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The Border Is a Back Door for U.S. Device Searches

September 9, 2013 by

The documents detail what until now has been a largely secretive process that enables the government to create a travel alert for a person, who may not be a suspect in an investigation, then detain that individual at a border crossing and confiscate or copy any electronic devices that person is carrying.

To critics, the documents show how the government can avert Americans’ constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, but the confiscations have largely been allowed by courts as a tool to battle illegal activities like drug smuggling, child pornography and terrorism.

The documents were turned over to David House, a fund-raiser for the legal defense of Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, as part of a legal settlement with the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. House had sued the agency after his laptop, camera, thumb drive and cellphone were seized when he returned from a trip to Mexico in November 2010. The data from the devices was then examined over seven months.

Although government investigators had questioned Mr. House about his association with Private Manning in the months before his trip to Mexico, he said no one asked to search his computer or mentioned seeking a warrant to do so. After seizing his devices, immigration authorities sent a copy of Mr. House’s data to the Army Criminal Investigation Command, which conducted the detailed search of his files. No evidence of any crime was found, the documents say.

“Americans crossing the border are being searched and their digital media is being seized in the hopes that the government will find something to have them convicted,” Mr. House said. “I think it’s important for business travelers and people who consider themselves politically inclined to know what dangers they now face in a country where they have no real guarantee of privacy at the border.”

A spokeswoman from Customs and Border Protection said the agency declined to comment about the settlement with Mr. House, or answer questions about travelers’ rights when their devices are seized or inspected during a border crossing.

While many travelers have no idea why they are singled out for a more intrusive screening at a border, one of the documents released in Mr. House’s settlement shows that he was flagged for a device search months before he traveled to Mexico.

On July 8, 2010, Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators in New York created an alert, known as a TECS lookout, for Mr. House, noting that he was “wanted for questioning re leak of classified material” and ordering border agents to “secure digital media” if he appeared at an inspection point.

TECS is a computer system used to screen travelers at the border, and includes records from law enforcement, immigration and antiterrorism databases. A report from the Department of Homeland Security about border searches of electronic devices says a traveler may be searched “because he is the subject of, or person-of-interest-in, an ongoing law enforcement investigation and was flagged by a law enforcement ‘lookout’ ” in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement computer system.

On Oct. 26, 2010, an automated message notified investigators that Mr. House had an airline reservation on Oct. 30, traveling on American Airlines flight 865 from Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Cabos, Mexico; a later query noted that he would be returning to Chicago O’Hare on American flight 228, landing at 6 p.m. on Nov. 3.

Since airline passengers are required to provide carriers with their birth date and passport number before a flight to or from the United States, and airlines pass that information to Homeland Security (as part of the Advance Passenger Information System), computers matched the lookout alert with Mr. House’s itinerary. Agents were then dispatched to meet him.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/business/the-border-is-a-back-door-for-us-device-searches.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

All-You-Can-Fly Airline Plies the California Coast

August 5, 2013 by

After arriving in Washington, jobless, he landed a position in Vice President Dick Cheney’s press office, followed by stints in Iraq as a government operative and in Washington as a National Security Agency consultant.

This all helps to explain why Mr. Eyerly, while projecting a Ferris Bueller-like certainty that everything will always work out in the end, eschewed graduate school at Stanford to start an airline.

With Surf Air, Mr. Eyerly is bringing what he calls the all-you-can-eat-style pricing plan of the local gym or Netflix to air travel — pay a membership ($500), a monthly fee ($1,650) and fly as often as you like on six-seat, single-engine turboprops.

Surf Air started flying in June, with service between smaller airports in Burbank, Calif., and San Carlos near Palo Alto, tapping into those who do business between Hollywood and Silicon Valley and would prefer to do so without the headaches of major airports. It added service last month to Santa Barbara, Calif., and is considering additional destinations by the end of the year.

If it looks as if he is flying blind — a novice businessman diving into an industry that is plagued by contractions, mergers and failed enterprises — Mr. Eyerly views his fledgling Surf Air as an opportunity to fundamentally change the way business travelers fly.

