Latest in Aviation Screening
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has announced that she plans to introduce new legislation aimed to "significantly strengthen drone safety laws to protect U.S. airline passengers and U.S. airspace." The announcement comes in a letter to FAA Administrator Michael Heurta, in which she cites evidence of more than 190 drone safety incidents in the last nine months.
Over at the Intercept, Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux have this piece on the NCTC's guidelines for adding citizens and foreigners to terrorism watchlists. Their article opens:
As Wells noted a few days ago, the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon issued an opinion this week in Latif v. Holder, which held unconstitutional certain redress procedures for individuals on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s No-Fly List. This post overviews the opinion.
Professor Jeff Kahn (SMU Law, also visiting at W&L Law) writes in with the following guest post on yesterday's no-fly list decision. Be sure to check out Jeff's terrific book on the right to travel and terror watchlists (here).
Coincidentally, they come to us from two different federal judges in the District of Oregon.
The first decision concludes that remedial mechanisms associated with the so-called "No Fly" list violate due process; the second rejects a defendant's post-conviction effort to have an indictment thrown out---and, among other things, in doing so also rejects a constitutional attack on Section 702 of FISA.
In his response to my earlier Lawfare post on the FBI's investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and a later review of that investigation by various Inspectors General, Michael German misconceives my argument. Put as concisely and clearly as possible, my argument has four points:
In an earlier post regarding MH370, I wondered why it was that transponders on airplanes were still capable of being turned off. I feel rather justified to realize that I’m not the only one asking the question. Gregg Easterbrook has an op-ed in The New York Times in which he makes the same point and amplifies it with the point that 5 of the last 10 major air disasters began with the transponder being switched off.
Fools, they say, rush in where angels fear to tread. Proving that I am less angelic than foolish (and confident that the blogosphere will quickly forget these musings), I thought I'd offer a few Homeland Security-related thoughts on lessons learned from MH370. Of course this speculation can be utterly overtaken by events, but even at this point it seems that we can identify both some gaps and some opportunities in the area of aviation security -- factors that will probably outlast whatever ultimately is concluded about this particular flight:
Released today: this quite significant order, containing the district court's findings of fact and conclusions of law in Ibrahim v. Department of Homeland Security---or the "No-Fly List Case" [h/t Wired].
The Supreme Court today decided Air Wisconsin v. Hoeper, a case that sounds like a tort matter but, in the end is about homeland security. The facts of the case are relatively straight forward: