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A Peek At DHS's Files On You
kenblakely writes "We've known for a while that the Department of Homeland Security was collecting travel records on those who cross US borders, but now you can see it for yourself. A Freedom of Information Act request got this blogger a look at DHS's file on his travels. Pretty comprehensive — all the way down to the IP address of the host he used to make a reservation."
All your data are belong to us!
I'd be interesting to see what it says since I've moved to the UK. I'll do it after my citizenship to see if that makes it on there.
I once worked at a bank/wealth management type office. I noticed once that my google queries were accessing "dhs.gov" (Didn't even know what it stood for at the time.) I wonder if it was because it was a bank and all transactions are logged, or that maybe the previous google search for "Saturn V rocket plans", that I had done, based on a claim by a co-worker that NASA had lost this information, might have triggered this.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
So, it is supposed to be tracking the travelers but S^HDHS
is getting IP address information when a flight is booked.
So, if the traveler cancels, what was the point of getting the IP?
And if the traveler had a travel agent book the flights, how
would having their IP help?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I wish they would also track credit card spending in the same file.
Perhaps I could then just forward the DHS records for my travel expense reports.
Nullius in verba
It's a shame he didn't explain how much identification was required to request this information and how well that identification was checked. I imagine ex-spouses and employers would love a list of where you've traveled and who paid for the ticket.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Officials use the information to prevent terrorism, acts of organized crime, and other illegal activity.
Does the DHS have even one documented case of this information preventing said activity? Maybe I'm setting myself up in the wrong way here, but AFAIK, the DHS and TSA combined have never thwarted a terrorist attack or busted the mafia. Perhaps they've used to convict people of violating those administrative rules which no one is allowed to see, but I'm not aware of any evidence which suggests this information actually prevented terrorism or organized crime.
I mean sure, the FBI has busted criminals, but with regular gumshoe detective work.
With journalists like these, who needs a terrorist?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I'm curious whether the amount of detail in the record is gonna skyrocket because he dared to check the records or if it will stay roughly the same. If the DHS were afraid of bad publicity it might decrease, but we know they're way beyond that.
I was curious to see what was in my file, as I've had a devil of a time trying to come up with my travel via stamps in the passport. The airlines were not helpful past 2005. I sent in for mine, based on the notes in that article, like this...
and addressed to
Freedom of Information Act Request
U.S. Customs Service
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
Washington DC 20229
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I remember an episode of Law and Order: SVU from last year where Richard Belzer's character requests his own file under FOIA. He's telling them where they can park the trucks to deliver it, but he's sorely disappointed when he gets his file and it only contains a single sheet of paper. The writers of the show must be Douglas Adams fans, cause the paper said something fairly equivalent to "Mostly harmless." Belzer's character complained about this, along the lines of "But I was a violent revolutionary!"
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I wonder if by chance they keep track of what meal you request. Well maybe not, since airlines do not offer a Muslim meal AFAIK. The day they start though, I bet you they will keep track of that request.
I believe I read somewhere that there are, at any given moment, 60,000 people in the air over the United States alone. That's a tremendous amount of information and more accumulates every day, so much that I cannot imagine how anybody or any software could sift through all of it effectively.
Let's say the traveler cancels at the last minute, and the plane blows up. They go check it out, because maybe he/she was tipped off by a friend not to get on the plane.
I knew a guy who was supposed to be on flight 800 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800) but that morning he fell down carrying his metal trash down the stairs and injured himself. He went to the hospital and was OK but he had missed the flight. The next day the FBI came over and wanted to know why he had not been on the plane. He had to convince them that he had gone to the hospital. They went and checked out his story.
"Piter, too, is dead."
To get them to start a record on you. Begin record: "Subject requests non-existent record of self, begin monitoring immediately after non-record is given."
It can be really difficult to deturmine exactly what any action "prohibits" unless you've got a lot of data where you can at least begin establish corelational data between TSA/DHS and airbore terrorist attacks. This is kind of difficult to do when you only have one, or a small handful of this sort of thing happening ever to compare against. Since the mandate is "Don't let terrorists blow up our planes" we won't know if it is working until we either catch a terrorist with a bomb on a plane or attempting to board a plane and stop him or we have enough data to deturmine there is a marked-drop in attempted attacks; which I see as being difficult to come up with because I don't think there are that many, and even if there is, so few have been successful you're going to get a lot of new arrests due to increased enforcement, but never have anyway of truly knowing what the individuals intent was for comparison to historical data. If terrorists were regularly blowing up 1 per 1000 flights and after the advent of the TSA the rate dropped to 1 per 1 000 000 or rose to 1 per 10 flights, you'd be able to say they that something is making terrorism easier/more difficult. Just like the bank... if it has only been robbed one time and that was in 1957, it is hard to say if the additional gaurd is the factor that has caused it to not be robbed in 2008.
One DHS program (US Border & Customs) could more redily be tested for effectiveness in how it alters illegal immigration or the transfer of illegal and or dangerous materials into or out of the country (e.g. # attempting to enter, vs those stopped, percentage over time.)
Granted, I don't find the TSA extremely effective per-se, as they let a caught a relative with a pair of 4" scissors who accidentally left them in her sewing bag, but then let her on the plane with them anyway; but it is a stretch to say authoritatively what the real threat has ever been over time. Than also being said, it is more of a mater of personal philosophy if their level of interference, data collection, etc... has been worth the hastle and invasion of privacy that is worth the risk they may/may not have reduced if it could be numericly deturmined. Some would say that no amount of privacy violation is worth total loss of all aircraft and some would say the book is open if it has the potential to save one aircraft; and I'd say most folks are somewhere in the middle.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
old news.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
The obvious question is: does requesting your own info raise a red flag? Common sense says that it shouldn't, given that people who want to cause trouble would rather not raise their profile. That doesn't mean that's the actual policy.
If requesting your records does raise a red flag, there's a simple, yet perhaps difficult to coordinate workaround: have enough people request theirs that the mere act of requesting it does not signal anything. This has the unfortunate side effect of, as TFA states, simply costing taxpayers more in the end. Perhaps a better solution is to write your lawmaker to support legislation which limits the data retention times and provides funding for proper security of the data.
.
Obviously, the $50 is payment that is passed onto the p0rn companies as the agents 'need' to fully and completely check out your weblinks.
The person made his request under FOIA. That was not the best vehicle for this.
A much better law to use to get information about yourself is the Privacy Act.
The two laws have confusingly similar numbers: 5 USC 552 for FOIA and 5 USC 552a for the Privacy Act.
The Privacy Act is a much bigger hammer for getting information about yourself. Agencies have many fewer excuses and the deadlines are far shorter. And agencies generally can't make you pay for you to get their information about you.
Yes, the Privacy Act has many loopholes, but they are much fewer than those in FOIA.
So, if people are going to do this they should make sure that they make their request under the Privacy Act. They can still use FOIA, but they should do so under a separate cover because the agencies will intentionally conflate the two laws so that they can avoid fully complying with either.
See: http://www.cavebear.com/archive/nsf-dns/laws.htm
This info is available to any airlines ticket agent at the check-in counter.
Nothing to see here folks move along.
Don't make a mountain out of a mole hill.
Interesting to see what's there.
A few years ago, though, I started to wonder -- why do we seem to be concerned when the government has detailed information about us, but not when business does?
Your bank probably says they'll only share your information with related companies... but they carefully don't say what counts as "related"...
Was there anything in those records, I wonder, that the airline didn't know, or the credit card company?
I love the timing. The Series Premiere for the new ABC reality show "Homeland Security USA" is tonight. I don't think I'll be watching it, but I have to laugh everytime I see the commercials for it. Maybe its just because when I think of Homeland security I think of the TSA people harassing me at at the airport or the "We have randomly searched your bag for your own protection" letters I find in my luggage occasionally when I fly.
I mean, you don't know who is seeing your files.
Do you trust every gov employee who has access to your data not to pass a few important bits of information to some unscrupulous people?
It looks like some Credit card number is grayed out.
You'd never be able to trace it back to it's source.
Also is it possible to use the freedom of Information act to see other people files?
I can imagine what a violation of my privacy that would be.
It's interesting the IP address doesn't have a time/data stamp. So for Dynamic IP's it's not going to be that useful in tracing down to an exact street address where you were at the time.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
The billions of dollars spent on the security theater we put up with at airports would buy a hell of a lot of good old-fashioned counterintelligence work, infiltrating organizations that mean to do us harm. The idea that a perp won't go through with an attack if you just suck down a couple more terabytes of data and feel up every woman in the security line is nothing but fantasy.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If there is one reason I can't wait 'till January 21st, it is the reinstatement of the Godwin's Law:
With Bush in power the law got suspended and it got most fashionable to compare American Government with 3rd Reich — instead of losing the argument instantly, one gets a +5 moderation...
Not after the upcoming inauguration, one Hopes.
Does anyone have records of Gestapo mailing a German a copy of their file on them? Oh, never mind...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There is a saying, that a married man need not remember his mistakes — his wife will always remind him.
Similarly, there is, it seems, hardly a need to maintain one's own travel records (such as for tax purposes) as the Government will always be ready to mail a neat envelope with 20 copies...
The only offensive part here is that although — according to TFA: "Since 2002, the government has mandated that the commercial airlines deliver this information routinely and electronically " (emphasis mine), the records aren't delivered to the citizens neither routinely (only upon request), nor electronically (20 copies by mail?). Oh, and the request, apparently, needs to be filed on bad old paper.
Time for FOIA-2.0...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
what with 9-11 and all. But the Administration got all of this in place so fast it almost appears they already had plans to make America a prison colony. Sorta like Australia. 9-11 just gave them an excuse to push up the timetable.
America always seems to pull back from the brink, but in order to do that they always have to go there. I'd like to see a graph of the number of police shootings of unarmed civilians plotted against elapsed time since 9-11.
So, it is supposed to be tracking the travelers but S^HDHS is getting IP address information when a flight is booked.
Actually, what I want to know is why they are bothering to track the IP but not the time that the tickets were bought? If the time of purchase was tracked I don't see it on any of these papers. Isn't knowing the IP without knowing the time that the user was using that IP (remember dynamic IPs are the norm) kind of useless?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Let's say the traveler cancels at the last minute, and the plane blows up. They go check it out, because maybe he/she was tipped off by a friend not to get on the plane.
I knew a guy who was supposed to be on flight 800 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800) but that morning he fell down carrying his metal trash down the stairs and injured himself. He went to the hospital and was OK but he had missed the flight. The next day the FBI came over and wanted to know why he had not been on the plane. He had to convince them that he had gone to the hospital. They went and checked out his story.
yes but how would an IP address help?, an IP address barely corresponds to a nearby town, much less a person. I think their address/phone number would be alot more useful
"In two cases, the basic identifying information about my traveling companion (whose ticket was part of the same purchase as mine) was included in the file. Perhaps that information was included by mistake."
I don't think it is a fluke/mistake They want to know whom you travel with also... Is it someone of interest to the DHS?
Since the airlines stopped paying them, I don't think there are any more travel agents. At least I haven't heard of anyone using one in the last 6 years or so. I guess they might still exist, but you have to pay them for anything except cruise ships - I think they still get a commission on those.
Airfare? Last time was at least 2002, maybe before that.
From the Fine Article:
"An I.P. address is assigned to every computer on the Internet. Each time that computer sends an e-mailâ"or is used to make a purchase via a Web browserâ"it has to reveal its I.P. address, which tells its geographic location.
two things.
1.) Not every computer gets a public IP address. Most normal PCs just sit on a RFC1918 network, and usually the router gets the "public" IP. This can be one computer, or fifty.
2.) IP may equal the geographic location of your network, or it can be the location of a proxy, which can be anywhere.
This is the kind of thinking that leads to IP = smoking gun. And FWIW obtaining the IP of anyone is trivial if you really wanted to. This guy makes it sound like it's some secret "Where's Waldo's Network" game.
The entire point of bomb & drug dog training is to make them ignore the things that interest normal dogs (dogs of the opposite sex, food, dogs of the same sex, and people, generally in that order) and pay attention to the things that their trainers are interested in (high-nitrate compounds, processed coca leaves, or even DVDs).
If a detection dog is getting distracted by other scents while on duty, it calls into question whether or not they should be used as a cause for further investigation.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
This one is easy ...
Ever since the DHS has been setup, there are no terror attacks on the USA. So, obviously what the DHS is doing prevents terrorism.
Is is the same up here in Canada. We sprinkle black pepper on our lawns to prevent elephants from messing then up.
But there are no elephants in Canada you say? See, more proof that the black pepper works ...
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Those ip addresses seem like they would be from the web site not the end user.
