The weaponization of travel blacklists

https://papersplease.org/wp/2025/10/06/the-weaponization-of-travel-blacklists/

by throw7 • 10 months ago

159 65 10 months ago

axus• 10 months ago

"The Quiet Skies program was ended in June 2025 by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noehm. The same day as the Senate hearing on Quiet Skies last week, the TSA announced that Secretary Noehm was firing five senior TSA officials associated with the Quite Skies program, including the TSA’s executive assistant administrator for operations support and the deputy assistant administrator for intelligence and analysis."

Credit where credit is due!

josefritzishere• 10 months ago

Spying on people using DHS and ICE resources or Palantier isn't better on using the TSA. It's all the same.

KPGv2• 10 months ago

Spying on people using DHS and ICE resources or Palantier isn't better on using the TSA. It's all the same.

You're right, but not for the reason you think. TSA is part of DHS, so it's a tautology.

ls612• 10 months ago

Doing one wrong thing is better than doing two. You can oppose the Trump administration immigration policy and this sort of TSA abuse and celebrate one of them ending.

blurbleblurble8• 10 months ago

Absolutely not. These jerks are very clearly posturing to consolidate all the power into ICE and private contractors to punish political and ideological opposition to their little ethnic nationalism project.

She gets credit for being complicit in a violent overthrow of the Democratic government of the united States.

Go read the latest national security memo and ask yourself, if they carry that through as written will you feel safe to show up at the airport?

bilbo0s3• 10 months ago

I don't know about the violent overthrow stuff, but you're absolutely right about the simple consolidation of Constitutional violations with respect to travel into FBI and ICE. But that's how politics work, if you wave around a shiny bauble above your head in your right hand, most people are wayyy too slow to remember to look at what you're doing under the table with your left hand. I think that's the dynamic that the original comment is evidence of.

nokun7• 10 months ago

She gets credit for being complicit in a violent overthrow of the Democratic government of the united States.

Care to elaborate what is this in reference to? Especially the "violent" part. Please do not simply link to some news article in your response.

causal• 10 months ago

I mean that's the narrative but can you provide any evidence this is happening with the Quiet Skies program?

themgt• 10 months ago

I'm going to take the bold stance that the executive putting their political opponents on a TSA watchlist is bad, regardless of which party is doing it.

JuniperMesos• 10 months ago

ICE has extremely little power to punish people who are citizens of the united states, something not true of the TSA. If the federal government consolidates power in ICE and private contractors for ICE, then this is likely marginally better for US citizens than the status quo.

efitz2• 10 months ago

Are you so nakedly partisan that you can’t accept a win at face value?

Gabbard et al were targeted by Quiet Skies. It was mentioned many times during the campaign and during the administration. I don’t think Noem is Machiavelli; the administration clearly signaled an intent to end this and it doesn’t surprise me that they did so and I think there were valid reasons given and I accept that anything politicians do may ALSO have a political goal in mind but doesn’t make their stated reasons insincere.

notanastronaut• 10 months ago

"News reports, presumably based on DHS statements, described Quiet Skies as a 'Biden-era' program even though its largest expansion came in 2018 during the first Trump administration."

More like we're lucky that in blind fury they lashed out and actually crumbled something that was terrible to begin with. A broken clock and all that.

bilbo0s3• 10 months ago

I'm sorry. Just to be clear..

You do realize, do you not, that the US travel blacklist is now maintained by TSC instead of being a major feature of TSA right?

I mean you don't actually believe we would get rid of that function do you?

mdhb• 10 months ago

A real “at least hitler made the trains run on time” moment.

IAmBroom• 10 months ago

Technically, that was Mussolini. Who didn't even do that.

Hitler's only contribution was killing the great-great-great-grandfather of the time machine, assuring his own birth, but also preventing the worst tourist industry ever developed.

