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The Identity Project

May 22 2026

Minnesota OK’s “open” meetings behind TSA checkpoint

The Minnesota Commissioner of Administration  has issued a formal advisory opinion that it doesn’t violate the state’s open meeting law for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) to hold its meetings in location behind a TSA checkpoint and accessible only by showing REAL-ID or paying a $45 fee, as long as the MAC offers to pay (or reimburse) the fee for those seeking to attend MAC meetings.

The advisory opinion addressed only the following question:

Does the Metropolitan Airports Commission Board of Commissioners policy requiring attendees to pay for TSA ConfirmID or obtain a Real ID or passport to attend meetings violate Minnesota Statutes, section 13D.01 to hold open meetings?

The advisory opinion only addresses the requirement to pay the fee or show REAL-ID. This leaves unresolved an issue on which we requested an opinion, but which the Commissioner declined to address: Whether Minnesota’s open meeting law permits the MAC or another state body to hold meetings in a location to which access is under the control and subject to the standardless discretion of the TSA or another third party. The TSA claims the right to deny passage to anyone, regardless of whether they show REAL-ID, pay the illegal $45 fee, or respond to the TSA’s unlawful questioning.

May 21 2026

Immigrant and human rights groups call for California not to upload driver’s license data to national ID database

Before a hearing last week before the California Assembly Budget Subcommittee #4 on Transportation, a coalition of 170 immigrant and human rights groups and allied organizations submitted a joint letter opposing the plan to upload data about all holders of California driver’s licenses and state-issued IDs to the SPEXS national ID database.

The joint letter and testimony by some of the witnesses at the hearing called on legislators to reject the proposal by Governor Newsom and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to appropriate $55 million and amend California’s driver’s license privacy law to allow the upload, which would be prohibited by current state law.

Alliance San Diego and other groups have also launched a petition campaign for individuals to tell Governon Newsom, “Do Not Comply” with the REAL-ID Act.

In testimony and a Powerpoint presentation for the hearing, witnesses from the DMV led by Director Steve Gordon doubled down on claims also made by Governor Newsom’s office that are partly misleading and partly false.

The DMV witnesses stressed that other states accessing the SPEXS database at AAMVA’s central site through the  S2S network will be able to send and receive answers to only a limited set of queries, and won’t be able to perform bulk searches such as for all the SPEXS records from California with “99999” in place of a Social Security number.

But the DMV avoided mentioning that AAMVA, as the owner of the SPEXS database, could perform this or any other sort of bulk search and retrieval of SPEXS data — or could be ordered to do so by  Federal or state law enforcement agencies or courts.

The DMV also said in its Powerpoint and testimony that, “AAMVA must notify CA if non-participants [such as federal agencies] request data.” This isn’t true.

The contract with AAMVA signed by the DMV on March 30, 2026 provides that AAMVA will notfy the California DMV of such a demand “if legally permitted”. A legal order to AAMVA to search for, retrieve, and hand over some or all of the information in the SPEXS database could and probably would be accompanied by a gag order prohibiting AAMVA from disclosing the order to  California authorities, the individuals whose data was retrieved and revealed, or anyone else.

As we’ve noted before, California authorities cannot truthfully promise that AAMVA will be allowed to notify them of a demand for SPEXS data, or that they will even have an opportunity to contest such a demand. Once this data is uploaded to AAMVA — a private out-of-state entity — this data will be out of the state’s control.

Some witnesses at the hearing called for “guardrails” to be included in the California law to protect sensitive data uploaded to SPEXS, such as the “9999” placeholder that flags  records of drivers who were unable to provide the DMV with a Social Security number.

But in reality, no such guardrails are possible. Nothing in California law or a contract between AAMVA and the DMV could override AAMVA’s duty, as a private Virginia corporation, to comply with orders from Federal courts or courts in Virginia or other states.

