"Keeping Track of Travelers' Personal Information"

WSAV-TV in Savannah, Georgia, used my forms and instructions to request the U.S. government’s records about one of their reporters’ travels from the “Automated Targeting Ssystem”. Two months later, after getting an (incomplete) response, they’ve broadcast a detailed Thanksgiving travel-season report on what they found and its significance:

Keeping Track of Travelers’ Personal Information (by JoAnn Merrigan, 25 November 2009):

• Video of full interview, Part 1
• Video of full interview, Part 2

They interviewed me remotely from the CNN studios in Boston, where I’m visiting family for Thanksgiving after speaking at the Hostelling International convention. They used excerpts on the air, and posted an additional 20 minutes of video from the interview on their Web site. Together, they provide a good overview of the U.S. government’s travel surveillance programs.

Among other things, we talked about my work with the Identity Project and the comments I recently filed with the FTC (on behalf of the Consumer Travel Alliance, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights) for the FTC’s forthcoming roundtables on the privacy of consumer information.