We say âNoâ to mug shots at airports and borders
Published: December 23, 2020
Illustration from CBP website.
The claim that facial recogntion “helps to prevent the spread of germs” is especially bogus, since facial recognition requires travelers to remove their face masks wherever it is used.
Today the Identity Project (IDP), Restore the Fourth, Privacy Times, and the National Workrights Institute filed joint comments with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in opposition ot the CBP proposal to require mug shots (and possibly collection of other biometrics) from all non-U.S. citizens at all border crossings and international airports and seaports:
HAMMOND- The United States Attorneyâs Office announced that Gary T. Bell is now the Acting United States Attorney.
The Vacancies Reform Act (VRA), 5 U.S.C. § 3345(a)(1), provides that when a presidentially appointed U. S. Attorney resigns, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney (âFAUSAâ) of that office automatically becomes Acting U.S. Attorney. As a result of Thomas L. Kirschâs resignation, Gary T. Bell is now the Acting United States Attorney for the Northern District of Indiana.
Mr. Bell has held the FAUSA position since earlier this year and has been in a Supervisory Attorney position since 2014. Mr. Bell joined the U.S. Attorneyâs office in June of 1999 as an Assistant United States Attorney. At that time, Mr. Bell focused on violent and drug related crimes and worked mostly with the GRIT task force.
State Department watchdog steps down after Pompeo rails at report on investigation into wife s travel
Updated 8:30 PM ET, Thu December 10, 2020
Washington (CNN)State Department acting Inspector General Matthew Klimow is leaving his post earlier than expected after just a few months on the job, he told colleagues in a memo, a source at the Office of the Inspector General told CNN on Thursday.
Klimow announced his departure the same day Secretary of State Mike Pompeo s department offered a combative response to an inspector general report on an investigation into travel by the secretary s wife, Susan.
The independent watchdog found that the majority of trips by Susan Pompeo over a two-year period had taken place without written approval from the State Department, despite the fact that her trips were considered official travel and paid for by US taxpayers.
Biden s inauguration can t come soon enough. In yet another act of sheer desperation after losing one court case after another, Trump s so-called lawyer and national embarrassment, Rudy Giuliani, reportedly called the (illegally) Acting Deputy Secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, Ken Cooch Cuccinelli (
who, as readers here may recall, ignored a ruling by a federal court that he did not meet the qualifications under the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, but hey, in the age of Trump, laws are for suckers, so he decided to hang around regardless of how the court ruled) and asked him about seizing voting machines: