPPS-II (not)?:

The government already has a so-called no-fly list, which is actually a list of people whom the airlines are not supposed to carry, and a larger ["selectee"] list of people who are supposed to be put through secondary screening if they seek to fly. According to an administration official who asked not to be identified, those two lists have fewer than 10,000 names but the new computer system would integrate a list of names that is "dramatically larger."

The other big difference between CAPPS-II and CAPPS-II (not) is that the new CAPPS-II (not) will use the same integrated blacklist as many other government programs, not a list specifically related to perceived threats to aviation. So the much larger number of people whose names are on the list will be prevented from doing lots of other things, as well getting on airplanes.

I'm feeling safer from harassment already. I'm sure that identifying people more precisely will mean that only the real enemies of the state will be prevented from travelling, or singled out for "special treatment" when they try to fly.

Of course, since I'm not an enemy of the state , I've got nothing to fear. They'll never come for me. It can't happen here.

CAPPS-II to be renamed and/or merged into traveller registration program

USA Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge has confirmed in an interview with USA Today that the CAPPS-II airline passenger profiling and monitoring system will be renamed and/or merged into a system of (pseudo-voluntary) registration of travellers.

USA Today headlined the story, "Plan to collect flier data canceled", which would be very good news if true. But the story itself makes clear that CAPPS-II, in a new guise, is far from dead:

Ridge said a new program with a different name might be developed to take the place of CAPPS II. But if enough people volunteer to provide personal information through a new "registered traveler" program, that alone could replace CAPPS II.

This is exactly the two-part strategy for salvaging the essential surveillance and profiling functionality of CAPPS-II, in the face of overwhelming public and Congressional opposition, that I've inferred from previous DHS/TSA actions. The remarkable thing is that Ridge has made it explicit.

The name change is purely a ruse. Congress has forbidden any spending on CAPPS-II unless and until it can meet specified standards, as certified by the GAO. The GAO has said it isn't yet even close to meeting those criteria, and the TSA is probably realizing that it never will. But since the legislation is worded in terms of the program name, "CAPPS-II", rather than a description of its function, DHS/TSA can completely escape the current Congressional oversight, at the stroke of a pen, by renaming the program or including it in a program with another name. Presumably they will also respond to any continued criticism of CAPPS-II by saying, "But we aren't doing it any more", even if they are doing essentially "it" in another name. That's also what they are likely to tell the courts that are considering challenges to CAPPS-II .

The question is whether Congress and the public will let them get away with these ruses. Privacy advocates should call a spade a spade, and demand that any new computerized airline passenger screening system be conducted in the name of CAPPS-II and subjected to the tests that Congress has already enacted for CAPPS-II. And Congress should make sure that the next "homeland security" or aviation related legislation clarifies that the current limits on CAPPS-II apply to any system for screening airline passengers, by any name or as part of any other program.

In their current conception, the successors to CAPPS-II will be substantially broader. In order to register , would-be travellers will have to "consent" to give fingerprints, iris scans, addresses of everywhere they've lived for the last five years, etc. -- none of which were to have been required for CAPPS-II, and which will be subject to even less protection than data used for CAPPS-II.

The DHS and TSA still haven't said anything about most of the key privacy issues for the traveller registration program, as was pointed out in EPIC's comments on the "registered traveler" Privacy Act notice. Let's hope that with this scheme assuming functions formally allocated to CAPPS-II, more of these questions are asked, and answers demanded by Congress.

Instead of a profiling system limited to air travellers, the DHS will use a multi-purpose profiling and screening system for which the first contract has just been awarded. It will probably be used first for applicants for the new Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC), rather than registered travellers. But once the government has identifying information on registered travellers (or any other group of people), and a screening "black box", it's almost inevitable (and would violate no current law, at least in the USA) for travel registrations eventually to be fed through the "terrorist screening" system.

And the kicker is that this is "voluntary". Anyone who objects to having to register will be told that they have a choice -- if you don't want to register, you can always go through the second class unregistered screening line instead. Anyone who objects to the second-class treatment of unregistered travellers will be told that they have a choice: they can always register instead. Isn't the TSA generous: they will give us two different choices of how we want to surrender our civil liberties.

By controlling the allocation of screening staff between the "registered" and "unregistered" lanes, the TSA can impose exactly as much or as little delay and inconvenience as is necessary to induce travellers to register, and can implement the differential treatement of registered and unregistered travellers as gradually as it wishes. As first, I expect registered travellers will be given preferentially faster screening than the current default. As more people register, the registered screening lines will gradually slow down to the speed of the current default lines. Once registration becomes the "norm", increasing delays will begin to be imposed on the those who remain unregistered.

The replacement or repackaging of CAPPS-II as part of a larger and more intrusive system of general-purpose "screening" that treats everyone -- not just air travellers -- as suspected terrorists, and a traveller registration system that gives the government and travel companies even more detailed infomation, under fewer restrictions, than would have been required for CAPPS-II, is scarecely the "death of CAPPS-II". Nor is it anything close to the end of the threat CAPPS-II and its successors pose to our freedom to travel.

"Throw Momma from the train"?

Press release:

TSA Begins Third Phase of Rail Security Experiment

Beginning Monday, passengers may be screened for explosives while traveling on Connecticut's Shoreline East commuter rail as part of the third stage of a pilot program exploring new measures for rail security. Passengers boarding from one of the eight Shoreline East stations may pass through a specialized railcar equipped with on-board screening technology as the train is in motion .

In the previous TSA "Transit and Rail Inspection Pilot" (TRIP) tests, would-be passengers had the opportunity at the checkpoint at the station, before boarding the train, to refuse to have themselves and/or their baggage be "screened" (i.e. searched). It's not clear if the screening was legal, but at least it was possible to refuse, and the TSA and the railroads (most of them, like the Shoreline East, government-owned and/or operated common carriers) could maintain at least a veneer of consent.

It's less clear what options might be available to passengers who have already boarded, and whose fare has been collected and accepted, if they decline to consent to onboard "screening" while the train is in motion. Can a search be considered consensual if the only alternative is to jump from a moving train? Will those who "fail" the screening be thrown from the moving train? Or will the screening car also be a jail car, where they are detained until their expulsion at the next station stop? If anyone gets a chance to tour the new screening/jail car, ask to see the accommodations for those who decline to consent to screening.

