9 ms·

The weaponization of travel blacklists

159 points by throw7 1y ago

axus 1y 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 1y ago
  Spying on people using DHS and ICE resources or Palantier isn't better on using the TSA. It's all the same.
  - KPGv2 1y 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 1y 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.
    - bilbo0s 1y ago
      Not if it didn't end. US travel blacklists are now maintained by the TSC at FBI. What the Trump admin did was political sleight of hand. Calculated specifically to please people who, because we make it intentionally complex, are unable to understand the full spectrum of our military, law enforcement, and intelligence infrastructure. Politically speaking, these kinds of people could be made to believe we got rid of travel blacklists. When in actuality, the lists today are even longer. Slightly off topic, but this is one of the primary reasons independents will never win an election by the way. The liberals and conservatives can always say, "you're lying", and it would take longer than the average voter is willing to pay attention for an independent explain why they're not lying.
    - coldtea 1y ago
      >Doing one wrong thing is better than doing two Depends on their respective impact.
- blurbleblurble 1y 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?
  - bilbo0s 1y 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.
    - blurbleblurble 1y ago
      Whole heartedly agree. The violent overthrow stuff is reference to current attempts to send the US military into blue states against court orders, to drum up the insurrection act, to the violent arrests of children in their underwear as a publicity stunt, to ICE officers / bounty hunters ramming cars into pedestrians without recourse, to the slamming of non-violent bystanders into the ground, arresting elected officials violently for no reason, to the psychological violence of the rhetoric being broadcast ("Russ Vought is the reaper") along with Stephen Miller's rhetoric in general but specifically about how many 10s of millions of people don't belong in this country in his mind. Brown people is who he's talking about. They want ethnic cleansing and are openly blatant about it if you open your ears to exactly what they're saying. Sure they'll also deny it at other times, opportunistically, but if you listen to what they're saying in full, not just to denials, they're spelling it out. Go listen to the leaked Russ Vought interview about his strategy and tell me that's not incredibly violent. Listen to Stephen Miller's rhetoric. These guys are itching to arrest elected officials and political critics, and to go as far as they can to hurt and punish people who push back against the state that they're hell bent on forcing into existence. If you haven't seen these things I urge you to pay attention.
- notanastronaut 1y 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.
- bilbo0s 1y 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 1y ago
  A real “at least hitler made the trains run on time” moment.
  - IAmBroom 1y 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 1y 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
  - lostdog 1y ago
    Is there a source for this or did you just make it up?
    - anonymousiam 1y ago
      https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/09/30/dhs-and-tsa-expose-targeting-political-opponents-former-biden https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/09/30/dhs-and-t...
      - lostdog 1y ago
        Your source is a press release by the Trump administration?
commandlinefan 1y ago
Saw that coming 20 years ago...
- sixothree 1y ago
  Sad that the things happening today we were warned could happen. The future of this country does not look good.
  - onetokeoverthe 1y ago
    [dead]
delichon 1y 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 1y ago
  No shit. I'm tired of this race to give up our Constitutional freedoms as quickly as possible.
  - boazi 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- Simulacra 1y 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".
- ianferrel 1y 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.
  - trhway 1y 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 1y ago
Osama bin Laden couldn't have dreamt of these far reaching effects of 9/11.
- gretch 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
Travel blacklists have always been a weapon. It’s like saying the weaponization of firearms.
metalman 1y 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
ihsw 1y ago
[dead]
eyeundersand 1y 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'.
efitz 1y 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.
- phendrenad2 1y 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.
ianferrel 1y 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 1y ago
as if they weren't always a weapon.

159 points by throw7 1y ago

axus 1y 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 1y ago
Spying on people using DHS and ICE resources or Palantier isn't better on using the TSA. It's all the same.
- KPGv2 1y 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 1y 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.
  - bilbo0s 1y ago
    Not if it didn't end. US travel blacklists are now maintained by the TSC at FBI. What the Trump admin did was political sleight of hand. Calculated specifically to please people who, because we make it intentionally complex, are unable to understand the full spectrum of our military, law enforcement, and intelligence infrastructure. Politically speaking, these kinds of people could be made to believe we got rid of travel blacklists. When in actuality, the lists today are even longer. Slightly off topic, but this is one of the primary reasons independents will never win an election by the way. The liberals and conservatives can always say, "you're lying", and it would take longer than the average voter is willing to pay attention for an independent explain why they're not lying.
  - coldtea 1y ago
    >Doing one wrong thing is better than doing two Depends on their respective impact.
blurbleblurble 1y 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?
- bilbo0s 1y 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.
  - blurbleblurble 1y ago
    Whole heartedly agree. The violent overthrow stuff is reference to current attempts to send the US military into blue states against court orders, to drum up the insurrection act, to the violent arrests of children in their underwear as a publicity stunt, to ICE officers / bounty hunters ramming cars into pedestrians without recourse, to the slamming of non-violent bystanders into the ground, arresting elected officials violently for no reason, to the psychological violence of the rhetoric being broadcast ("Russ Vought is the reaper") along with Stephen Miller's rhetoric in general but specifically about how many 10s of millions of people don't belong in this country in his mind. Brown people is who he's talking about. They want ethnic cleansing and are openly blatant about it if you open your ears to exactly what they're saying. Sure they'll also deny it at other times, opportunistically, but if you listen to what they're saying in full, not just to denials, they're spelling it out. Go listen to the leaked Russ Vought interview about his strategy and tell me that's not incredibly violent. Listen to Stephen Miller's rhetoric. These guys are itching to arrest elected officials and political critics, and to go as far as they can to hurt and punish people who push back against the state that they're hell bent on forcing into existence. If you haven't seen these things I urge you to pay attention.
notanastronaut 1y 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.
bilbo0s 1y 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 1y ago
A real “at least hitler made the trains run on time” moment.
- IAmBroom 1y 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 1y 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
- lostdog 1y ago
  Is there a source for this or did you just make it up?
  - anonymousiam 1y ago
    https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/09/30/dhs-and-tsa-expose-targeting-political-opponents-former-biden https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/09/30/dhs-and-t...
    - lostdog 1y ago
      Your source is a press release by the Trump administration?

commandlinefan 1y ago

Saw that coming 20 years ago...

sixothree 1y ago
Sad that the things happening today we were warned could happen. The future of this country does not look good.
- onetokeoverthe 1y ago
  [dead]

delichon 1y 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 1y ago
No shit. I'm tired of this race to give up our Constitutional freedoms as quickly as possible.
- boazi 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
Simulacra 1y 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".
ianferrel 1y 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.
- trhway 1y 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 1y ago

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

gretch 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago

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

metalman 1y 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

ihsw 1y ago

[dead]

eyeundersand 1y 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'.

efitz 1y 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.

phendrenad2 1y 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.

ianferrel 1y 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 1y ago

as if they weren't always a weapon.