The Amazing Race 13, Episode 1

Los Angeles, CA (USA) - Salvador, Bahia (Brazil)

The first leg of "The Amazing Race 13" took the reality-TV racers from the Los Angeles Coliseum to the city of Salvador, in northeastern Brazil.

As usual, the flight choices for the first leg (on American Airlines and United Airlines, we were told) were prescribed by the TV producers, and the actual route and connections were omitted or obfuscated. So viewers aren't likely to have realized that even given a free choice of flights, the racers would have needed to change planes at least twice. And they couldn't have arrived in Salvador on American or United, since neither flies any closer than Rio de Janiero, 800 miles away: at one of their connection points, they must have had to transfer to some other airline.

In fact, northeastern Brazil is by far the largest and most populous region so close to the USA without direct flights to and from the USA. The reasons why are a case study in airline and government decision-making:

Some places I recommend

One of my most frequently asked questions is, "Where should I go on my next trip?"

Usually, I refuse to answer, except to say that you should make your own choices, according to your own self-awareness of your own tastes, and not rely on my advice or that of anyone else.

Everyone has their own interests and reasons to travel. That's why I devote so much space in The Practical Nomad; How to Travel Around the World to the process of researching and choosing destinations.

But having just spent 13 months travelling 80,000 miles through 28 countries on 6 continents, just this once I'll take the liberty of telling you some of the places I liked best.

All of these are places not to miss, in my opinion, but in different senses: some are worth making your primary destination for a trip from the USA (or wherever you may call home), while others are worth a detour if you are nearby, or a stopover of you are passing through. All of them are places that aren't as well known, in the USA in particular, and don't get nearly as many foreign visitors as other nearby places that I skipped, or found less rewarding. This isn't intended to be a list of the world's "best" places to visit, but a list of places I greatly enjoyed on this trip (I've left out some places that were really interesting, but not for me so much fun) but that you might have overlooked, or never even have heard of.

My top dozen such places from this trip, in the order I visited them (not a ranking):

• The Humahuaca Valley, Jujuy Province, northwestern Argentina: Stunning mountain scenery (as seen in the prize-winning and recommended documentary film Rio Arriba , which has caused a backpacker boomlet in Iruya), and small towns reminiscent of Sante Fe or Taos, where European-Argentine (i.e. white) artists and hippies seem to coexist fairly happily with the indigenous and mestizo majority. For travellers prone to altitude sickness, this is one of the few overland routes up to the high Andes that permits gradual acclimatization, with villages and comfortable lodging every 500 meters (1500 feet) of altitude gain, all the way up the valley from the pampas to La Quiaca at the Bolivian border. If you are coming from Buenos Aires, you can take the train to Tucuman -- less than US$40 per person for a private sleeping compartment -- then continue by road through Cafayate, the center of the Torrontes wine-growing region.
  
  
• Potosi, Bolivia: Perhaps eight million people died in the mines of Cerro Rico, the "Rich Mountain" above Potosi that was the center of Spanish colonial wealth in the Americas. From Ecuador to Argentina, Indian conscripts were marched thousands of miles to labor in the mines of Potosi. Those who survived to return home propagated some of the first seeds of a common "Hispanic American" cultural identity. Today, the mines (as deadly as ever, although on a reduced scale) remain the sole reason for the existence of a city in such a location, on an almost unbuildably steep slope in barren desert at an almost uninhabitable altitude. Given that past and present, I thought it important to visit Potosi, but I didn't expect to enjoy it. To my surprise, I did. Potosi is, above all, a living city, warts and all, not a monument to the Holocaust of which it was and is the center. Local people are justifiably proud of what they and their ancestors have so arduously wrought, and of their city's historic importance. Potosi was comfortable, inexpensive (like everywhere we went in Bolivia), visually stunning, and a delight to explore on foot -- at least until the altutude and steepness got to us.
  
  
• Portugal: Worth a trip. If you are wondering where you can still afford to travel in Western Europe with devalued U.S. dollars, put Portugal at the top of your list. Friendly people, great food and wine, great scenery, few crowds (even in the summer, most foreign visitors to Portugal stick to the beach resorts of the Algarve, in the far south), and the price sinkhole of the Euro zone. The climate is mild enough to be pleasant even in winter, and gorgeous in "shoulder" season in spring or fall. Like Ireland and perhaps Greece, Portugal combines a proletarian identity (as a country whose main export used to be migrant labor) with modern European infrastructure. Lisbon and Porto are charming cities -- big enough to be exciting, small enough to be accessible.
  
