DHS Needs to Construct a System to Surveil Americans’ Travel Data – Mother Jones

An airplane prepares for takeoff at King County International Airport in Seattle, Washington, on April 29, 2025.Paul Christian Gordon/ZUMA Press Wire

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the US Secret Service wish to construct a instrument for monitoring US vacationers’ flights and different private data in response to beforehand unreported documents reviewed by Mother Jones.

These businesses have requested for suggestions from the non-public sector on whether or not this instrument could be made, or if one thing prefer it already exists. Their request was posted on the federal government’s database for contractors. In it, the Secret Service, an arm of DHS, outlines the specifics they envision: a program that would offer real-time or near-real time entry to a variety of non-public journey knowledge, together with passenger names, origins and locations, flight numbers, ticket numbers, and types of fee. The knowledge could be gleaned from third-party ticketing websites, comparable to Orbitz or Expedia, and should cowl main US and worldwide airways.

The proposed instrument seems to be an try and rebuild a surveillance pipeline that was just lately shuttered amid public backlash. Last 12 months, The Lever and 404 Media revealed that the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC)—a knowledge dealer owned by the most important US airways—had discreetly offered flight knowledge to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, that are each additionally arms of DHS. ARC ceased its so-called Travel Intelligence Program in November, citing stress from lawmakers. DHS’s new Request for Information (RFI) appears to reference the now-defunct ARC program, saying the requested platform would “replace an existing commercial database used by the United States Secret Service for law enforcement travel data queries.” DHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark, together with a query about whether or not the company is exploring a alternative for ARC.

“Travel records reveal an enormous amount of information about people’s private lives—where someone travels, how often they travel, and who they travel with—and expose deeply personal information, including medical care, family relationships, political activity, or religious practice,” mentioned Tom Bowman, coverage counsel with the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Security & Surveillance Project. “It’s not hard to imagine that DHS would want access to these travel records to be able to track all sorts of people, whether it’s people who they’re targeting for immigration related proceedings, or whether it’s targeting people who have been involved in public dissent against federal immigration enforcement.”

RFIs are an information-gathering instrument; they don’t imply that the proposed program exists or that the federal government is looking for bids on a selected contract. Still, they provide a significant window into the federal government’s surveillance wishlist—and will encourage the non-public market to step up and meet that demand.

“DHS is essentially inviting the creation of more surveillance-as-a-service business models to come into existence,” Bowman mentioned.

The authorities’s request for elevated entry to flight knowledge arrives amid a unprecedented growth of DHS spying capabilities, fueled by the industrial knowledge dealer trade and the rise of biometric surveillance instruments. ICE has come underneath hearth for its “dystopian” use of the facial recognition app Mobile Fortify, which brokers have used to scan the faces of anti-ICE protesters and collect “contactless” fingerprints. Last month, Wired reported that DHS is shifting to create a search engine that will enable the federal government to consolidate biometric knowledge throughout businesses.

In January, DHS posted an RFI requesting suggestions on using “commercial Big Data and Ad Tech” in ICE investigations. DHS has additionally already purchased at least two programs that present entry to Americans’ cellphone location knowledge, scraped from social media and offered by industrial brokers. The DHS inspector common beforehand present in a 2023 report that ICE’s use of real-time mobile location knowledge had violated privateness legal guidelines, inflicting the company to stroll again the follow. On March 4, over 70 Congressional Democrats, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), called for a brand new investigation into the newest cellphone knowledge buy-up by DHS.

This speedy growth of DHS’s home surveillance dragnet is a results of President Trump’s priorities for his second time period, together with the mandate that immigration authorities deport 1 million folks per 12 months. The authorities claims its use of those instruments abides by federal privateness legal guidelines and is important for implementing the legislation. But critics say that warrantless mass surveillance violates constitutional protections in opposition to unreasonable authorities searches.

“Purchasing all of this information from a commercial intermediary like a data broker really undermines and weakens the Fourth Amendment protections in practice,” mentioned Bowman. “Frankly, the rule should be simple: If the government would need a warrant to compel the data, it should not be able to buy it instead. But that’s exactly what the government is seeking to do.”