Tag: Customs

Customs Computer Systems Down Nationwide, Causing Massive Delays At Airports

A computer issue is preventing U.S. immigration officials from processing arriving passengers at several airports across the country. “It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the problem at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but the agency said it was investigating,” reports CNBC. Agents will be processing people manually until the systems are resolved. One Twitter user posted a video of a long…

Google Workers Demand Company Not Work With Border Agencies

Some Google employees have called on the company to publicly promise not to work with U.S. immigration authorities, which they said are abusing human rights. From a report: U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently said it was looking for proposals from companies to supply it with cloud-computing services. Google is a leading cloud provider. Activists and politicians have accused the agency…

America’s FBI Is Running Facial Recognition Searches On Millions of Driver’s License Photos

America’s FBI and its Customs Enforcement agency “have turned state driver license databases into a facial-recognition gold mine, scanning through hundreds of millions of Americans’ photos without their knowledge or consent,” reports the Washington Post. They cite thousands of newly-released facial-recognition requests, internal documents, and emails from the last five years, revealed after a public-records request from researchers at Georgetown University,…

Delta Airlines Begins Using Facial Recognition Scanners To Replace Boarding Passes

“Delta Air Lines announced it will give passengers who fly out of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport the option to use facial recognition to board their flight instead of a standard boarding pass,” reported a CBS affiliate this week. The facial scanners will be installed this week at 16 gates, with availability on all international flights through Delta beginning in July. The…

Proposed Law in India Would Imprison Anyone Who Uses Cryptocurrency

Holding, selling or dealing in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin could soon land people in India in jail for 10 years. From a report: The “Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019” draft in the nation has proposed 10-year prison sentence for persons who “mine, generate, hold, sell, transfer, dispose, issue or deal in cryptocurrencies.” Besides making it…

Apple Is Still Trying To Sue the Owner of an Independent iPhone Repair Shop

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Despite initially losing the case last year, Apple is continuing its legal pursuit against the owner of a small, independent iPhone repair shop in Norway. Apple is attempting to hold the repair shop owner liable for importing what it says are counterfeit iPhone screens into his home country of Norway. Last year, Apple…

Senators Propose Bill Requiring Warrants To Search Devices at the Border

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you’re taking a trip in to or out of the US, border agents currently have free rein to search through your digital devices. Unlike police, agents don’t need a warrant to look through your phones, laptops and other electronics. Two US senators are hoping to change that with a bipartisan bill. Sen. Ron Wyden,…

Internal ‘Civil War’ Pits Google Against Its Own Employees

Google employees “want a say in and control over the products they build,” reports Fortune, in an article headlined “Inside Google’s Civil War”: As the so-called techlash has cast a pall over the entire sector, organized employee pushback is slowly becoming part of the landscape: Amazon workers are demanding more action from the company on battling climate change; at Microsoft, employees…

Tesla’s Solar Factory Is Exporting Most of Its Cells

Most of the solar cells Tesla is producing at its Gigafactory in upstate New York “are being sold overseas instead of being used in the company’s trademark ‘Solar Roof’ as originally intended,” reports Reuters. “The exporting underscores the depth of Tesla’s troubles in the U.S. solar business, which the electric car maker entered in 2016 with its controversial $2.6 billion purchase…