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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 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.
More likely your browser was pre-fetching search results and one of your search results was on a dhs.gov web page.
well you might also find your FBI record interesting as well.
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 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."
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
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
The TSA does more than check passengers for box cutters. This incident (besides being anecdotal) says nothing about the TSA, other than that one TSA agent is not a droid and used some common sense. As many have pointed out, the era of small melee weapons being effective hijacking tools is over. Seriously, what do you think would happen if someone pulled out a pair of scissors and said "this is a hijacking"? Remember Richard Reid, the "Shoe Bomber?" They had that fucker hogtied and sedated within minutes of smelling a burning match. The 9-11 attacks were only successful because the "aircraft suicide bomb" gambit had never been done before and people were conditioned to go along with hijackers and wait it out.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Meh. Vegetarians are murderers and those populist vegans are a sell out. I'm a seventh-level vegan.
I don't eat anything that casts a shadow.
------
beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
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."
dhs.org is a dns redirector. I have an account with them.
LOL i actually got asked once if i worked for DHS when i provided someone with an email address using that redirector. I've had the account with them long before the DHS office ever existed.
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.
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.
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.
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
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."
Schnitzel is an Austrian dish, not German.
Just an FYI.
So was Hitler, so I think it's kind of appropriate.
The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I figure one of these days I'll just get the data from a disc left on a train seat next to me. Won't have to pay anything for it.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.