  
• Ourense, Spain: Probably not worth a trip, but definitely worth a detour. Despite being the capital of Galicia (don't worry, everyone speaks standard Castilian Spanish as well, although much signage is bilingual in Galician), Ourense is just far enough off the pilgrimmage route to Santiago de Campostelo that it's almost completely untouched by foreign tourism. The most fun part of our visit, other than the food, was the natural open-air public hot spring, in use since Roman times, at the edge of the river in the center of town, walking distance from our hotel.
  
  
• Pau, France: Like Ourense, Pau is the sort of place that makes a Eurail pass worthwhile: you find yourself passing through or changing trains, and decide to stay a while. What have you got to lose? If you don't like it, you can get back on the next train. Pau used to be on the main rail line from Paris to Madrid (and may be again in the not to distant future), and with its vista of the high Pyrenees was once quite a fashionable resort. Today it's a quiet but still cosmopolitan place with plenty to keep you busy for a few days. And the rail route across the mountains to Zaragoza, Spain (site of this year's World's Fair, in case you hadn't noticed) remains spectacular despite having to switch to a bus over the pass, where France and Spain have been arguing for decades over the repair of a damaged tunnel.
  
  
• Marseille, France: It's hard to find anything except racism and (unwarranted) racialized fear to explain the paucity of tourists in Marseille. It's France's second-largest city, Europe's most African and ethnically diverse major city, and for millennia one of the most important ports on the Mediterranean. I've wanted to get to get to Marseille for years, and having been there, I'm eager to return. The Marseillaises have culture and panache, even on the barricades (whether in the French Revolution, in their celebrated leading role in the resistance to Nazism, or in the contemporary labor demonstrations we happened upon). But we encountered none of the snootiness of which Parisians are so often accused. Nor did we find Paris-like crowds at the museums, churches, concerts, restaurants, excursions, and sights. Nothing is really cheap, but the prices are tempered substantially by the general absence of mass or luxury tourism.
  
  
• Syria: Worth a journey in its own right, or an overland side trip from Turkey. Damascus and Aleppo were, for me, the high points of more than a year on the road. So much to see, and so few tourists. There are caveats and complication, and I'm working on a longer article specifically about travel in Syria. But nowhere else in the world, ever, have I experienced such a universal, unqualified, generous, and sincere attitude of welcome as I did from almost everyone I met in Syria. And that was especially true when they learned that we were from the USA! Nor have I been anywhere with so much historical importance and so few visitors. No, I never felt the least afraid: Even in the largest cities, foreign women can walk down dark alleys alone in the middle of the night safely -- and not just because it's a police state. Except for accommodations, everything is dirt-cheap, including great food and fine-quality handcrafted souvenirs in the frenzied bazaars.
  
  
• Thessaloniki, Greece: Worth a stopover along the rail route between Athens and Istanbul, or a side trip from either. My first taste of big-city life was at college at the Univerity of Chicago, so perhaps it's not surprising that I have a thing for "second cities": big enough to be cosmopolitan and dense enough to get around by foot or public transit, but not so self-important or overwhelming as mega-capitals tend to be. (Come to think of it, Marseille fits much of this same pattern, although with even fewer tourists than Thessaloniki.) Thessaloniki's location and multicultural history tie it as closely to the Balkans and to Turkey (its obvious sister city is Izmir, Turkey) as to Greece, while the present-day character of the city is dominated by the port (as always) and the huge university. Lots of Europeans on weekend "city breaks" mean lots of comfortable and empty hotel rooms on weeknights, with highly negotiable rates. Have I mentioned the superb and reasonably-priced (if not cheap) food?
  
  
• Ethiopia: If I could visit only one country in all of Africa, I would probably pick Ethiopia -- provided I was willing either to travel really rough (seriously bad busses and bedbugs) on a backpacker budget, or pay the price for comfortable accommodations (which do exist in the major tourist spots) and internal transportation by air (Ethiopian Airlines is Africa's best by far, with impeccable efficiency and competence even when flying to remote places) or a private car and driver. As the seat of the African Union, Addis Ababa has become in many ways the capital of the the continent, while Axum and Lalibela provide an accessible introduction both to the grandeur of African civilization and to contemporary life in African communities outside the big cities. Extremely safe compared to most of the rest of Africa, much less the USA, with English widely spoken. And of course, the food is a unique delight. (Asmara, Eritrea, gave us a fascinating comparison and contrast with Ethiopia, but isn't on the way to anywhere else, and doesn't have much in the way of tourist-oriented activities or entertainment.)
  
