Amtrakl/DHS is spying on passengers and letting police access records without warrants
MassPrivatei.blogspot.com
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Do you feel secure knowing DHS/police are spying on passenger records without a warrant?
The first release of documents from ‘Papers Please.org’s’ FOIA request for records of police and govt access to Amtrak reservation data show that Amtrak is giving police root access and a dedicated user interface to mine passenger data for general state and law enforcement purposes and is lying to passengers about it.
Papers Please. Org’s FOIA request was prompted by Amtrak’s obviously incomplete response to an earlier FOIA request from the ACLU. That response omitted any mention of Homeland Security’s (DHS) access to Amtrak reservation data. Even though we’ve seen records of Amtrak profiling passengers and denying DHS involvement. The documents were clearly responsive to the ACLU’s request, and should have been included in Amtrak’s response to that request.
The first release to Papers Please by Amtrak includes a few documents: a 2004 letter from US Customs and Border Potection (CBP) to the Amtrak Police legal department, requesting “voluntary” provision by Amtrak to CBP of Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) identification data about all passengers on international Amtrak trains, and a 2004-2005 project summary and scoping document for the work that would be required by Amtrak’s IT department to automate the collection, maintenance in Amtrak’s “ARROW” passenger reservation database, and deliver the data to customs (DHS).
Amtrak’s reservation database is being collected by a PRIVATE corporation that spies on you and forwards it to the govt! Remember your tax dollars are being used to pay for this B.S. and they’re laughing all the way to the bank!
The Rest…HERE
