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Saturday, July 28, 2018

Welcome to the Quiet Skies



Did you scan the boarding area from afar?


Have a cold, penetrating stare?

Sleep on the plane? Use the bathroom? Talk to others?

This is just some of the information that federal air marshals collect on thousands of regular US citizens under a secret, domestic surveillance program.


Welcome to the Quiet Skies

By Jana Winter

July 28, 2018

Federal air marshals have begun following ordinary US citizens not suspected of a crime or on any terrorist watch list and collecting extensive information about their movements and behavior under a new domestic surveillance program that is drawing criticism from within the agency.

The previously undisclosed program, called “Quiet Skies,” specifically targets travelers who “are not under investigation by any agency and are not in the Terrorist Screening Data Base,” according to a Transportation Security Administration bulletin in March.

The internal bulletin describes the program’s goal as thwarting threats to commercial aircraft “posed by unknown or partially known terrorists,” and gives the agency broad discretion over which air travelers to focus on and how closely they are tracked.








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