  
• Sana'a, Yemen: Even if you don't (and maybe shouldn't) venture out of the city, Sana'a is definitely worth a stopover. Yemen Airways has excellent prices on through routings between Europe, East Africa, and South and East Asia, via Sana's, and gets my "we try harder" award as the best small airline of my trip. At 7,000 feet above sea level in a bowl in the mountains that set Yemen off from the rest of the Arabian Peninsula, Sana's has the perfect temperate climate characteristic of equatorial highlands. If you think all Arab countries are alike, think again: people here are Yemenis (and members of a tribe) first, and Arabs only secondarily. Yemen isn't really isolated, but in a world of homogenized globalization, it's its own place in appearance, lifestyle, architecture, and exuberant welcome. (And qat-chewing, but that's another story.)
  
  
• Bendigo, Victoria, Australia: Like most foreigners, I thought of Australia mainly in terms of the East Coast cities (especially Sydney) and the Outback. But there's a third Australia in between, which tourists shouldn't miss: the countryside and the "country towns", of which Bendigo was only one that happened to stand out in our experience. Nothing spectacular, but comfortable and "pleasant" in the best sense of the word.
  
  
• Narita, Chiba Prefecture, Japan: Most people know "Narita" as the name of the international airport serving Tokyo, but Narita is actually a small city worth visiting in its own right -- even if you don't have time, or don't want to deal with the crowds, to take the train to central Tokyo. Narita's best-known attraction, the Naritasan Shinshoji Buddhist temple, draws ten million pilgrims a year from throughout Japan and farther afield, and is surrounded by a pedestrian strip of traditional restaurants and shops catering to these pilgrims, as well as several hotels within walking distance. It's just a few minutes by train from the airport, so a half-day layover can be an opportunity for exploration rather than an enforced waste of time. Japan has never been as expensive as some people would have you believe: you can spend a fortune, but you don't have to spend any more than you would to travel at a similar level in the USA, possibly a little less. With the Japanese yen having appreciated much less against the U.S. dollar than the Euro or many other currencies, that makes Japan a bargain these days compared to almost anywhere else in the First World (except the USA itself, of course).

If you are wondering about the absence from this list of India and China (both big, diverse, interesting, fun, and essential if you really want to be able to say you've seen the world), the reason is that we didn't get to India on this trip (we spent a couple of months -- not enough -- in India and Pakistan on our first trip around the world), and while we did get to China, briefly, the recent changes in China's visa rules preclude independent travel, at least for now.

I say again, your mileage may vary. Please post your recommendations (and the reasons for them) in the comments: What are the places you've been that don't get as many foreign tourists, aren't as well known, or don't have as good a reputation as you think they deserve?

"The Amazing Race" resumes this Sunday

The Amazing Race 13 premieres this Sunday, 28 September 2008, from 8-9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, 7-8 p.m. Central and Mountain Time on CBS-TV in the USA.

I was travelling and skipped season 12. If you're tempted to say, "You could have downloaded it as a bit torrent and watched it online from a cybercafe", then you don't know what Internet access is like form behind the great government firewall of Syria, or from a wattle-and-daub walled cyberhut with a shared 56k bps dial-up connection in provincial Ethiopia.

Now I'm back home in San Francisco, I've invested in a high-definition TV tuner/server for my home computer network, and once again I'll be posting weekly commentary on the reality-TV race around the world, and the lessons it holds for real-world travellers.

If you want something to watch to get yourself back in the mood for travel "reality" TV, check out the fictional movie travelogue The Art of Travel , just released on DVD. Travel movies used to be inherently expensive to produce, and thus tended toward big-budget cast-of-thousands extravagnace. But "The Art of Travel" is testament to the degree to which technology has made on-location production, even in the Third World, feasible for even low-budget independent filmmakers. It's an unexpectedly intriguing mix of a totally unrealistic and hokey Hollywood plot (straight out of Sacramento, actually) with a dead-on depiction of a certain type of backpacker and "adventure" tourist. It's perhaps best in exposing the relationships between travellers (the protagonist who's convinced his money was stolen by the maid, when in reality it was taken by another hosteller, for example) and the fantasies with which they invest their journeys.