Georgelemental• 10 months ago

Republican elected officials and members of the present admin, e.g. Tulsi Gabbard, were targeted by the program under Biden. So they had a personal grudge

lostdog2• 10 months ago

Is there a source for this or did you just make it up?

commandlinefan• 10 months ago

Saw that coming 20 years ago...

sixothree• 10 months ago

Sad that the things happening today we were warned could happen. The future of this country does not look good.

delichon• 10 months ago

  And the TSA and DHS have consistently asserted authority and exercised power — legally or not — to blacklist and surveil travelers without needing any suspicion of criminality.

So the surveillance is a 4th amendment search violation and the blacklist is a 5th amendment due process violation. It would be nice to have a government agency to enforce those. And an electorate that cares about them.

beej71• 10 months ago

No shit. I'm tired of this race to give up our Constitutional freedoms as quickly as possible.

Simulacra• 10 months ago

It's hard enough to get police departments to stop pulling people over on the side of the road and literally stealing their money, devices, or anything of value under the ridiculous concept of "civil forfeiture".

ianferrel3• 10 months ago

Surveillance in a public space is not a 4th Amendment search violation. The police are allowed to follow people around in public and note what they do without any kind of warrant. I'm fairly sure anyone is allowed to do this.

trhway2• 10 months ago

Somehow government made distinction between a machine gun and a rifle in the context of 2nd Amendment, even though they are really the same thing in principle.

Paradoxically, the same government fails to see the same distinction between an individual police officer following a person and a mass scale surveillance using electronic cameras everywhere with automated computer image analysis (the "machine gun" of 4th Amendment).

praptak• 10 months ago

Osama bin Laden couldn't have dreamt of these far reaching effects of 9/11.

gretch• 10 months ago

This isn't actually because of 9/11.

For the politicians who are putting this structure into place, 9/11 is a convenient excuse to pin all of this on.

But in reality if 9/11 didn't happen, then any myriad of other things would be used in it's place to justify this.

Just look at things like the chat control proposal in the EU. Which "9/11" is that based on? None, and they don't need one.

huem0n• 10 months ago

With context (e.g. no due process) those logs are chilling

redacted ate sandwich
redacted and UNK1 purchased head phones
redacted and UNK1 used their phones to scroll through news
UNK1 opened settings app and top of phone showed 'redacted iPhone'

All that work being done manually is one thing -- it would be limited to high profile targets. But with AI, its concerning that this kind of detailed transcript could be scaled to mass surveillance.

briandw• 10 months ago

Travel blacklists have always been a weapon. It’s like saying the weaponization of firearms.

metalman• 10 months ago

first class, is the new second class, anybody worth anything flys private, ie: if you have a ticket, you are on the list that way, further restrictions may apply. at this point it would take an very special and exceptional circumstance to prompt me to fly internationaly

eyeundersand• 10 months ago

Off topic but can anyone tell me why the [sic] in 'The Quiet Skies [sic] program assigned officers from the Federal Air Marshals Service ...'?

Also see numerous typos in the article, including a mention of 'Quite Skies'.

efitz2• 10 months ago

I’m flagging this post; the discussion went off the rails. I don’t understand how “government ends dubiously legal program that was abused and weaponized” can in any way be perceived as tyrannical.

phendrenad23• 10 months ago

It's HN, what do you expect. More than half the people here are (probably) the ones who put in black masks and swing bats at people.

ianferrel3• 10 months ago

I'm a little confused by this article. It is facially opposed to extrajudicial blacklists, which, sure, I'm 100% on board with. Those are civil rights violations.

But it seems to spend most of its time and evidence on what seem to me to be totally fine surveillance. It's not a 4th amendment violation for a police officer to be in a public place and pay attention to the public movements of suspects. You don't need a search warrant to write down "so and so went to the bathroom" You don't even need any police powers. I'm pretty sure any random person could make a log of what they can see someone on an airplane they were on did during the flight. What abuse of power is supposed to be involved here?

jasonm23• 10 months ago

as if they weren't always a weapon.

The weaponization of travel blacklists

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