Collaborate Disseminate
CBP is conducting warrantless phone searches of up to 10,000 Americans annually and storing details in a government database.
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Public records and reporting has revealed that federal agencies have spent millions of dollars on contracts with massive data brokers.
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Civil liberties groups on Friday asked the Supreme Court to hear a case challenging the Department of Homeland Security’s warrantless searches of travelers’ electronic devices at U.S. ports of entry and airports. The petition from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union asks the Supreme Court to overturn a U.S. appeals court’s decision in February that authorizes border agents to search devices without a warrant. The EFF and ACLU sued DHS in 2017 on behalf of 11 U.S. citizens who contended border officers violated their rights when they searched their devices as they re-entered the U.S. The issue has long been a concern for privacy-minded groups and press advocates. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which does advocacy around the world, warned in 2018 that journalists traveling to the U.S. “should be aware that current practice risks exposing contacts, sourcing and reporting material contained on laptops, phones and […]
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled earlier this week that Customs and Border Protection agents may conduct warrantless searches of cellphones and electronic devices at the U.S. border, in a ruling that is already raising privacy questions among digital rights advocates. The decision, issued by a panel of judges and authored by Judge Sandra Lynch, states that the government’s interest in searching persons at the border is “at its zenith,” therefore trumping privacy concerns. “Electronic device searches do not fit neatly into other categories of property searches, but the bottom line is that basic border searches of electronic devices do not involve an intrusive search of a person,” Lynch writes. The decision is at odds with an earlier district court finding that these kinds of searches violate the Fourth Amendment because there’s no assurance there is a “reasonable suspicion” that the devices in question contained digital […]
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The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency failed to enforce basic security practices at a contractor that was hacked last year, exposing some 100,000 individual photos of travelers, a new inspector general report has found. Some of the hacked images ended up on the dark web, but the entire episode “may damage the public’s trust in the government’s ability to safeguard biometric data,” the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general concluded in a report released Wednesday. It’s an example of how, as federal immigration and security agencies increasingly draw on biometric data for their work, the stakes for protecting that data from hackers have grown. The data collection was for a CBP pilot to use facial recognition to screen travelers at ports of entry. The project went awry when surveillance technology company Perceptics, a subcontractor, downloaded sensitive CBP data from an unencrypted device and transferred it to the company’s network, […]
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials suspended Perceptics, the provider of license-plate scanners and other surveillance technology, from federal contracting following a data breach that exposed travelers’ information, according to federal records first obtained by the Washington Post. CBP last month said one of its subcontractors, later identified as Perceptics, was breached in a “malicious cyberattack” that resulted in images of travelers’ faces, license plates, contracting documents and other data being made publicly available on the internet. Now, the Post reports, CBP has taken the rare step of punishing a federal contractor, citing “evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity.” As a result, Perceptics is prohibited from doing business with the government, a punishment that could last for years if the company is placed on a government blacklist. CBP said on June 12 that a subcontractor had violated government policy by transferring images of license plates […]
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A recent breach of U.S. Customs and Border Protection traveler photo and license plate data has led experts to condemn the collection and storage of facial recognition data. Continue reading Data Breach Exposes 100K U.S. Traveler Photos, License Plates
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday that one of its subcontractors had been breached in a “malicious cyberattack,” compromising an unspecified number of images of travelers and license plates. The hackers struck after the unnamed subcontractor transferred copies of the images collected by CBP to the subcontractor’s network, the Department of Homeland Security agency said in a statement. “Initial information indicates that the subcontractor violated mandatory security and privacy protocols outlined in their contract,” a CBP spokesperson said, adding that the breached data had yet to show up on the dark web or public internet. CBP, which learned about the hack on May 31, has told Members of Congress about the breach and is working with law enforcement agencies and “cybersecurity entities” to investigate, the spokesperson said. While CBP did not identify the hacked subcontractor, the statement it emailed to The Washington Post included “Perceptics” in the title. Tennessee-based […]
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CBP and DHS officers allegedly detained a Los Angeles man of Muslim faith before he boarded a plane for four hours, asking him questions and pressuring him to show them the contents of his phone. Continue reading American Sues US Government For Allegedly Pressuring Him To Unlock His Phone at Airport
While the Department of Homeland Security has looked to step up its use of drones to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, lax security policies have left the collected data vulnerable to hackers and insider threats, a new audit finds. IT systems used by the Customs and Border Protection to share drone-gathered data are “at increased risk of compromise by trusted insiders and external sources” because of security shortcomings, a DHS inspector general report states. “Continuous monitoring to facilitate effective security incident handling, reporting, and remediation was lacking, while system maintenance and oversight of contractor personnel were inconsistent,” the report says. The IG investigation comes as DHS has sought more advanced drone technology to surveil border areas. In July 2016, for example, the department asked industry for proposals for small and easily deployable commercial drones. And in missions along the Texas-Mexico border over three years, a Predator B drone helped CBP personnel seize more […]
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