Most online agencies would not be sending a user's ip address to the airline it's booking on or to anyone else.
With a search warrant an IP/timestanp leads to a specific real world address +- WiFi real quick.
Before everyone gets all tinfoily, this is merely a PNR (Passenger Name Record) from Continental Airlines reservation system (System One) made through their online website. Most employees at Continental would have access to this.
Its relatively easy to decode:
1 CO 40H 20JUN FR EWRFCO HK1 525P 745A 27B
1 -1st leg
40H -Flight number + ?
CO -Continental Airlines
20Jun -Departs June 20
EWRFCO -Flight is Newark to Rome
525P -Departs 5:25 pm
745A -Arrives 7:45 am
27B -Seat number
2 ARNK -ARrival uNKnown, means legs are not continuous
3 CO 103V 06JUL SU AMSEWR HK1 920A 1150A 27b
AMSEWR -Return flight is Amsterdam to Newark
IP Address stuck in case of credit card fraud.
Most airlines have something very similar that is created every time you make a reservation.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
yes but how would an IP address help?, an IP address barely corresponds to a nearby town, much less a person. I think their address/phone number would be alot more useful
I guess they note the IP just in case they get something like the httpd logs from forums.terroristsr.us [1], and they can just correlate posts about waging holy jihad on the infadels against recent travellers.
Of course, they don't need the httpd logs, they can just just cross reference it with the NSA's records of who surfed where and when.
[1] heh, terroristsr.us looks like it doesn't exist, wonder how good it'd look as my email address on my CV[2]? At least if I get a job with that email address I know the employer has a sense of humour.
[2] Resume in en-US.
Car analogies break down.
an IP address barely corresponds to a nearby town, much less a person.
If we REALLY needed to get him, that would be close enough.
Not nessecarily, how do they know the person wasn't using tor or a proxy?
I thought about discussing the value of the information: not necessarily great. How ever an IP/timestamp does still lead to a specific real world location.
You would be surprised how much info companies have on you. Its always nice to have it explained, thanks.
-
it may lead to a real world location, but that may be thousands of miles away from the actual person
Sorry to say but it's really easy to bounce a connection through another IP, so that it appears to be the source. Of course that does give them the relay location. My point is that can be significantly further than +- WiFi.
Those who can, do.
All the guy discovered is that homeland security had a copy of his plane reservation. It's hardly unusual for companies accepting online transactions to record the client IP address. That information just happened to be embedded in the airline reservation info.
homeland security didn't have spooks sniffing this guy's network, they just have a copy of the reservation that the airline gave them. If you look at your airline ticket stub, I suspect you'll see pretty much the same glob of data.
The DHS and the Patriot act, both unconstitutional, were created trough the use of FUD by the Republicrats and Democans. The Republicrats and Democans both feel the constitution is nothing more than a "God damned piece of paper." This is another reason people should vote Libertarian.
-Bob Robertson
There may be people who cancelled their terrorism
because the security looked too difficult to defeat.
Security theater isn't without value.
That's it - so much of this "information" is merely digital detritus that means nothing. What they have effectively done is set up an entire agency that does exactly what the schmuck in the cube next to you does - gives people the perception he is working by pointing to the growing mound of crap on his desk, but produces absolutely nothing of value.
Suppose you go make a reservation on an airplane, from an IP address that is currently mapped to tor.
If you were in the FBI, would that be a flag for you to dig deeper?
What if you made a reservation on an airplane, from an IP address that is currently coming from a proxy.
You get the idea.
Is there a way to get the mac address of the pc if it connects to a commercial wifi service (like Hotspot, for example?) Would Dell, HP, ASUS or any other identify the purchaser of a specific mac address owner?
There are many ways to find out who is who if you are the government and you tap the internet tubes, and you have secret rooms in the communication companie's headquarters, and you know what you are doing, and the NSA is helping you out.
I know I would be digging for that sort of stuff if it was my job.
"Piter, too, is dead."
I made a FIOA request back in early 2002. There were two priorities; standard and high priority. I chose standard or fossil. A year later 2003 I received a letter saying my request was in the system and was a normal request. That letter also provided a case number. So 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 nothing?
Who else out there has done an FIOA? What was your result? What was your interaction?
Thanks,
Jim
Schnitzel is an Austrian dish, not German.