Has it come to this, that the default accommodations on a government-owned and/or operated common carrier, for those who don't "voluntarily" waive their right not to consent to search, are in the jail car? Or that those who assert their rights are to be thrown from the train -- on the government's orders?

TSA admits CAPPS-II "back to the drawing board"

Responding to questions at a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing yesterday on his nomination as administrator of the USA Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Navy Admiral David M. Stone reportedly said the TSA is considering changing or eliminating major components of the CAPPS-II airline passenger profiling and monitoring proposal.

There's no mention of CAPPS-II in Stone's prepared statement to the Senate commitee -- itself a sign of continued TSA effort to avoid Congressional oversight of CAPPS-II -- but the questioning is described by the Associated Press (via CNN), Wired News , and Reuters .

This is the second full Senate committeee to hold public hearings on Stone's nomination: He already went before the Government Affairs commitee last month with responses to their questions that confirmed many earlier reports (including some previously denied by the TSA), and some additional details, on use of airline reservations by the TSA and other government agencies for testing of CAPPS-II and other, similar, passenger profiling schemes.

What remains to be seen is whether the TSA is merely renaming the more controversial portions of CAPPS-II, or moving them into other programs (such as the pseudo-voluntary traveller registration program already being tested by the TSA and airlines), or whether they have really backed off from their desire to require every traveller to be positively identified so that their reservations can be indexed into a lifetime travel history, accessible to the government on request or demand even if maintained by a computerized reservation system (CRS) or other private company.

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 2

Punta Ballena (Uruguay) - Montevideo (Uruguay) - Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay) - Buenos Aires (Argentina) - San Antonio de Areco (Argentina)

The Amazing Race has been plagued with bad timing, starting with the broadcast of the premiere episode (featuring scenes of racing through the streets of Manhattan) on 5 September 2001.

This season both the concept of the race (with Americans finally travelling the world again in larger numbers than before 11 September 2001, as I discussed in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times ) and the particular destinations are seeming more timely than ever before.

In a small sense, it was particularly apt that the broadcast of the race crossed the Río de la Plata or River Plate (actually an estuary over a hundred miles wide between Buenos Aires and Montevideo) at the exact same time, at least on the East Coast of the USA, as Argentina was playing Uruguay in a high-scoring "futbol" (soccer) match that the commentators on Univision kept calling a "classico de la Río de la Plata" in the Copa America .

Of course, that means few of the Argentines or Uruguayans in the USA would actually have been watching their countries' big opportunity for tourism promotion through reality TV (how could that compete for interest with soccer?), but it was timely in a larger sense as well: The setting of this week's episode of the race is one of the regions currently experiencing the largest growth in international tourist arrivals, including from the USA.

Deservedly so. I spent a month in Argentina and Uruguay last year, renting an apartment in Buenos Aires and taking excursions from there to some of the other places the race passed through this week. I'd recommend it to almost anyone. That's something I'd rarely do, given the diversity of travellers' tastes, but Argentina's tremendous geographic diversity gives it something for many types of visitors. It's not for everyone, but no place is.

I'm not alone in my opinion: as was reported at the start of this year in the Airtreks.com newsletter (where I work), Buenos Aires was "the clear winner" when we polled our staff of resident experts to find out where they most often recommend as the best place in the world to go right now:

Why? Diversity and beauty of the land. Wonderful people. (You could say that, truthfully, about almost anywhere, of course.) Music and dancing. Shopping. Excellent infrastructure. Great food ("steaks the size of shoes", "elaborate European-style cuisine with the best and freshest local ingredients -- for peanut prices"). Above all, "Great value for the money."

Wherever you're going, there are a couple of lessons here, especially about that, "value for the money":

1. Don't let stories about the rise of the Euro confuse you about the cost of travel to the rest of the world. Yes, travel to Western Europe is more expensive for Americans than it was last year. But that's not a reason to stay home -- that's a reason to consider travelling further afield, to places where the U.S. dollar still goes much further than it does at home. Most air trekkers still find that their expenses on the road are substantially less than their living expenses were at home in the USA. [It's also timely, in this context, that "The Amazing Race" isn't going to Western Europe at all this season, except in transit.]
   
   
2. Don't confuse bad news for locals with bad news for visitors. Reports about Argentina have focused on the fall of the peso, and the problems that has caused. As the local currency has collapsed against the dollar, local salaries and savings have lost two-thirds of their purchasing power. But that also means that the buying power of tourists' dollars tripled, and that they can travel just as well on a budget a third the size of what they used to need. [Both Wayne Bernhardson and my most loyal correspondent in Argentina point out that inflation has made up for a portion of that -- I was there a year ago, and this Airtreks.com newsletter was published in January 2004 -- so the ratio in dollars is no longer quite three to one. But the value remains.]

And the warmth and sincerity of the welcome! Argentines know they live in a beautiful country that just a few years ago was expensive for foreigners on a budget. If they were Americans, they'd be jumping at the chance to visit Argentina now, while it's such a bargain. Like people in other such spots around the world, they welcome visitors and their dollars, and congratulate them on their good taste in choosing their vacation destination so well.

Likewise Uruguay, and the racers saw that welcome clearly. The streetwalker Mirna and Charla try to ask for directions in Montevideo at 2 a.m. ("The prostitute will know where the disco is." "She's pissed because she's got business to do.") doesn't want to help them if it means getting her face on TV, but this is still a place where Buquebus will delay an oceangoing ferry with hundreds of passengers for someone who pleads that they have an "emergencia" (I'll leave the appropriateness of making such a plea, for the sake of a race, as an exercise for the reader in the ethics of television tourism), and passers-by in the city drop what they are doing to lead the racers and their packs of "perros" (dogs) through the streets from one clue to the next.

The best guide to all the places the race went this week, my friend and long-time Southern Cone guidebook writer and scholar Wayne Bernhardson's new Moon Handbooks Buenos Aires , describes the "pit stop" where this episode ends as follows:

San Antonio's most emblematic estancia , La Porteña has belonged to the Güiraldes family since the early 19th century. Of all the farms in the area, it has the finest grounds; French landscape architect Carlos Thays, who created major public parks like Palermo's Jardín Botánico [in Buenos Aires] and Mendoza's Parque General San Martín, designed the plan, including the stately avenue of elm-like hackberries that leads to the main house. The estancia has only a few guest rooms, so reservations are essential. Beef is the standard menu [surprise!], but the kitchen will happily accommodate vegetarians with pasta and other meatless dishes, served in a dining room filled with French and British antiques.