It is a pitch to certain kinds of decision makers — the small-business chief executives, the bottom half of the one-percenters, those who have not yet made their fortune but are intent on making their mark. For his customers, Mr. Eyerly hopes Surf Air can be an incubator of ideas, where flights can be dinner parties in the air, where the membership can be a Facebook for entrepreneurs.

If the business model works in California, with expansion to places like Palm Springs and Lake Tahoe in mind, it will work in more than 50 markets around the country, he said.

“Forgive the Kansas City reference, but it’s Bo Jackson at the plate,” Mr. Eyerly, a 34-year-old Kansas City native, said, referring to the former Royals slugger. “It’s a home run or a strikeout. It works or it doesn’t. If this doesn’t work in a year, 18 months, we’ll know. It won’t drag out.”

Surf Air has raised about $11 million in capital, Mr. Eyerly said, from investors that include Velos Partners, Base Ventures and Anthem Ventures, as well as the actor Jared Leto and the developer Rick Caruso. The company has 60 employees, 25 of whom are pilots, and a fleet of three Pilatus PC-12 planes. Its membership is nearing 300, each of whom has made a three-month commitment.

It was not hard to see the lure recently when members arrived and departed from Burbank. It was possible to pull into the small parking lot outside the Atlantic Terminal, which is separate from the main terminal, walk a few dozen steps to the lobby, grab a snack from the concierge cart and walk out on the tarmac to board the plane. There were no tickets, no lines and no body scans. A valet parked the customers’ cars.

“It’s truly transformative for me on several levels,” said Heather Rafter, who runs her own small Bay Area law firm but travels frequently to Burbank to do business, visit children in college or attend concerts. She is an elite-level flier with United Airlines and Southwest, but because of early-booking requirements or change fees, her frequent flights are costly, she said.

“My whole brain is thinking differently,” Ms. Rafter said. “I do business development when I want, I do client meetings when I need to and if I forgot to come home for my daughter’s swim meet, I just come home without stressing about what it’s going to cost. I feel free in my personal and work life.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/business/airline-banks-on-a-buffet-style-business-model.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Itineraries: The Leisure Pack Is Back

June 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

It was after midnight, and Leilanie Ramos just wanted clean clothes.

An event planner for a satellite communications company, Ms. Ramos was halfway through a stretch of back-to-back trade shows that kept her on the road for nearly two weeks. She checked into her hotel in Tampa, Fla., after a late-night arrival from Istanbul with plans to do her laundry at the hotel’s facility, figuring she would have the machines to herself at that hour.

“There were two other people doing laundry at almost 1 o’clock in the morning,” she said. Since there were only two washing machines, Ms. Ramos had to wait, finally getting to bed around 3 a.m., she said.

“There’s a lot more people where you don’t expect them to be,” she said.

For a few years, business travelers had lobbies and lounges (not to mention laundry rooms) to themselves. It was a silver lining of sorts, even if the economic outlook was grim, consumer confidence was shaken and personal finance experts promoted the benefits of the “staycation.”

This summer, that trend is over. The U.S. Travel Association says leisure travel will hit a record high this year, while belt-tightening in the hotel and airline industries means packed houses all around. “Now, it’s a free-for-all,” said Jeff Butler, an engineer for a company that makes broadband equipment whose work takes him on the road three to four days a week.

“Leisure travel is back, and it’s back stronger,” said Alex Tonarelli, general manager at the Loews Miami Beach Hotel.

Scott Berman, principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers Hospitality and Leisure, said that from a hotel industry perspective, that’s good news. “People are feeling better about themselves,” he said, making them more likely to indulge in a vacation this summer.

PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the average hotel occupancy in the United States this year will reach 62.2 percent, the most crowded that hotels have been since 2007. Planes are also “chockablock full,” said the airline industry analyst Robert W. Mann Jr., who predicted domestic flights would be 84 percent full this year. “It means everyone is sharing an armrest,” he said.

Business travelers wistfully remember when they had elbow room — or even an entire row to themselves — on flights that left at inconvenient times. “The early morning flights that used to be just business travelers are now filled with people on a discount fare,” Mr. Butler said.

What’s more, he said, the Transportation Safety Administration lines aren’t as fully staffed at odd hours, making the wait to be screened even longer. “It never used to be that bad,” he said.

Ms. Ramos said she remembered when “you’d have empty seats next to you for those red-eyes and long international flights; you could easily stretch out.” But on her international trips so far this year, she said, “All of the seats were taken.”

Barry Richards, a vice president for production at a company that creates media for hospital marketing, said he was seeing a lot of completely full flights.

“The thing I always watch out for is families and school groups and anybody who doesn’t look like they have much experience traveling,” he said. “I don’t want to be behind somebody that requires a lot of re-scanning.”

Business travelers say they find themselves stuck in long lines more often at hotels, too. On a recent trip to Las Vegas, Mr. Butler said his hotel’s front desk was overwhelmed, even with five people working behind it. Most of his fellow travelers didn’t appear to be visiting the city on business, he said, adding, “They were folks that were there to have fun in Vegas.”

“It was crazy getting through,” he said. “I probably waited close to an hour at check-in.”

In some cases, business travelers can’t even get a room. “We seem to encounter more and more sold-out hotels,” Mr. Richards said. “In the past, we haven’t run into that a whole lot.” He said in his 15 years of business travel, the competition for rooms was never this fierce.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/18/business/overcrowding-makes-business-travelers-wistful-for-the-recession.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Economy News Tagged With: , ,

On the Road: The Collision Over Traffic Cameras

July 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Hence most people support those traffic cameras perched on roadsides in hundreds of municipalities all over the country, flashing retribution at offending drivers. Or shall we say, most people support them till they get a camera-generated ticket that they believe was issued unfairly.

“We’re certainly hearing varying tales around the country of how people feel about these cameras,” said Justin McNaull, the director of state relations for AAA, the automobile travel organization. “People are generally supportive of them. However, there is a fairly vocal minority that, for various reasons, doesn’t — whether those with concerns about Big Brother and government misuse of technology, or those who have gotten tickets that they simply don’t feel they should have got.”

And there’s the rub. I know or have heard from a good number of people who have never previously had a traffic citation, who one day open the mail and see their face on a ticket, say for a red-light violation they had no idea they committed, in a place they drove through months ago. Fines can run as high as $500 in some jurisdictions, with additional costs for mandatory attendance at safety classes. (And no, I have not had a ticket myself.)

The issue crops up increasingly with business travelers, especially those in rental cars. Typically, rental-car companies, which get the actual ticket, simply pay a summons and then bill the customer, who has little recourse.

Critics say that far too often, localities are using the systems — installed and managed by big corporate vendors that get a large chunk of the fine money — as just another way to generate revenue. They say some systems are rigged to cast a wider net that includes an ever-growing number of safe drivers whose violations, if any, would be overlooked by an actual police officer.

“Technology can absolutely help make roads safer, and red-light cameras and speed cameras, on properly engineered roadways, can play a proper role in that,” said Mr. McNaull, who is a former police officer in Arlington, Va. “The devil is really in the details as to how these things are implemented, so motorists are not being set up to fail.”

A reaction has been building, driven in large part by the growing number of people who feel they have been unfairly ticketed. Among the criticisms are that camera systems at some intersections, for example, have been calibrated to shorten the yellow-light interval to ensnare people who think they’re crossing prudently when the light suddenly goes red.

“We certainly have concerns that some jurisdictions view these cameras far more as revenue sources than as safety programs,” Mr. McNaull said.

A properly designed traffic camera system works in conjunction with good intersection engineering and basic common sense, “so you’re not going to ticket the person who mistimes a light by four one-hundredths of a second,” he said.

Good intersection engineering mitigates the problem for a driver who is wondering, do I hit the brakes or not?” he said. “At properly designed intersections you shouldn’t have that dilemma zone, because there is ample yellow time for you to recognize that the light is changing,” Mr. McNaull said.

Redesigning accident-prone intersections costs lots of money, of course, at a time when localities are desperate. “In some parts of the country, proposals to initiate or expand automated enforcement have been put forward as part of the mayor’s budget package, and that causes real concerns,” Mr. McNaull said.