“Guardrails” in the law authorizing the upload to SPEXS would be a sham: They would offer only a misleading and falsely reassuring illusion of protection for Californians’ privacy

Senate Budget Subcommittee Chair Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) acknowledged explicitly that whether to capitulate to Federal threats to harass Californians boarding airline flights, if the state doesn’t comply with the REAL-ID Act, presents a choice between “inconvenience” to air travelers and much more severe potential negative consequences for immigrants  or others who might be targeted based on SPEXS data.

That should be any easy choice. Protection of vulnerable Californians, especially immigrants, against Federal weaponization of their personal information should take precedence over the convenience of air travelers. California should not comply with the REAL-ID Act. Instead, the state should stand up to lawless Federal threats and prepare to defend Californians against any interference with their right to travel.

The DMV witnesses at last week’s hearing weren’t asked, and didn’t explain, why they signed a contract with AAMVA to upload data to an out-of-state private entity in a manner prohibited by current California law, without waiting to see whether the legislature would amend the law to permit this upload.

The DMV also avoided mentioning that the February 2027 “deadline” for the upload of California data to SPEXS was set solely by AAMVA and isn’t based on any provision of Federal law or regulations. There’s no need for California to do anything this year, especially on a rushed schedule that buries this major policy change in the budget bill.

The Assembly Budget Subcommittee heard testimony but deferred any decision on the proposal The next hearing on this proposal come as soon as next Thursday, May 28, in Senate Budget Subcommittee 5 on Transportation.

Apr 29 2026

Uploading California driver’s license data to the SPEXS national ID database

Our research is cited in a detailed report by Khari Johnson and Wendy Fry of CalMatters (syndicated statewide) on plans by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to upload information about all California driver’s licenses and state IDs to the SPEXS national ID database run by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA).

If you’re looking for background, here are some of our previous reports on this issue:

The Washington Examiner reports receiving a statement from a spoksperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom, “CalMatters got it wrong – their reporting hurts vulnerable Californians by manufacturing fear and panic with lies.”

In a statement posted on Bluesky, Gov. Newsom’s office says that, “Federal immigration  agencies have NO access” to data uploaded to SPEXS, and that “the system does NOT include immigration status and cannot be searched that way.”

These claims by the Governor’s office are false. Federal immigration or other law enforcement agencies CAN access SPEXS data with a warrant or subpoena to AAMVA, the same way they could obtain data held by any other private entity. That order to AAMVA could include a gag order so California wouldn’t know or be able to challenge it. A simple search for SPEXS records with the placeholder “99999”  in the field for the last five digits of the Social Security Number CAN retrieve all records of licenses issued to individuals who were unable to provide a Social Security Number.

What part of this do the Governor or his lawyers not understand or not believe?

We stand by our statements to CalMatters and the accuracy of their reporting.

The Governor and the DMV are proposing that the state capitulate preemptively to lawless threats by Federal authorities to harass and discriminate California residents when they travel by air. That’s a choice not to challenge those lawless Federal threats, as the state has challenged many other recent lawless Federal threats. That’s also a choice to prioritize the convenience of air travelers over the protection of immigrant Californians. If they want to make those choices, they need to make them openly and be willing to defend them.

The upload to SPEXS of data about all California licenses and IDs would break the promises made by the state and the DMV that information in driver’s license records wouldn’t be made available for immigration enforcement or other unrelated purposes. Those promises  are codified in current California law, which would prohibit the planned upload to SPEXS.

AAMVA as a private entity requires (although neither Federal nor state law requires) that if a state chooses to upload information about its residents to SPEXS, it must include either the last five digits of the Social Secuirty Number for each license holder, or “99999” as a placeholder for each license holder without an SSN. This makes licenses issued pursuant to immigrants and other individuals without SSNs, pursuant to California AB-60 and similar laws in other states, immediately identifiable in the SPEXS database.

As we pointed out in our interview with CalMatters, the Governor’s office and the DMV must have known that once data about California licenses and IDs is uploaded to SPEXS, immigration or other law enforcement agencies will be able to obtain that data from AAMVA. A warrant or subpoena could contain a gag order prohibiting AAMVA from telling California or the impacted individuals that their data has been handed over by AAMVA.

