The Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, which was assisting the DEA with the searches described in the warrant, said it was an ongoing investigation and declined to comment further. The FBI, the DEA and Sabre had not provided comment at the time of publication. “For example, if travel records were held to the same standard as wiretap orders, they could never get an order for two years of data.” (Wiretap orders typically last for 30 days, though can be extended with repeated government applications.) “It’s chilling that the courts grant access to Sabre data under the All Writs Act, which requires very little showing from the government,” added Fox-Cahn. Similar orders were filed in 2015 to track an infamous Russian cybercriminal and in 2019 to track down an Indian fugitive suspected of hacking, per Forbes’ previous reporting. The order was made using the All Writs Act, a 1789 law that allows the government to ask for “non-burdensome” assistance from organizations not directly related to an investigation.
While all identifying details of the suspect were redacted, the document detailed an FBI attempt to track down a “known fugitive” by having Sabre provide “contemporaneous ‘real-time’ account activity information of the traveler” for two years. “It’s chilling that the courts grant access to Sabre data under the All Writs Act.”Īlbert Fox-Cahn, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project executive directorĪt the end of December, Forbes’ lawsuit led a court to unseal a 2015 order on Sabre, a large $2 billion-valued GDS supplier that has access to at least a third of all global travel bookings. That makes them useful for the federal government when it wants to spy on someone’s global movements. GDSes are vast databases of travel information that can be accessed by airlines, cruise providers, car rental companies and hoteliers, all to make bookings as seamless as possible. To push for more transparency from the government on its surveillance of global travelers, over the last two years, Forbes and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press have taken the federal government to court to unseal documents detailing secretive, “real-time” surveillance of individual targets’ travel bookings via companies known as “global distribution system” providers.
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