It's characteristic of the way "economic crisis" and "currrency collapse" mean "window of opportunity for foreign tourists" that the clientele of a "dude ranch" like La Porteña is shifting from Argentines, few of whom can still afford the now-astronomical US$100 per night, to more foreigners, few of whom used to be able to linger in expensive Argentina. That's why the estancia is busy building an English-language version of its Web site , even if it's still unfinished and has some entertaining examples of robo-translation like the sink of swimming .

Argentina is a big country (the eighth largest in the world), with many contradictions and ironies. And I can't leave Uruguay without acknowledging its most famous living citizen, and master of irony, the writer Eduardo Galeano. I'll get to that and more next week. In the meantime, have a glass of Torrontés wine (all but unobtainable outside Argentina) or perhaps of strong cider from the Mendoza region, and enjoy your trip, wherever you go!

The second episode of The Amazing Race 5 will once again be re-broadcast in the USA on CBS this Saturday night, 17 July 2004, from 8-9 p.m. EDT/PDT, 7-8 CDT/MDT. It's not yet clear if every episode this season will be re-broadcast the following Saturday, but The Amazing Race 6 will be on Saturday nights this fall, starting almost immediately after the finale of "The Amazing Race 5".

(For answers to some readers' questions, and more on The Amazing Race 6 and "The Amazing Race 7", see the followup to last week's column in this blog.)

The Amazing Race 6 filming underway now or soon

I got a flood of questions after the 6 July 2004 premiere episode of The Amazing Race 5 about how to apply to be a contestant/cast member in future seasons of The Amazing Race .

Casting of The Amazing Race 6 is already complete, and filming is or will be underway in July or August 2004. Watch for the yellow and red flags, epecially in airports. If you see a couple with backpacks being followed through an airport by a videographer and sound technician, take their picture or note their description, and try to figure out what flight they are coming from or to. If there are several teams, note the order in which they arrive or leave. If they are leaving the airport, and you know the area, offer them a ride, or offer to be their local guide, and you might wind up on TV!

The Amazing Race 6 will be broadcast on CBS in the USA in the fall of 2004, probably starting almost immediately after the finale of "The Amazing Race 5", in a new time slot on Saturday nights.

Only citizens of the USA have been considered as participants in "The Amazing Race". No Canadians need apply. I didn't make this rule, but I don't expect it to change. Please direct all comments, bouquets, and brickbats (not really, that's a joke) concerning the rules to CBS-TV and/or to the producer of "The Amazing Race": Elise Doganieri, World Race Productions, Inc., 4120 Del Rey Avenue, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292, USA.

And as always, if what you want is a trip, rather than a race, don't wait until you get picked for the cast of a TV show. Just buy yourself a ticket (and a copy of The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World , of course) and do it! It's easier and cheaper than you think, and tens of thousands of people do it every year.

I also got lots of feedback, in blog comments and Usenet postings and by e-mail, from travellers and travel agents (a surprising number of whom turn out to be reading this blog) on my analysis of CRS deregulation and the different responses to flight queries given by computerized reservations systems used by travel agents and by retail Web sites, even when they have the same owners.

Some people asked about ITA Software (which found better conections than some other retail airfare Web sites, but not the optimum ones for the racers), and whether it is "the search engine for Orbitz.com". It's not exactly: ITA Software licenses some software to Orbitz.com, but Orbitz.com has turned off some of its functionality so as to produce higher prices, as I've previously reported after seeing ITA Software demonstrate one of the disabled options.

Orbitz.com power user and amateur travel agent John Levine, who writes a FAQ of long standing in the "rec.travel.air" Usenet newsgroup and is on Orbitz.com's "Consumer Advisory Committee", figured out a way to get Orbitz.com to display the optimal connections. But it requires that, instead of selecting the racers' actual criteria (a known departure time), one search by arrival time, to the nearest hour.

If you guess the right hour, it shows up at the top of the list of "shortest flights". But if you select "anytime", or if you select the departure time, it's not included at all, even though more than 100 slower options are shown.

Maybe it's a bug -- John says Orbitz.com has recently "upgraded" its software. But it's very strange that "anytime" doesn't actually show all flights that Orbitz.com would prioritize for specific times . And Orbitz.com's user interface seems much better suited for those customers who are brand-loyal to one or another of Orbitz.com's airline owners, and want a specific airline regardless of how slow, indirect, or expensive it is, rather than the more typical, less loyal travellers who want either the fastest flights or the cheapest flights, regardless of airline or route.

[Addendum, 26 July 2004: Applications open through 11 August 2004 for "The Amazing Race 7".]

[Further addendum, 3 October 2004: How to apply for "The Amazing Race 8".]

Road Trip Russia

The epigraph to my first book, The Practical Nomad: How To Travel Around the World , is San Francisco poet laureate Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Recipe for happiness in Khabarovsk or anyplace" ("One grand boulevard with trees / with one grand café in sun ..."). Khabarovsk isn't the equal of Vladivostok in tourist interest, but it can be pleasant, at least in mid-summer, and I found it worth a couple of days' visit.

Although Khabarovsk is the hub of the Russian Far East, and from 1991 to 2001 had weekly direct trans-Pacific flights via Anchorage to and from San Francsico (which is how I got there, on one of the most elegant commercial of jetliners, the Ilyushin 62), news from Khaborovsk in mainstream USA sources is rare.

Russia is the largest country in Asia, and most of Russia is in Asia. But most American news organizations assign Russian Asia -- the Russian Far East, Siberia (which is west of the RFE), and the "autonomous" republics like Buryatia and Tuva (very interesting places indeed to visit) -- to the "Russia beat" of correspondents based thousands of miles away on another continent in European Russia, who visit only rarely.

So the New York times is to be commended for having moved the Russian Far East a few years ago into the "Northeast Asia" beat of their correspondent based in Tokyo, more than 5,000 miles closer to the subject of their reporting.