Last week, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a trade group, released a survey stating that two-thirds of drivers in 14 big cities that use red-light cameras support the cameras, which the survey says have reduced fatal crashes significantly.

But others say the data used to claim significant road-crash reductions is often highly selective and misleading. Last fall, an audit by the Los Angeles city controller of the red-light cameras at 32 intersections found that the program “cannot conclusively demonstrate that it has reduced traffic collisions” and actually lost money for the city, once the private vendor was paid.

Around the country, voters have been supporting various initiatives to eliminate traffic cameras. In Houston, for example, voters last year approved a petition to remove traffic cameras that have generated more than $44 million in fines since 2004. However, a federal judge overturned that initiative on procedural grounds last month.

This debate is intensifying, and I’d like to hear from business travelers about their own experiences.

E-mail: jsharkey@nytimes.com

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=595fe59a487d7fa2e8ed7b30711aa7d2

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,

Corner Office: You’ve Passed the Interview. Now Give Us a Presentation.

April 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss? 

A. It was when I started a magazine in North Carolina called the Vagabond. And the vision was to enable business travelers and families to discover restaurants, hotels and golf courses in 50 top cities. It is the same theory that I believe in today with Appssavvy, which is to be really clear about the vision and how you’re going to get there, and tell people how their involvement will be meaningful. The more you can make people feel that they have a hand at the wheel, that they’re driving something, the more that they’ll participate and own it like you own it. 

 From my experience, if you have an army of people who believe as passionately about the goal and the vision, you’re going to find a lot more success than by using the theory of command and demand. 

Q. And what were some early leadership lessons?

A. I was born in Finland. My grandfather started a paper company in Finland, and I had experience in high school as an intern selling paper products internationally from a desk outside of Helsinki. And I didn’t really know what I was doing other than having a phone and a piece of paper and some sort of concept of the products. But learning how to sell internationally gave me confidence to do things at an early age. 

You also learn through sports — and I was a sports junkie, from hockey to football to lacrosse — what you have in your gut, in your heart, and you learn about your ability to get people to listen. Most of the time, people will listen to you not just because of the direction you set, but also because of the follow-through and the execution. 

Q. How do you hire?

A. We look for people who really want the job. And that sounds really simple to say, but some of the most important people in the organization who shine and are really transformative people were the ones who were almost jumping out of the chair, saying: “I have to be here. I’ve been studying this company. This is all I’ve ever wanted. And if I’m not here, I’m not going to be happy.” Those individuals took that extra step as well to follow through after the interview. We watch how quickly the person follows through, and how much thought they put into how they want to contribute. But how badly do they want the job — I can’t stress that piece enough. 

Their résumé, I believe, is one of the least-valuable components of an interview. For me, primarily it sits on the desk as a reference point, and to potentially make that person feel comfortable that I’m a professional C.E.O. But the truth is, I’m not interested in the résumé. I’m more interested in understanding the time that the person took in understanding our business, product and the industry landscape. 

I spend a lot of time asking about the challenges people have faced in prior work environments, and how they would behave or react in an unfamiliar situation where they might not be too comfortable. The people who are able to respond quite quickly and have very short, concise answers to how they would overcome a problematic situation typically are the ones who seem to possess leadership skills. You have to ensure that you’re not just hiring a person because you have an opening, but you want people who possess leadership qualities so that they could replace the person who’s hiring them. 

Q. Can you elaborate on this quality of facing down challenges?

A. I ask them to recall real examples. It can potentially expose something that we believe is very important, which is problem-solving. Great leaders can take the initiative and solve problems on their own. So we ask: Were you in a challenging predicament, and faced with a scenario that you were not used to? What did you do? Who do you reach out to? How did you go about handling this? How would you follow through on it?

Some of the biggest misses, I think, come from people not following through. A great idea or solution is only as strong as the follow-through. Nothing will potentially frustrate me more than if there’s no action item. If you follow through, that is a tremendous asset that a lot of individuals don’t necessarily possess. 

Q. What else is unusual about your hiring process?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=32211ddfc658b72d1df779d48508fbae

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: , ,