On September 30, 2025, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs held a hearing on Examining the Weaponization of the Quiet Skies Program
Coming just hours before the partial shutdown of Federal government operations, this hearing was sparsely attended, even by members of the committee, and got little press attention. The hearing opened with the Chair and Ranking Minority Member of the committee talking over each other at length.
Much of the argument between Senators and the questioning of witnesses focused not on the general problems of the Quiet Skies traveler surveillance program program or government travel blacklists (referred to euphemistically as “watchlists” throughout the hearing) but on whether these programs have been weaponized to a greater extent under Democratic or Republican administrations.
But if we — and, we hope, members of Congress — can look past the partisan polemics, the testimony and documents introduced into the record of this hearing provide important guidance on what can and should be done to protect all travelers — regardless of our party affiliation (if any), ethnicity, religious beliefs, or political opinions — against the weaponization of travel blacklists by whatever government is in power.
The Quiet Skies [sic] program assigned officers from the Federal Air Marshals Service (one of the police agencies within the Transportation Security Administration) to accompany and surveil pre-selected airline passengers on flights and in airports.
Quiet Skies is just one of many travel surveillance and blacklisting programs. According to another report by the same Senate committee last yea (under a chair from the opposite side of the aisle), “There are at least 22 different mechanisms that might lead Americans to receive additional screening at airports and other ports of entry or be denied the ability to travel.”
According to precious whistleblower reports and documents obtained by the Senate HSGAC Committee and entered into the record of the hearing last week, Quite Skies targets were selected by a ruleset that incorporated other US government blacklists and watchlists as well as profile-based rules that factored in ethnicity and countries previously visited.
Targets of blacklisting and watchlisting have ranged from people selected based on having used a credit card at a Washington-area airport on or around January 6, 2021 , to critics of Israel’s military actions in Gaza , among other activities protected by the First Amendment.
The Quiet Skies program was ended in June 2025 by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noehm. The same day as the Senate hearing on Quiet Skies last week, the TSA announced that Secretary Noehm was firing five senior TSA officials associated with the Quite Skies program, including the TSA’s executive assistant administrator for operations support and the deputy assistant administrator for intelligence and analysis.
News reports, presumably based on DHS statements, described Quiet Skies as a “Biden-era” program even though its largest expansion came in 2018 during the first Trump administration. And according to the TSA’s press release last week:
... continue reading