The Times won't knowingly print travel stories contributed by writers whose trips have been subsidized by tourism companies or promoters, and not even the Times pays freelancers enough for a single travel article to cover the cost of the trip to research it. So more and more of the articles in the Times travel section are contributed by their regular overseas news corrspondents (something few other newspapers have any more).

Today, James Brooke of the Times , passing through Khabarovsk (the regional transport hub, as I just said) to cover the growing role of Chinese migrants and sharecroppers and ethnic Korean returnees in Russian Asian agriculture, also reports for the travel section on the trans-continental road across Russia (or the lack thereof).

Brooke isn't primarily a travel writer, but he does know bad roads from his previous postings to Brazil and West Africa:

Mr. Putin inaugurated the road when it was nicely concealed beneath packed snow.

"In some sections there is no road, just a roadbed graded by bulldozers, with trees knocked down everywhere," Gennadi Kulaev, a 42-year-old businessman, said by telephone. "You can hardly get through." In mid-March, he said, he wrestled a Toyota Land Cruiser from Vladivostok to his home in Ulan-Ude, east of Lake Baikal in Siberia....

"At some places, it was blocked by rocks from the mountains detonated by dynamite. So drivers had to hire bulldozers working nearby, or just crawl atop those rock piles as I did....

"There are paved sections, sometimes near settlements, sometimes just a piece of asphalt in the middle of nowhere," Mr. Kulaev said.

Residents of the Russian Far East sense that soon they will feel the call of the open highway . "You can't just put a label on it, and call it a road," said Sergei Rudenko, a Khabarovsk taxi driver. "But they promise to pave it by 2008."

In the meantime, take the train.

"Agreement" and "Undertakings" on PNR transfers published by USA and EU

Statewatch notes the publication of the Undertakings on PNR transfers, including as an attechment the list of PNR and API elements to be transferred in the Federal Register (69 FR 41543-41547, 9 July 2004), and the publication of the PNR transfer Agreement (OJ L 235/12, 6 July 2004) in the Official Journal of the European Union .

It's important to keep in mind, however, that the legality of the Agreement has been chellenged by the European Parliament, which has asked the European Court of Justice to annul it. And while one report said the Undertakings "will come into force on 15 July 2004", that's not quite correct: unless and until (a) enacted by Congress, (b) properly promulgated as a regulation, under authority of Congress, by a Federal agency, or ( c ) ratified by the Senate as a treaty, thay have no force at all, and cannot be invoked as binding in any USA legal or administrative proceeding. The Federal Register notice says they were published "to provide the public with notice of the issuance of this document upon which the EU has based these very important decision." For all the force that gives them, they might as well have been published as a press release.

(The links above are to the Statewatch.org mirrors of the published documents. They are also available directly from the respective government sites, if you search by citation, although its harder to link to those directly.)

MBTA board ignores continued protests of passenger stops and searches

Directors of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority ignored protesters at their meeting last night in Boston, refusing to debate their new policy of "random" stops and searches of transit passengers.

Meanwhile, with growing national interest and media coverage of the preparations for the Democratic Party National Convention later this month in Boston, the largest demonstration yet against the transit "stop and search" program is being planned for Tuesday morning at Park Street station:

STOP UNCONSTITUTIONAL "T" SEARCHES!

RALLY AT PARK STREET STATION 8-9 AM TUESDAY JULY 13th!

MBTA SEARCHES: WILL THEY MAKE YOU SAFER OR SIMPLY LESS FREE?

The MBTA is in the process of implementing a new search policy on the "T." The plan has officers searching "randomly" selected passengers with bags at a handful "T" stations at any given time. This leaves over a hundred stations with no one being searched. If a terrorist saw a line of people being searched at a "T" station he or she would simply walk to the next station and enter the system there, avoiding a search. This policy will delay traffic and subject riders to useless, unneccessary and unconstitutional searches.

TELL THE "T" THEY'RE NOT FOOLING US!

Sponsored by the Safe and Free "T" Alliance

We also encourage you all to call Deputy MBTA Police Chief John
Martino at (617) 222-1112

The stops and searches of transit passengers are being justified in the same of "security", but Rozzie points out the fallacy of that argument in a posting in the "ne.transportation" Usenet newsgroup:

As far as I know, no subway rider has ever caused a terrorist disaster in the United States. But the Oklahoma City bombing, the worst terror activity until 9/11, used a truck.

We read regularly of car bombings taking place in the Middle East, where cars are often used to conceal terrorist weapons. Cars are a much bigger part of daily transportation for the average American than a subway system or a city bus.

While people debate the pros and cons of MBTA bag searches, millions of people are driving around all the time surrounded by unknown vehicles, any one of which could be driven by a terrorist concealing explosives in the trunk or other cargo area.

Doesn't it make sense that a terrorist who was trying to strike fear into the hearts of as many Americans as possible would threaten their car use, rather than a subway system?

Searching subway riders plays into the myth that bad things happen underground in the big bad city. It's easy for suburban patriots to tell city people that they have to sacrifice carrying their groceries home, or go without books and laptops on their way to school.

But I wonder how the safety checks would play out if one out of every 8 drivers on the Mass Pike was pulled over for inspection, not just for the convention but presumably every day into the future? How many drivers would put up with leaving a half hour early every single day because of the risk that an inspection could make them late for work?

To make it truly equitable, don't just stop people on the Pike. Stop everyone at checkpoints as they drive into Malden Center, or East Hadley, or the Rockingham Mall. Stop, frisk, check the trunk, show your ID, ask the kids where they're going. How long would Americans put up with this? If the answer is "not long," it should not be inflicted on subway riders either. There's been the same amount of terrorism on the Orange Line as there has been at the Wal-Mart in Walpole.

[Addendum, 10 July 2004: Gary McGath spotted this first-hand account of the MBTA Board meeting as well as this new statement by the T about the search policy.]

The world as viewed from Charlottetown, P.E.I., Canada

Europe: It's Closer Than We Think
(from Reinvented.net )

My mother the terrorist

The USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has reportedly confirmed issuing orders last month to immigration inspectors at six USA airports (LAX, JFK, EWR, IAD, ORD, and DTW) to give special scrutiny to "all travelers of Pakistani descent, including U.S. citizens," according to several independent reports.

