Latest news with #TravisLeBlanc
Miami Herald
3 days ago
- Miami Herald
TSA issues new warning for airport travelers
With the busy summer travel season underway, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning globetrotters about the dangers of using USB chargers at airports. According to a Facebook post from TSA, travelers should avoid charging electronic devices via the USB ports that are now commonplace at airports around the country and the world because of the potential malware the ports may contain. According to TSA's advisory on Facebook: 'Hackers can install malware at USB ports.' The advisory goes to state that 'when you're at an airport do not plug your phone directly into a USB port. Bring your TSA-compliant power brick or battery pack and plug in there.' The same Facebook advisory also contains a warning from the government agency about free public WiFi available at most airports. Here too, the concern is that hackers can access your personal information unbeknownst to you, the traveler. The TSA Facebook post states: 'Don't use free public WiFi, especially if you're planning to make any online purchases.' The post goes on to warn 'Do not ever enter any sensitive info while using unsecure WiFi.' Meanwhile, privacy experts have been busy issuing warnings of their own. Travis LeBlanc, a lawyer and former member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, recently told The Mirror that travelers would be wise to opt out of the facial recognition technology that the TSA has begun using at U.S. airport security checkpoints over the past year or more. 'You don't have to submit your picture to the government for the government to scan it and store it under their rules,' LeBlanc, The Mirror reported. Separately, privacy and data policy expert Jennifer King told the publication: 'I'm sure that the dream of enforcement agencies would be to be able to track people in real time based on something like facial recognition.' However, according to King, TSA has been 'a little vague' about what they plan to do with the photo data now being collected. TSA meanwhile, has said that any data collected is not used for surveillance. Additionally, the data is not stored. A TSA agent previously told the HuffPost that: 'Photos are not stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made, except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the technology's effectiveness. A real-time picture simply means that an image is taken at the kiosk and that 'live' photograph is matched against the image on the identification credential.' _________ Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Fox News
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Federal judge blocks Trump admin from firing 2 Dem members of privacy oversight board
A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump's administration from firing two Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on Wednesday. Trump fired all three Democratic members of the five-person board in February, resulting in two of them filing a lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton found that allowing unilateral firings would prevent the board from carrying out its purpose. Walton wrote that allowing at-will removals would make the board "beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people." The oversight board was initially created by Congress to ensure that federal counterterrorism policies were in line with privacy and civil liberties law. "To hold otherwise would be to bless the President's obvious attempt to exercise power beyond that granted to him by the Constitution and shield the Executive Branch's counterterrorism actions from independent oversight, public scrutiny, and bipartisan congressional insight regarding those actions," Walton wrote. Trump's firings left just one Republican on the board. The third Democratic member had just two days left in her term when she was removed, and she did not sue the administration. The two plaintiffs, Travis LeBlanc and Edward Felten, argued in their lawsuit that members of the board cannot be fired without cause. Meanwhile, lawyers for Trump's administration argued that members of other congressionally created boards do have explicit job protections, and it would therefore be wrong for Walton to create such protections where they are absent. "The Constitution gives President Trump the power to remove personnel who exercise his executive authority," White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Associated Press. "The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue." The plaintiffs also argued that their firings left just one member on the board, a Republican, and that falls short of the quorum required for the board to function.
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Judge Strikes Down Trump's Firings of Civil Liberties Watchdog Board Members
A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that President Trump broke the law when he fired members of an independent civil liberties watchdog without cause in January, ordering the reinstatement of those challenging their removals in court. In a 71-page opinion, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia said that Mr. Trump's dismissal of Democratic-selected members to the five-person Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was illegal. Lawmakers, the judge wrote, clearly intended to shield board members from arbitrary removal by a president before their terms were up. He noted that Congress created the bipartisan panel to oversee government counterterrorism actions and policies on the recommendation of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 'That responsibility is incompatible with at-will removal by the president, because such unfettered authority would make the board and its members beholden to the very authority it is supposed to oversee on behalf of Congress and the American people,' wrote Judge Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush. The judge issued a permanent injunction ordering the government to let the two board members challenging their dismissals, Travis LeBlanc and Edward W. Felten, immediately return to work. In a statement, Mr. LeBlanc celebrated the outcome. 'The court's decision is a win for privacy, a win for civil liberties, a win for independent agencies and a win for the rule of law,' Mr. LeBlanc said. 'I look forward to promptly returning to the agency and continuing my service to the nation.' The Justice Department press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment. Congress established the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to investigate national security activities that can intrude upon individual rights, like surveillance affecting Americans or the use of terrorism watch lists to subject people to extra security screening at airports. The board has security clearances and subpoena power and is set up to have five members, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, who serve six-year terms and can stay on for another after that if no successor has been confirmed. Some members are picked by the president, and some are selected by congressional leaders of the other party. In late January, Mr. Trump fired all three board members who had been selected by Democrats. The move was part of a larger purge of officials who exercised various forms of independence from White House control, especially those whom Congress has protected from arbitrary firings without a cause like misconduct. The Trump administration has said it wants to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn a 1935 precedent that says Congress can enact laws that limit a president's ability to fire certain types of officials in the executive branch. But that precedent remains binding law, Judge Walton noted, and he ruled that it covered the board members. One of the seats was already vacant, so the firings left the agency with just one member, Beth Williams, who had been selected by Republicans. Because the agency needs at least three members to take a legal action, like endorsing an investigative report or starting a new project, it was left largely paralyzed. One of the fired members of the board was set to depart two days later. But Mr. LeBlanc and Mr. Felten filed a lawsuit contesting the legality of their removal. The case is complicated by the fact that Congress did not explicitly write into a statute that board members could be removed only for cause — the usual mechanism by which agencies are made independent from the White House — even though the law creating the board declares that it is an independent agency. But there has been a general understanding that all officials atop independent agencies are shielded by tenure protections. 'To hold otherwise would be to bless the president's obvious attempt to exercise power beyond that granted to him by the Constitution and shield the executive branch's counterterrorism actions from independent oversight, public scrutiny and bipartisan congressional insight regarding those actions,' Judge Walton wrote.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