Just an FYI.
Now write 10 times. FOIA FOIA FOIA FOIA FOIA FOIA FOIA FOIA FOIA FOIA. Now the fingers have it.
I know why you messed up. My dad used to occasionally get wrong numbers in our college town. He would always reply. "I'm sorry you got the wrong number, the number you dialed is 903-886-1234. Thank you.". This would "teach" the person to always call dad. It was the funniest and annoying thing at the same time.
Thanks ryanov!
Jim
The copy of the first doc he shows, is a PNR. There is all kind of info in a PNR, and until VERY recently there was even the credit card and in some case expiry date and auth code. Thankfully I think msot system switched to X everything except the last 5 digits. But don#t worry we still get the auth code and expiry date and credit card number in the ticket themselves, as many firm are not PCI DSS compliant. But my main point is that it is the airline in the first place which save all that crap in a PNR. Same for history. Some of the blacked out info are airline stuff like PNR number, and PNR system. Bottom line the airline jsut give a full 100% access to the DHS. Sure the DHS scrap everything they find. But if the airline did not save that much crap to begin with in the PNR, the problem would not be there.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
My airline can prevent me from getting to my vacation paradise, but it can't throw me in jail. I can turn around and walk out of the airport, and all it'll cost me is the money I spent on my tickets.
My bank may be able to have me thrown out of my house (actually, it's the bank's house, but they let me live in it while I'm paying my debt to the bank), but it can't have me indefinitely detained in someone else's house.
Finally, if my airline does that to me often enough, I can take my business to another bank. If my bank withdraws my line of credit, I can take my business to another bank. Americans (and this is an American thread) have no recourse against their government -- even moving to another country and renouncing citizenship means they're still taxed on their world income and subject to criminal sanctions if they don't file, every year, for the rest of their lives. Google "expatriation tax"; it was tightened just a few months before the economy collapsed in mid-2008 with bipartisan support, via the usual technique of tacking it onto some bill for Veterans' benefits or some other popular cause.
If you're an American, and you don't like the way your government provides its services, it's illegal to take your business to a competing provider of government services. You can work for any employer you like. You can fly any airline you like. You can bank anywhere you like. But you can't just take your business to another government, ever.
I find this interesting because whilst I've never suffered further questioning entering the US (it's been generally no different to anywhere else bar the fingerprint/retina scan) I did have major problems in Canada once.
The first time I ever visited I flew from Manchester UK to Philadelphia US to Ottawa. When I arrived and went through the first customs and immigration stand and was asked only a couple of simple questions (Purpose of being there etc.) and despite me answering them truthfully and as I have on many other trips I was for some unknown reason sent to their customs/immigration office just past the initial customs/immigration barriers. Here I was asked the same questions again which I thought nothing of at first, but after I was asked these questions the customs girl went away and came back a few minutes later and started asking me more and more invasive questions (How much do you earn etc.), soon after she dissapeared again and brought forward her male superior who also asked me some questions. I was sent into the baggage check area to have everything checked thoroughly, I was taken into an interview room and interviewed somewhat more formally (recorded etc.), my laptop was checked over, they asked me to login so they could search through my files. I was asked about my criminal record of which I have none to which they responded with "You better not be lying as we can check" to which I responded "Sure thing, go for it". Some other choice questions that somewhat amused me were "How much money do you have in your bank account?", "Do you have a girlfriend or are you married?", "Do you plan on doing any work on holiday?" and perhaps the greatest of all, which I really actually had to try hard not to laugh at was from the girl who checked my bags in the bag check area after putting on latex gloves (it scared me at first until I realised it was just so she didn't contaminate any evidence if they were to find any), she asked "Do you have any beastiality images on your laptop or camera?"- I answered no because that was the truth to which she responded "Do you know what beastiality is?", I mean, how do you answer that? I just went with "Yes", at which point she moved on.
Eventually after 3 hours they let me continue on to enjoy my holiday with a rather sour taste in my mouth regarding the start of my first ever visit there.
To this day I have absolutely no idea why I was pulled over but reading this article I wonder now if the officer at the initial desk had sent me into the immigration office on orders based on data that was sent beforehand and that perhaps there was something in this data they didn't like such as use of a public library IP for booking the tickets perhaps rather than my home IP as I was working in IT support at the time for libraries and had booked my tickets at work during lunch. A Canadian friend suggested it could be because the customs officials were French Canadian and just liked the idea of harassing a British citizen but I'd like to believe they're a little more professional than that.