The nature of the special treatment to be given Pakistani and Pakistani-Amnerican travellers remains unknown, but it's front page news in the South Asian-American press, with even Indian-American sources -- no friends of Pakistan, and in general even more suspicious of Pakistanis than the DHS -- voicing concern.

Pakistan's diplomatic protests of the second-class treatment of its citizens is also getting coverage in Pakistan and in South Asian-American media .

But the inclusion of USA citizens of Pakistani ancestry seems to have raised barely a ripple of protest. "'Unfortunately, people of Pakistani, Indian, and Arab origin have been going through this scrutiny anyway,' CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations] [Los Angeles] chapter executive director told India-West ."

What does this mean? It means my mother, a Quaker and peace activist who leads workshops in nonviolent conflict resolution for inmates in maximum-security prisons and who was born to expatriate American-citizen parents (my grandfather taught English at Forman College in Lahore, now part of Punjab University) in what was then British India and is now Pakistan, is now officially a terrorist suspect in the eyes of her government.

How does it feel, after 70 years, suddenly to become a second-class citizen? "I guess we'll all have to say we're from Pakistan now," she said when I told her. "Maybe I should wear a salwar kameez the next time I go through U.S. customs."

As a result of my mother's place of birth, the terms of the partition of British India, and the constitutions of both India and Pakistan, I'm eligible for both Indian and Pakistani citizenship (in addition to my present citizenship by birth in the USA).

India-West says the DHS official who confirmed the story wouldn't discuss "operational details, including how the agents will try to ascertain whether a passenger is of Pakistani origin. But he said the agents have been instructed to take particular note of recent visitors to Pakistan and 'to look for other clues'." Currently, there's no way to tell from my USA passport where my parents or other ancestors were born, or what citizenship they held. But that would change if my travel documents could automatically be linked to a personal dossier through a registered traveller credential or an RFID passport .

And to how many generations of descendants will the taint of suspicion-by-place-of-birth be continued? Will my nephew be an automatic suspect, when he comes back home to the USA, if he ever tries to leave the country, perhaps to visit his grandmother's birthplace in Lahore, or his great-grandparents' summer home in Kashmir ? If he has children, will they be born suspected terrorists too? I don't know, and the DHS won't say.

Wasn't there supposed to be some sort of prohibition on "discrimination on the basis of national origin"?

It almost makes me want to get those Indian and Pakistani passports, just for insurance. I like to travel, and I want a chance to live abroad. But I also like to come home. This is my country, where I was born and where some of my ancestors have lived for more than 300 years -- almost a century longer than the present United States of America. I'm not yet ready to give up on it, or to give it up to the enemies of freedom.

Today, police dogs on buses. Tomorrow, bagels and coffee, too.

Yesterday would-be travellers on interstate commuter buses from New Hampshire to Boston were required to submit to searches and dog-sniffing of themselves and their baggage by police before being allowed to board. The Boston Globe reports that more searches are planned, while the Associated Press (via the Portsmouth [NH] Herald), has this to say about the basis for the searches:

Concord Trailways supports the searches, said Vice President Ken Hunter. He said no specific threat prompted the searches.... Hunter said buying a ticket means a passenger agrees to terms imposed by the company, which include consenting to a search.

[Police Capt. Bill] Hart said ... "Our goal is to minimize the intrusion in busy commuters' lives.''...

He said the next time the officers show up, they'll bring coffee and bagels for passengers.

[Addendum, 8 July 2004: Here's what the USA Supreme Court decided the last time it considered the Constitutionality of police boarding buses and asking for passengers' "consent" to searches of themselves and their luggage, in U.S. v. Drayton in 2002, and what the Supreme Court dissenters had to say: "The bus was going nowhere, and with one officer in the driver's seat, it was reasonable to suppose no passenger would tend to his own business until the officers were ready to let him."]

Don't register to fly.

Today the USA Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and several major airlines (starting with Northwest, to be followed by United and American) started providing separate security lines at certain hub airports for those of their elite frequent flyers who have volunteered to be photographed, fingerprinted, iris scanned (recording the patterns of blood vessels in their eyes), subjected to criminal and other unspecified background checks, have all this information retained for an as yet unspecified and unlimited time and given to other government agencies in the USA and abroad, and carry a "two-dimensional barcode" registered traveler card whenever they fly.

Many questions remain unanswered, as the Electronic Privacy Information Center points out in its comments on the TSA's Privacy Act notice for the records to be compiled on registered travellers. The TSA has published a Privacy Impact Assessment of the traveller registration program, but neither it nor the TSA's Fact Sheet even mention most of the key issues, such as what -- if any -- conditions will be put on retention, use, and re-disclosure of the records, including fingerprints and records of all addresses for the last 5 years, by other government agencies or travel companies that receive them. As the first public report by the new TSA privacy officer, Lisa Dean, it earns her an unequivocal "F", or perhaps an "E" for Evasion of the real issues.

Supposedly, only invited elite members of airline frequent flyer programs are eligible to participate in the test, which implies some mechanism for TSA access to frequent flyer records to verify this. What form this TSA access to airline records takes, and whether it is bidirectional (giving airlines access to traveller registration records) has not been disclosed.

The government says this is all "voluntary". But travellers will only register if either (A) registered travellers are searched less carefully or with lesser frequency than all airline passengers now are (with no evidence that they are actually less likely to be malevolent), or (B) unregistered travellers are subjected to slower or more intrusive searches than they are now (penalizing them for exercising their right not to "consent" to fingerprinting, background checks, and widespread dissemination and retention of their registration information).

As registration becomes the norm, unregistered travellers can expect progressively worse treatment. And if they complain, they'll be told, "But you don't have to go through this. Just give us your fingerprints and iris scans and a list of everywhere you've lived for the last five years, and agree to always carry the special card we give you to prove you're not a terrorist, and we'll go back to treating you no worse than we used to."

But why should we have to register with the government to travel by licensed common carrier, or be punished if we don't?

Interviewed in the New York Times , Barry Steinhardt of the ACLU echoes my arguments that the traveller registration program has assumed the functional agenda of the (apparently) defeated CAPPS-II passenger profiling and surveillance system, with profiling performed at the time of registration rather than at the time of travel, and with even more intrusive identification and personal data aggregation under even less privacy protection than the (inadequate) provisions in the CAPPS-II proposals.