California authorities cannot truthfully promise that AAMVA will be allowed to notify them of a demand for SPEXS data, or that they will even have an opportunity to contest such a  demand. Once it’s  uploaded to AAMVA — a private entity — it’s out of the state’s control.

There’s no way to know whether AAMVA has already been required to secretly hand over any or all of the data already uploaded to SPEXS by other states.

The Governor’s proposed budget contains funding for the upload and is accompanied by a  “budget trailer bill” that would amend state law to allow the upload.

Our previous report mentions a separate bill, AB-2156, which had been introduced on this subject. AB-2156  was repurposed by amending it to substitute unrelated legislation for a new and unrelated purpose. This is a procedural tactic used in the California legislature to more rapidly advance an urgent measure for a new purpose after the deadlines for introducing new bills. The result is that AB-2156 won’t serve the original purpose.

The only bills that will be considered will be the budget bill (funding the SPEXS upload) and a “budget trailer” bill containing legislative changes needed to allow the projects funded in the budget, including amending state law — which in its current form would prohibit the SPEXS upload — to allow the SPEXS upload. This policy change will be bundled into the budget trailer bill, rather than given full and separate consideration.

Apr 21 2026

D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals keeps U.S. citizen on “no-fly” list

In an interlocking pair of decisions issued the same day by the same panel (one opinion written by the same judge who dissented from the other), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has denied U.S. citizen Saad bin Khalid any meaningful review of the U.S. government’s decision to blacklist him and prohibit him from air travel to, from, within, or overflying the U.S. or on U.S.-registered aircraft.

Having been harassed by FBI and other U.S. agents every time he entered the U.S. since he was 16 or 17 years old, Mr. bin Khalid now lives in Pakistan with his wife and children.

The dissent from one of the two opinions tries hard to tease out a hypothetical procedural pathway to judicial review of a no-fly order in some circumstances. But the practical effect of this pair of decisions is that Mr. bin Khalid will have to fly to Mexico or Canada, then enter the U.S. by land, every time he he wants to return to the country of his citizenship. He will have to repeat that process in reverse to leave the U.S. and rejoin his family in Pakistan.

The knotted logic of both decisions rest primarily rests on 49 U.S.C. § 46110(c), a facially unconstitutional law stripping U.S. District Courts of jurisdiction over TSA “orders” and allowing review by Courts of Appeal only on the basis of the one-sided and secret “record” selected by the TSA for presentation to the Court of Appeals, with no confrontation of witnesses or adversary fact-finding at any stage of the process.

As the dissent sums up the problem in the panel majorities’ logic:

The majority ultimately reads section 46110 to strip the district court of more jurisdiction than it confers on this court. That means that neither we nor the district court can review Khalid’s claims that the Center improperly placed him on the terrorist watchlist.

The Court of Appeals also upheld the Constitutionality of basing this “no-fly” decision in part on evidence provided to the court but not to Mr. bin Khalid or his lawyers, and in part on evidence supposedly relied on by the Threat Screening Center to recommend blacklisting Mr. bin Khalid, but disclosed neither to Mr. bin Khalid, his lawyers, the Court of Appeals, nor the Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) who was nominally responsible for the “order” adding Mr. bin Khalid’s name to the more than a million mostly Muslim names  on the U.S. no-fly list.

This was based on a finding  that  the right to travel by common carrier is not a “fundamental” right, and that in today’s world, the ability to travel by land or sea — between, say, Pakistan and the U.S. — is an adequate substitute for air travel:

Khalid may continue to travel to, from, and inside of the United States by means other than airplanes. As a result, the TSA Administrator’s order maintaining Khalid on the No Fly List does not infringe a fundamental right.

Given the unlikelihood that the Supreme Court will choose to review, much less overturn, these decisions of the Court of Appeals, what can be done?

The simplest way to insure that people like Mr. bin Khalid get their day in court would be for Congress to enact the Freedom to Travel Act. This bill would address each of the reasons that the Court of Appeals denied justice to Mr. bin Khalid. It would (1) write explicit recognition of the right to travel into Federal law, (2) create an explicit cause of action for deprivation of that right, and (3) removing TSA orders from the restrictions on judicial review in 49 U.S.C. § 46110(c).

Apr 08 2026

When you fly, you fly with ICE

Further confirming and providing more details about a story first reported here and later confirmed by the New York Times, Ted Hesson and Kristina Cooke of Reuters report that more than 31,000 records of domestic airline reservations obtained by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) through its Secure Flight passenger surveillance and control system were passed on by the TSA to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first year of the Trump 2.0 Administration. More than 800 arrests by ICE during that time were based on Secure Flight data.

The TSA has exempted Secure Flight records of domestic air travel from the provisions of the Privacy Act that would normally entitle each traveler to obtain, on request, an “accounting of disclosures” showing what information about them was disclosed by the TSA to which other agencies or third parties. So there is no way for you to find out whether the TSA has provided ICE with your air travel plans, so that ICE can arrange an unwelcoming party for you at the airport on departure or arrival or while changing planes. You have to assume that ICE has the details of all of your planned air travel in the U.S.

The arrests at airports reported to date all appear to have been of non-U.S. citizens. As we noted when we first reported on the additional of immigration lookouts to the Secure Flight ruleset, the TSA has long wanted to expand its airport checkpoints into all-purpose law enforcement checkpoints by checking all airline passengers against the FBI’s aggregated NCIC database of wants and warrants. That still doesn’t appear to be happening, but we have no confidence that the TSA will confine its activities within Constitutional limits, especially in an area where it has exempted itself from accountability.

Please let us know if you hear of U.S. citizens being arrested at airports on outstanding warrants, especially if there is no obvious way police would have known of their travel plans without having been tipped off by the TSA based on airline reservation data.

Apr 06 2026

Is a meeting “public” if you have to show REAL-ID or pay a fee?

At our request, the Minnesota Commissioner of Administration has directed the state’s Data Practices Office (DPO) to issue an advisory opinion as to whether the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC) violates the state’s Open Meeting Law by holding its meetings in an area at the MSP airport accessible only by passing through a TSA checkpoint, which requires either REAL-ID compliant ID, a passport, or paying a $45 fee.

The Commissioner has complete discretion to decide when to issue an advisory opinion. We are pleased that they have decided to do so in this case. We thank the DPO for their (unsuccessful buy helpful) efforts at informal mediation with the MAC, which preceded our request for a formal advisory opinion.

So far as we know, this will be the first official review by any state or local government body, under any state or local open meeting law, of whether a meeting of a government body can be considered “public” or “open” if REAL-ID or a fee is required for entry.

As stated in the Commissioner’s notice of the preparation of an advisory opinion, under Minnesota law, “Although the advisory opinion will not be binding on the Board, a court must give the opinion deference.”

We look forward to the Commissioner’s opinion. According to the notice , “Section 13.072 requires the Commissioner to issue an opinion within 50 days of receipt of the request. Therefore, the Commissioner must issue the opinion by May 21, 2026.”

Apr 01 2026

OMB gives blanket approval for USCIS social media surveillance

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved a request by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to require all individuals applying for or associated with applications for US visas, visa-free entry, residency, or citizenship to identify all social media accounts they have used in the last five years.

The new “generic clearance” approved by OMB spares USCIS from having to justify the purpose, relevance, and legality of demanding social media account information separately for each USCIS form or web page on which this information is demanded.

This approval by the current White House expands on the demand for social media identifiers first approved by OMB as one of the last actions of the Obama Administration.

Along with some other agencies, USCIS has adopted a new format for its analysis and response to comments on its regulatory proposals. The summary of comments appears to have been generated by an artificial intelligence chatbot. Unlike previous responses to comments that typically ignored or distorted many of the objections to agency proposals, the summary provided by USCIS to OMB is surprisingly accurate and complete. But rather than actually responding to the objections raised by the Identity Project and others, USCIS simply regurgitates a summary of its original claims about the proposal.

For example, in response to comments pointing out that collection of social media postings violates the Privacy Act’s prohibition on collection of information about acts protected by the First Amendment without explicit statutory authorization, USCIS merely repeats the conclusionary claim that, “Consistent with the requirements of the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(7)), DHS does not maintain records ‘describing how any [citizen of the United States or alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence] exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.'” There’s no meaningful engagement with the comments or explanation of the basis for claiming that postings on social media aren’t protected by the First Amendment or that collecting this information is expressly authorized by any statute — which it isn’t.

The USCIS summary acknowledges our comments that social media surveillance violates US obligations pursuant to international human rights treaties. But in response, USCIS merely summarizes the statutes it claims implicitly authorize these actions — which of course says nothing about whether those statutes comport with US treaty obligations.

The response to comments also repeats the false and conclusionary claim that that, “Social media involves publicly available information that is accessible to anyone without a warrant”, even though in fact the identification of an individual with an anonymous or pseudonymous social media account isn’t otherwise accessible without a warrant.

We urge other countries not to follow this bad example of the US government.

Mar 22 2026

Your rights when an airport checkpoint is staffed by ICE agents

Last December we reported on indications that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) had begun passing on information from airline reservations to Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) to enable targeting of domestic airline passengers for seizure and deportation. Ten days later, our report was confirmed by the New York Times.

In January, it was reported that ICE planned to set up immigration checkpoints for passengers on jetways at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). That hasn’t happened, but the possibility prompted us to review some of the legal issues it raised.

Now President Trump has announced that starting Monday, March 23rd, ICE agents will be assigned to take over some of the work of TSA checkpoint staff, further merging and conflating the unrelated functions of aviation security and immigration enforcement.

What are your rights, especially as an airline passenger traveling within the US rather than seeking to enter or leave the country, if a checkpoint at the airport is staffed by ICE agents instead of, or in addition to, the usual TSA staff or TSA contractors?

Read More →

Mar 15 2026

DMV wants to upload California drivers license data to the national REAL-ID database

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has requested more than $55 million in additional funding for costs related to uploading information about every California drivers license or state-issued ID card to the national REAL-ID database, SPEXS.

The DMV Budget Change Proposal is accompanied by a “trailer bill” and a “policy” bill, AB-2156, introduced in February on an “urgency” basis to take effect as soon as enacted, that would override the provisions of California motor vehicle and privacy law that currently prohibit this upload.

[Update: AB-2156 will no longer serve this purpose. See details in comments below.]

Both the budget and policy proposals have the support of the DMV and Governor Newsom. It will be up to members of the state legislature — and public pressure — to stop them before they are enacted into state law and have to be challenged in court.

These budget and policy proposals will need to go through both the Assembly and Senate Budget and Transportation committees. The first hearing on the budget proposal is expected to be this Thursday, March 19th, in the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, Subcommittee 5 on Corrections, Public Safety, Judiciary, Labor and Transportation. The first hearing on the policy bill is tentatively expected to be April 15th in the Assembly Committee on Transportation.

The DMV is asking for $32M in fiscal year 2026-2027 and $23M in 2027-2028 for what it describes as a “State-to-State Verification System (S2S) Project”:

The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) requests additional funding and personnel resources to continue DMV’s compliance with the REAL ID Act of 2005 by implementing the State to State (S2S) Program. California’s compliance date for State to State (S2S) is February 16, 2027, and the core DMV systems will interface and connect the driver license (DL)/identification card (ID) S2S data elements with the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) electronic verification and history exchange.

This summary is in parts inaccurate, in parts misleading, and in parts incomplete.

Inaccurate, because California is not in compliance with the REAL-ID Act and, as the proposal is written, this project would not bring the state into compliance.

Misleading, because it doesn’t mention the SPEXS national ID database that is central to this system; characterizes as a “state-to-state” system what is actually a hub-and-spoke network in which data is shared between states and AAMVA, not directly between states;  and downplays the role of AAMVA from the owner and controller of the database to the mere operator of an “exchange”.