Experts Issue Warning on New TSA Technology
In recent years, the TSA has rolled out some new technology at its airport security checkpoints that uses a real-time photo of your face to confirm passenger identity. However, some experts have issued a warning about the new technology. In an article published last month, Monica Torres of HuffPost quoted a few security experts as she warned travelers to opt out of the facial scan whenever they get to the security checkpoint at the airport. Travis LeBlanc, a lawyer and a former member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, told Torres that the benefit of declining the facial recognition technology 'is you don't have to submit your picture to the government, for the government to scan it and store it under their rules.' Those concerns were echoed by Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. King said that the TSA's public communications are 'a little vague about what they were doing with the data.' That, coupled with some past privacy issues regarding the Department of Homeland Security, leads her to decline the face scan every time. 'I'm sure that the dream of enforcement agencies would be to be able to track people in real time based on something like facial recognition,' King said. It's worth noting that the TSA explicitly states that this technology is not used for surveillance and that it does not store data for any travelers. 'Photos are not stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made, except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the effectiveness of the technology,' TSA states. However, LeBlanc warns that there are other potential uses for the technology. "TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which is also responsible for immigration enforcement," he said. "There's lots of different uses that you could see for these images." He also warned that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which serves as a watchdog for travelers' civil liberties, recently had key members fired, including himself. He said that the board was actually preparing a report on the TSA's new technology before the firings. As a result of the firings, LeBlanc warns that the board has 'lost the watchdog that would be there to promote transparency as well as make recommendations on changes to the system that would better balance privacy and civil liberties.' A TSA spokesperson has addressed these concerns, telling Huffpost in a statement that 'a real-time picture simply means that an image is taken at the kiosk and that 'live' photograph is matched against the image on the identification credential.' If a traveler does have reservations with the new technology, they will be permitted to opt out of the facial recognition screening. 'There is no issue and no delay with a traveler exercising their rights to not participate in the automated biometrics matching technology,' the TSA says on its website.
New York Times
24-02-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Two Members of Privacy Watchdog, Summarily Fired by Trump, File Lawsuit
Two former members of an independent civil liberties watchdog agency who were fired by President Trump sued the government on Monday, asking a court to declare their terminations illegal and reinstate them to their former positions. The lawsuit is the latest in a deluge of litigation arising from Mr. Trump's firings of officials as part of an assault on the basic structure of the federal government. The former officials, Travis LeBlanc and Edward W. Felten, were among three Democratic-selected members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board whom Mr. Trump ousted on Jan. 27. He also dismissed a third member, Sharon Bradford Franklin, but she was due to depart two days later anyway and did not join the lawsuit. A fourth seat was already vacant, so the departures left the five-member board with only one member, Beth Williams, who had been chosen by Republicans. The removals paralyzed the agency by leaving it without enough members to take official actions like starting an investigative project or issuing a board report with a policy recommendation. In the opening weeks of his second term, Mr. Trump has been on a firing spree — violating statutes in which Congress set limits on when a president may remove certain types of officials. Many of those summary firings have led to lawsuits, apparently setting up test cases to see whether the Supreme Court will expand presidential power by striking the laws down as infringing on Mr. Trump's constitutional powers. Many of those cases, however, center on explicit limits Congress wrote into law that say presidents cannot fire particular types of officials at will, but only for a cause like misconduct. Such lawsuits include Mr. Trump's firings of members of the Merit Systems Protection Board and the National Labor Relations Board. The challenge on Monday will be more complicated because Congress did not explicitly write into a statute that board members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board could be removed only for cause, even though the law creating the board declares that it is an 'independent' agency. But there has been a general understanding that all officials atop independent agencies are shielded by implicit protections that allow for removal only for cause. For example, the law for another independent agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission, also lacks such a clause, but in a 2010 case, the Supreme Court assumed, without actually deciding, that it nevertheless implicitly exists as a limit. Congress originally set up the privacy board for its members to serve at the president's 'pleasure,' but later revised the statute to remove that provision and make the board an 'independent agency.' The complaint argued that this change and other factors meant the court should interpret the law as barring arbitrary firings. 'Reading the statute to permit removal without cause would both contravene the statute's literal meaning and fundamentally undermine the scheme of agency independence that Congress deliberately designed,' the complaint said. Congress established the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board as an independent agency after the Sept. 11 attacks. Its job is to investigate national security activities that can intrude upon individual rights, like surveillance affecting Americans or the use of terrorism watch lists to subject people to extra screening in airport security lines. It has security clearances and subpoena power, and is set up to have five members, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, who serve six-year terms and can stay on for another after that if no successor has been confirmed. Some members are picked by the president, and some are selected by congressional leaders of the other party.