I just got off the phone with a friend who emigrated to the USA from what was then the Soviet Union, and has only this month, after trying for a dozen years, finally been "granted" approval to become a citizen of the USA. I'm glad that the USA is still a place people like him want to come to, because they see it as symbolizing their hopes for freedom. I want it to be easier for them to come here, and I want them to actually find the freedom they hope for. I want the USA to live up to its advertised ideals.

Twenty years ago, I was put in a prison camp by the USA for refusing to submit to registration with a government agency (in that case, the Selective Service Slavery System) and for organizing and encouraging others to do likewise (which they did, and continue to do, quite spontaneously, by the millions). I did the right thing, and I'm proud of having done my small part to keep America free.

I'm not about to surrender my freedom just to get on an airplane. Nor should you. Nor should we have to.

Don't register to fly. Don't make us register. And don't treat us as second-class travellers if we decline to "consent" to registration.

The Amazing Race 5, Episode 1

Santa Monica, CA (USA) - Montevideo (Uruguay) - Punta del Este (Uruguay) - Punta Ballena (Uruguay)

Before the teams in The Amazing Race 5 even get off the Santa Monica Pier, Jim is knocked down by another racer at the starting line, tears open his leg on a nail, and needs 25 stitches before he can get on the first flight.

We worry about flying, but the greatest dangers are on the ground, and closer to home -- in this case, literally underfoot before the would-be travellers have gone anywhere at all. We worry about whether the natives are friendly, but the people we need to watch out for most may be our fellow travellers.

After that, at the end of the pier, the racers open the box of clue cards, and learn that they have to fly to Montevideo, Uruguay, on either United Airlines or American Airlines.

Both these airlines have virtually identical schedules, departing and arriving within an hour of each other. Both go via Miami and Buenos Aires, but the Buenos Aires stop isn't mentioned or shown on the route map, perhaps to make the flights look more direct than they are. This is the second time the race has stopped in Argentina -- The Amazing Race 2 even spent a night on the Argentine side of the river at Iguassu Falls -- without the country even being mentioned. (More on that next week.)

This isn't the first time we've seen such blatant paid airline product placements in "The Amazing Race", especially on the opening leg. But what got my goat was that immediately after the racers are shown making their choice between Air Tweedledum and Air Tweedledee, viewers are treated to an announcement that "The Amazing Race 5" is sponsored by Expedia.com.

As has often been the case, there would have been better ways to get there, if the racers were allowed to take them. As is also often the case, especially between distant points without same-plane service (the USA Department of Transportation allows airlines to label connecting flights as "direct", but that's another story), the fastest and most direct flights would not have been on an airline based in the USA, and not even on an airline of the destination country, but on the airline of a third, intermediate country. And in most cases they would have involved a combination of flights on more than one airline.

The American Airlines and United Airlines flights got to Montevideo between noon and 1 p.m. (12:00-13:00). Using LAN Chile -- one of only 2 airlines, neither based in the USA, with nonstop service from Los Angeles to South America -- via Lima and either Santiago or Buenos Aires, they could have left at about the same time, and arrived between 9:00 and 10:00 in the morning, 3 hours earlier than the flights they took.

The racers' plight in being forced to take less direct (and in real life often more expensive, although CBS doesn't care in the race) flights on USA-based airlines is not, unfortunately, unique or even particularly unusual. In support of its commitment to free trade, and its principled opposition to protectionism, the USA government requires all travel that it funds, even in part (such as academic research trips on projects that have received even the smallest government grants) to be entirely on USA-based airlines, whenever possible, almost entirely without regard for how much less direct or more costly they are.

Choices of long-haul flights have typically been decisive factors in "The Amazing Race", making differences of hours compared to mere minutes saved by bribing or imploring taxistas to drive more recklessly, or by completing tasks more quickly. But even if the racers were free to choose their flights, would the show's sponsors at Expedia.com find the best ones? No.

It's not just Expedia.com. I also checked Orbitz.com and Travelocity.com, using a sample date of 13 January 2005. (You can't check flights for past dates on any of these Web sites, but the schedules are essentially unchanged except that United has shifted its gateway for the Buenos Aires/Montevideo flight from Miami to Washington Dulles Airport, and Aero Continente has discontinued its Lima - Buenos Aires service, leaving only LAN Peru with an overnight flight.)

None of these three largest Internet travel agencies lists the fastest and most direct flights at all. Even if I ask for the earliest possible arrival and for all possible alternatives, and specify that I'm willing to use a combination of multiple airlines, none of them list any flights on this date arriving earlier than noon (Varig, via Sao Paulo). On some other dates, they find the Santiago connections arriving at 9:50 a.m., but none find the interline connections via Lima and Buenos Aires to LAN Peru (or Aero Continente ) and Aerolineas Argentinas that leave at 12:35 p.m. and arrive at 9:05 a.m.

So how did I find these flights? I looked in the Sabre computerized reservation system, one of the four such CRS's used by travel agents.

Savvy travellers are probably saying, "But doesn't the same company (Sabre Holdings) own both the Sabre CRS and Travelocity.com?" Yes, it does. But they provide different information to consumers on their Travelocity.com Web site than they do to travel agencies.

Why? Government regulation, or the lack thereof.

The CRS's were all originally developed and owned by individual airlines. After airline routes and fares were deregulated in the USA in 1978, there were repeated consumer and travel agent complaints that the airlines that owned the CRS's were using their oligopoly power to bias CRS displays against competing airlines, in restraint of trade. As a result, CRS regulations were adopted in the USA, Canada, and the European Union requiring the CRS's to provide travel agents with unbiased displays and rankings of flights on the basis of trip duration, price, arrival or departure time, or whatever other criteria a travel agent specifies in their query.

None of the big four global CRS's are owned by airlines any more, but they remain an oligopoly, and these regulations remain in force -- for the time being -- to ensure consumers access to competitive information. CRS's can't sell positioning or ranking in responses to travel agent queries.

When the CRS regulations were adopted, the World Wide Web didn't exist yet, and there was no way for CRS's to provide information directly to travellers. In the absence of regulations, retail travel agencies and Web sites -- including those like Travelocity.com that are owned by the CRS's -- are free to filter, rearrange, or sell positioning on their displays. And they do.

So Sabre is required to show the flight that arrives first, if a travel agent knows how to ask, but is free to show visitors to Travelocity.com a different flight, in response to the same request, if they think it more profitable to do so.

That's not in consumers' or travellers' interests, and the evidence of cases like this makes clear that the CRS regulations should be extended to cover the information CRS's provide directly to consumers, especially on their own Web sites.

Instead, ignoring the obvious reality of a continuing CRS oligopoly and its anti-consumer, anti-competitive implications, the USA Department of Transportation published a decision in January 2004 that will entirely repeal the CRS regulations in the USA, effective 31 July 2004, unless further action is taken by the DOT or Congress.

If this happens, CRS's will be free to give travel agents -- who pay them for access to a neutral information source -- the same biased and filtered information displays they now give retail consumers. Some travel agents will still want to serve as advocates for travellers against the interests of airlines, but they will no longer have the tools to be able to do so: the CRS's will be free to reinvent themselves as advertising, marketing, and "distribution" channels for airlines, rather than unbiased information utilities.

The bottom line is that in what government regulations in the USA require, for many travellers -- use of USA-based airlines, or those on which they have fraudulently put their flight numbers -- and what they no longer will require -- unbiased information provided to travel agents by the CRS oligopoly -- those rules are depriving consumers and travellers of the best choices and information, in order to advance the interests of USA-based airlines.

The impending "sunset" of the CRS regulations is a disaster for consumers. It's the inevitable result of a regulatory process in which the primary participants were lobbyists for the economic interests of different segments of the travel industry, and the politicians who should have been watching out for the interests of the travelling public abdicated that responsibility.

See you next week in Uruguay. Maybe we'll have time for dinner in Montevideo, instead of just running through, or taking a bus out of town directly from the airport. One of the best meals in my life was at just this time last year, at the restaurant El Palenque , in the Mercado del Puerto , while waiting for the high-speed ferry to Buenos Aires to depart from the terminal across the road. At Uruguayan prices, it was a lavish feast that the teams in "The Amazing Race" could easily afford on what's left of the US$97.23 per couple they were given at the starting line. And there's plenty more to see and do there. But I've got to go now -- I've got an instant message from Argentina.

(If you missed it, the first episode of "The Amazing Race 5" will be re-broadcast in the USA on CBS this Saturday night from 8-9:30 p.m. EDT/PDT, 7-8:30 CDT/MDT.)

Security expert criticizes US-VISIT

US-VISIT Is No Bargain
(Bruce Schneier, eWeek, 5 July 2004)

The contract for the next phase of the US-VISIT program costs $15 billion . It also has other costs: convenience, privacy, civil liberties and distraction from the greater danger of other terrorist threats. Despite its costs, US-VISIT doesn't offer us much security in return....

Eyewitness to the final episode of "The Amazing Race 5"

If you aren't off travelling yourself (and maybe if you are), it's time for a summer of armchair travel around the world:

Broadcasts in the USA of the latest season of the CBS reality-TV show about around-the-world travel, The Amazing Race 5 , start Tuesday (tomorrow), 6 July 2004, at 9:30 p.m. EDT/PDT, 8:30 p.m. CDT/MDT, with the final episode tentatively scheduled for broadcast 21 September 2004. Canadian broadcasts will (mostly) be on the same days; broadcast schedules in other countries vary. (Some countries are several seasons behind.) Enjoy, learn -- and get inspired to travel!

Once again, of course, I'll be filing weekly columns the morning after each episode is broadcast (with the possible exception of a couple of weeks in the middle when I may be travelling outside the broadcast area and/or out of Internet connectivity).

This season CBS, for reasons that remain a mystery to me, put out press releases listing the locations of all the pit stops where the race stops. But don't worry: I think guessing where the racers are going is part of the fun, and I won't spoil it for you. If you really want to know, you can find listings elsewhere on the Internet, but you'll also find some extremely detailed and credible-seeming, but false, rumors and mistaken reports of sightings in places the race didn't go.

How do I know? I've got the scoop. One of my correspondents sent me an exclusive account of part of the final leg of the race, along with clearly recognizable photos of the final three teams.

No, I'm not going to tell you who they are now, and I'm not going to post the photos until the final week of the race. [14 September 2004: I've now posted the photos here and in more detail here.] Keep your own eyes peeled: "The Amazing Race 6" is being filmed this summer, for broadcast in a new time slot on Saturday night this fall, so now is the time to be watching for the yellow-and red flags wherever you go, especially around airports. But to tease you, and get you thinking about what it must really be like when the race comes through, here's what it was like for one eyewitness:

Finding a parking spot along our main street is always difficult. When one becomes available, locals are quick to grab it. When there's two or more empty spots in a row, you know something's going on -- either town operations is hanging Christmas lights or there's a film crew in town. On a recent day I spotted a row of empty spaces. It was after December, so it wasn't the Christmas lights scenario, and the only film crew in town I knew of had just finished shooting, so I was intrigued. The most obvious thing about the shoot was what wasn't in town -- the big rental trucks, the satellitte dishes, the change trailers, and frantic crew running around with cell phones stuck to their ears.

Two things about a guy leaning against a shop window caught my eye. Firstly, it was a cold day and he was outside reading the paper. Secondly, no one takes that long to read the local paper. I wandered over and asked him directions. He said he was from out of town, on vacation from California. With a walkie-talkie in his top pocket? Not likely, I thought.

I'd found out that filming was to be done in two locations. One was along the main street, the second in a parking lot by the river. I had no idea how soon the action would start, but it was obvious the downtown stop would be a quick one, and the main event would be out of sight of the public. I went home, changed into an outfit that screamed "tourist", bought a disposable
camera to complete the look, and headed off to the second filming site.

All entrances were manned by official security, so I disappeared into the woods and "accidentally" emerged in the middle a film crew preparing for the shoot. I ignored the spectacle and casually wandered along the riverbank, taking my first ever pictures with a disposable camera. A plain-clothes security guy wandered over, seemingly unconcerned, and asked what I was doing. After telling him I was on my honeymoon and how beautiful the river was, and that I was waiting for the sun to come out to take a photo, he wished me well. I asked what was going on, and he said they were filming a documentary, and that I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the set.

I had no idea how long until filming would begin, but I realized I had a unique opportunity to watch the action if I was in the right place and if I was cautious. It was cold, snow was beginning to fall, and the light was fading. It was time to get serious. I returned home, changed into some practical winter clothes, and loaded up my regular camera with fast film and a 600mm lens.