Incomplete, because it doesn’t explain that the “compliance date” it refers to was set by AAMVA (and could be changed or eliminated by AAMVA), not by any law; says nothing about the status of AAMVA as a private, non-governmental, out-of-state organization not subject to any of the open meetings, public records, due process, privacy, etc. laws that would apply to a Federal or state government agency; and doesn’t consider whether the proposals violate the state constitution.

The policy bill, AB-2156, has similar defects in addition to internal contradictions. These suggest that the drafters of the legislation didn’t fully understand what it would mean, why it’s so much worse than it appears, or that they have a real choice about whether to keep chasing the moving goalposts of Federal demands for REAL-ID “compliance”.

Read More →

Feb 17 2026

Show ID or pay a fee to attend a “public” meeting?

Is it an “open” meeting if you have to identify yourself, show ID, and/or pay a fee to attend?

That’s the question presented by today’s meeting of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Airports Commission (MAC), which is scheduled to be held in the “secure” area of the MSP airport reachable only by passing through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint.

As of February 1, 2026, this means individuals who want to attend a MAC meeting, including those who want to make public comments and those who just want to observe, must either (A) show ID credentials the TSA finds satisfactory or (B) pay the illegal $45 per person TSA Confirm.ID fee, answer whatever questions the TSA asks (based on records of the Accurint data broker), and be “allowed” by the TSA, in its unreviewable and arbitrary discretion, to enter the secure area of the airport. The MAC website says that “the MAC will cover this cost for up to three meetings”, but doesn’t say what will happen after that.

This is the first time — in Minnesota or any other state — that we have seen a demand for ID, a demand for a fee, a limit on the number of meetings that can be attended without a fee, or delegation of authority (authority the MAC itself would lack) to an independent third party to demand answers to questions or to decide in its discretion  who to allow to attend a meeting of a government body required by law to be open to the public.

Is any of this legal? We doubt it.

Rules for meetings of government decision-making bodies vary by state. The MAC is a Minnesota state agency whose members are appointed by the Governor.  The Minnesota Open Meeting Law (Minnesota Statutes Chapter 13D) requires that all decision-making meetings of entities such as the MAC “must be open to the public”.

The Minnesota law doesn’t define what “open to the public” means, but we don’t think it includes any of these conditions and restrictions on attendance:

  1. Requiring individuals to identify themselves (rather than attending anonymously, as they may wish to do if e.g.  they fear retaliation for attending or making public comments).
  2. Requiring individuals to have or show ID credentials.
  3. Requiring individuals to answer questions including questions from a third party (in this case, the TSA).
  4. Require individuals to pay a fee, or limiting the number of open meetings an individual may attend without paying a fee. (In this case, the fee is patently illegal, and having agreed to pay the fee on behalf of individuals attending MAC meetings, the MAC itself would have standing to challenge the fee.)
  5. Granting a third party discretion to decide who will, and who will not, be allowed to attend a meeting. (The MAC website notes that “Verification is not guaranteed”, i.e that the TSA may choose not to allow an individual to pass through the checkpoint, even if they identify themselves verbally, pay the $45 fee or have it paid for them, and answer all of the TSA’s questions.)

None of this fits within any reasonable definition of “open to the public”.

Any member of an entity subject to the Minnesota Open Meetings Law who violates this law, including by attending a business meeting of an agency that isn’t open to the public, is personally liable for a $300 fine for each “occurrence”. They have to pay the fine themselves. The agency isn’t allowed to pay it for them. Under a “three strikes you’re out” provision of this law, any office-holder found guilty of three separate violations of the Open Meetings Law forfeits their office for the remainder of their term.

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for a full response to our request under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act for information about the basis for the MAC’s dubious claim that it lacks any authority to limit where in the airport Federal agents can go.

The last word we received is that we can expect a response to our public records request tomorrow — the day after the monthly MAC meeting today at which we and others might (if we were allowed by the TSA to attend) have asked questions of MAC members about the decision to give Federal agents free run of the airport without challenge.