Still, I really do not enjoy going through Canadian customs/immigration, they were far more invasive, far more harassing than the US and ironically even the Chinese border guards have ever been. That's not to say I don't love Canada as a nation (I try to visit on holiday at least once a year) but it is to say their customs/immigration folk seem more viscious little dictator wannabes than anywhere else I've been- even in times I've been since, where I haven't had this problem they often come across as rather nasty. At least the US border guys smile at you when they steal your biometrics and every other peice of information they can off of you.
In hindsight I feel I should've asked them to call the British embassy folk over and stand up to it a bit if they weren't going to tell me why they were being so invasive, but at the time when they also tell you if you don't comply (the worst part is I was complying, they just liked playing the tough guy/girl) with them you'll be on the next
You think like a ReThuglican Jew
Seems like they had the tools to do the job before 9/11 then huh? Wonder why they needed expanded tools?
I work for a web-based travel company. We log IP addresses as part of our regular process, not due to government mandate, but because we're a web company, it would be rather stupid of us to _not_ ever log IP addresses, just for general site security and bot-banning purposes.
If the government required us to hand over logs, our logs would include the I.P. address. This should not be surprising to anyone.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I'd rather have some bureaucrat who is accountable in SOME way scrutinizing my information than have a cartel of corporations allowed unfettered access to my every move, including remote penis measurements in the urinal, because libertarians only consider "government" to be worth of exclusion.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
It just takes one corrupt official to lose some files to "external agencies" and international travel is in danger.
The Doctrine of "Homeland Security" should be replaced by the Doctrine of *Citizen* Security.
What use is a safe America that loses citizens traveling abroad.
When American citizens travel all over the world, if their information is leaked by a corrupt employee who does not understand the implications of his actions, he cannot be sufficiently punished since he might just be a new recruit, out to make some cash. But if these files reach a few fanatics in the Middle East, all American citizens who travel abroad have great risks.
In the long term, this defeats the entire globalization movement.
Seriously, "Homeland Security" *must* be changed to "Citizen Security". This will also mean that the US cannot pick fights with countries that do not align to democratic principles. It's so much more of a foreign affairs problem the moment there's one data leak.
I think UK citizens' information has been lost accidentally quite a few times. Imagine the dangers of traveler information landing into the hands of those war-mongering Islamic fundamentalists.
Either stop collecting the data or ask everyone to collect data.
The latter is even more dangerous as it allows even less careful governments - that would mean a global underground market for people's personal information.
What if your medical records get into wrong hands?
What if your property records get into wrong hands?
What if the Govt of the nation you travel to demands access to your files and stores copies?
What if the regime there is toppled by some fundamentalist fanatical coup?
The DoHS cannot protect all governments, can it?
If you make data collection and distribution among Govt or secret services the norm, other nations are bound to ask for the data.
Does that not defeat the entire point?
Just how is this going to help business especially when corporate America needs more business, local and global?
US businessmen need a sense of protection before they travel to strike deals.
Is this not basic business sense?
I find it both hilarious and scary that a Gov't agency is stupid enough to redact ("black out") info with a marker. If you look at the scanned docs, you can CLEARLY see EXACTLY what was redacted (compare to "grayed out" areas done by author). Redaction should be done digitally to remove all traces. Incompetence, plain and simple. Sure makes you feel safe with your data in their hands.
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ has a nice introduction to what AC was talking about.
You think it's scary having the DHS have a crap load of paperwork on ya, what about when you ask and all you get back is "This Information is not available. Reason: Documents sealed as Classified."
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
You do realize corporations and limited liability companies are sheltered by the government, don't you? Without government involvement, corporations and limited liability companies could not exist. There are reasons corporate execs vote Republicrat or Democan and never Libertarian.
-bob
In Soviet America, DHS... awww.. ferget it. It's redundant.
.
- aqk
F U
This agency which has turned out to be worthless, no, make that negatively worth, harmed worth, ruined worth, ruined rights, ruined USA position in the world, and been basically a round embarrassment, ought to be dismantled. The icing on the cake is that the worst president in the history of history who was for smaller government & less spending bought this thing on a credit card swelling the government more.