Two big black SUVs with rental plates greeted me in an otherwise empty parking lot across the river from the film site. I parked up the hill and slipped into the woods. High above, I could hear voices of what was obviously security, not allowing anyone to stop along a short stretch of road. By this time I had arrived at a narrow ridge, from where the entire filming set was laid out below and across the river. I snapped a few shots, then decided to move a little further along, where the brush was thicker. Even though my angle for watching the action was perfect, it hadn't crossed my mind there'd be a camera set up on "my" side of the river, but there it was, with two cameramen, a stone's throw from my own vantage point. I quietly retreated to my original spot. Over the next hour, there was little action across the river -- just an occasional crew member checking equipment, the supporting cast milling around a fire in traditional dress, and the crackle of walkie-talkies as the security guys above me patrolled the road.

Finally, a black SUV with tinted windows pulled up, with two well dressed guys jumping out and barking orders. Three teams of two arrived in quick succession, with one member of each team working on a challenge under the watchful eye of locals with thousands of years experience at the task. Each team was followed by separate film crews, getting up close and personal to capture the struggle, then panning out to capture tethered horses that were no more than props, benches covered in sheets to keep the wilderness look, and across the river to where I was hidden away. And then it was over. It was getting dark and I couldn't see who was who as the six competitors and 30-odd crew seemed to be casually mingling.

The entire parking lot was empty within an hour. I'd heard the nearby cameramen pack up long ago, so I headed back up the hill to my vehicle, chilled to the bone, but with two rolls of film to be developed and the satisfaction of having watched reality TV firsthand.

Photos of the season finale

More on the season finale

The Practical Nomad columns on The Amazing Race 5

Complete index of columns on all seasons of The Amazing Race

"It's still a wonderful world."

The World Beckons, and American Travelers Can't Resist
Jane Engle and Christopher Reynolds, Los Angeles Times, Sunday, 4 July 2004
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In a turnaround from the travel slump after 9/11, overseas bookings and passport applications have surged this year....

Facing war, scorn, terrorism, a tentative economy, a weak dollar and daunting transatlantic fares, hundreds of thousands of American tourists have come to a resounding conclusion this summer: They don't care.

They're going on vacation, and they're going overseas, in numbers not seen for years. By every major measure and against indicators that would suggest a different picture, U.S. leisure travel abroad is surging.....

The decision to travel means "people are coming to their senses," said Edward Hasbrouck, who holds the title of "travel guru" at San Francisco-based travel agency Airtreks.com and is the author of "The Practical Nomad," on around-the-world travel.

"They may be skeptical the first time someone says, 'You can go to places where the American government is unpopular,' " Hasbrouck said. "But the 10th or the 50th time they hear, they finally begin to believe. The word's getting out: It's still a wonderful world."

Weather Forecast for Thursday: Tea in Boston Harbor

The Boston Globe reported yesterday on growing protests and threatened lawsuits against the MBTA's plans (already at least partially in effect, according to some reports) for "random" stops, searches, and demands for identification credentials on transit vehicles and in stations.

The Globe also had a wishy-washy editorial, Searching Questions , endorsing an increase in "security" during the Democratic Party convention. But the DNC is just the sort of event during which, the naively conservative Constitutionalist might imagine, the First Amendment "right of the people... peacably to assemble" would be most powerfully at issue.

I don't think that's the Bostonians feel about their heritage of fighting for freedom. What comes next: checkpoints for pedestrians on the Freedom Trail?

T officials still say the stop and search policies are not open for public debate. So the public comment period at the start of the next MBTA Board of Directors meeting this Thursday, 8 July 2004 (1:00 p.m., 10 Park Plaza, 3rd floor board room) should be interesting.

Perhaps it's time for patriots to throw the "T" into the harbor.

Will the USA reinstate a military draft?

If you read this article in today's New York Times , you should also read this .

The erroneous (but so taken for granted as to be unstated) assumptions behind the Times story, and many similar ones, are that:

1. The only threat of a draft is of a general draft of young people for unskilled cannon fodder.
   In reality, even mouthpieces for the Selective Service System say that a special-skills draft, starting with physicians and other health care workers including men and women of a wide range of ages is the most likely form of draft, and would be called for much sooner than a general draft. (I've also pointed this out to the authors of the urban legends Web page on the draft, which was cited in a Usenet reply to one of my earlier posts on this topic.)
2. Whether there will be a draft is a decision for Selective Service or the Congress.
   In reality, the SS has no role in the decision -- their job is to carry out the draft, once it is ordered, not to recommend whether or when to do so. Only Congress could authorize the draft, and they aren't going to unless and until the military says it's necessary. So the question should be, "How soon will the Pentagon decide they need a draft to get enough doctors?" Even that misses a critical historical lesson: Whether there will be a draft will be determined by whether draftees submit. The reason we don't have a draft today, almost a quarter-century after the reinstatement of draft registration in 1980, is the sustained and ongoing, spontaneous and unorganized, individual noncompliance with draft registration.

Ultimately, the fate of the draft rests with those who would be drafted. It's what Dave Dellinger was talking about when he titled one of his books, "More Power Than We Know". If large enough numbers of draftees don't step forward when called, only a police state, and maybe not even that, can make them.

You have other choices . Don't go.

Privacy and Human Rights

I've posted a draft of a new section on Travel Privacy that I've been asked to contribute for the Privacy and Human Rights 2004 annual international survey of privacy law and developments. (Here's the 2003 edition .) Comments are welcome, as always.

[Addendum, 13 December 2004: Here's the final version as published, incorporating editiorial changes and corrections as well as additional contributions from other authors.]

"Flight Risk" Friday on KPFA Morning Show

I'll be making a brief appearance tomorrow morning (Friday, 2 July 2004) sometime between 7:30 and 7:50 a.m. PDT (15:30-15:50 UTC/GMT) on The Morning Show on KPFA , 94.1 FM in Berkeley, CA. For those outside the broadcast area, there's real-time streaming audio and archived audio files . I'll be on along with Michael Scherer, Washington correspondent for Mother Jones and author of the article Flight Risk about the relationship between the TSA and the airlines in the July/August 2004 issue.