See you on Sunday!

New look

Yes, that's a new picture of yours truly in the sidebar -- a few years older than the last one, and with a lot less hair, thanks to the passage of time and a series of encounters with barbers around the world with whom I had few words in common. (Don't laugh: Can you say, "Just a trim, please," in Arabic?) It will grow back, but in the meantime, I figured you deserved something a little closer to my current appearance. I've posted a few other portraits from the last year; if you've got a strong opinion as to which do (or don't) belong on my home page, please let me know.

Obama, McCain, and draft registration ("Selective Service")

In an interview yesterday, Barack Obama said that, "I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school."

That has prompted many questions about Selective Service and the draft registration requirements for men Obama's age.

Since I maintaine a Web site about the draft, draft registration, and their history since 1980, it seems appropriate to clear up some of the confusion:

New China visa rules

The opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics have been accompanied by a lot of hype (some of it justified) about the new China, as well as a lot of bad press about the Chinese government's efforts to keep political activists and other "troublemakers" out of the spotlight, away from the Olympic venues, and if possible out of China entirely.

Surprisingly, there's been little straight information about the changes in China's visa rules for ordinary tourists -- some of which are probably temporary but others of which may continue well after the Olympics are over, perhaps permanently.

The changes have been made in several stages, over a period of several months. Most press reports have focused on some of the intermediate stages. And China continues to obfuscate, saying some types of visas are (theoretically) still available, when in fact they aren't being issued except perhaps to those with extremely good connections. I'll try to describe what is actually happening, now.

Listen up, around-the-world and long-term independent travellers: In the short to medium term, the changes in China's visa rules are most likely to affect those who aren't on a tour, and/or who are travelling for a long time (more than a couple of months) outside their home country before they get to China, or who decide to add China to their itinerary only after leaving home. Hong Kong, the place that many years ago was the easiest place to get visas to (the rest of) China, is now the hardest place of all, unless you officially and legally are a resident of Hong Kong.

I got caught up in these changes myself, for just these reasons My partner and I had planned to spend two months in China, starting in April 2008. But if we had applied for visas before wee left the USA in June 2007, they would have been valid a maximum of three months. So we planned our trip to enter China through Hong Kong.

Unfortunately, we arrived in Hong Kong on a local holiday at the start of a long weekend in April, which happened to be the weekend that the news -- even outside China -- was dominated by the protests of the Olympic torch relay in London and Paris. Over the weekend, other headline stories in the South China Morning Post discussed the panicked changes being made by China to keep protesters away from the Olympic events in China proper (and the devastating impact of those changes on business people in Hong Kong who work with people and companies in mainland China). On Monday, as the torch headed for San Francisco and more protests, we presented ourselves at the office in Hong Kong that issues visas for foreign visitors to the rest of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Hong Kong is now a "Special Administrative Region" of the PRC, and "part of China". But Hong Kong still has its own entry system, with different rules. So an entry permit for the Hong Kong SAR (issued on arrival for most foreigners, without a visa) is valid only for the SAR. To cross from Hong Kong to "mainland" China requires a visa (there's almost no visa-free entry to China for foreigners) and is considered an "entry" to China for purposes of counting the number of allowable entries on your China visa (single, double, or multiple).

My partner was given a visa, but only for a month (not the two we had planned). And I was told that my application would not be accepted in Hong Kong at all: I would have to apply at a Chinese embassy or Consulate in the country of my citizenship and residency, the USA. I had no trouble getting visas in San Francisco for my previous visits to China, but there was no way, without actually going back to the USA and trying, to find out would happen this time.

So I hung out on Lamma Island in Hong Kong for a few days while my partner went to some of the places (Guangzhou and Shenzhen) that I had visited without her in 2002. By the time she got back to Hong Kong, the rules had changed again, and even she would have been required to apply for her China visa in the USA, not Hong Kong. Giving up on China, at least for this trip, we went on to Plan B: five weeks in Australia by way of brief stops in Singapore and Malaysia.

So what are the rules now?

• No tourist visas to China are being issued now without proof of paid reservations for accommodations. Basically, the Chinese government wants you to be on a tour -- not wandering around on your own, where you might make trouble or meet Chinese troublemakers. This is a huge step backward: China hasn't required tours or proof of hotel reservations for visas for about twenty years. They sometimes used to ask for an itinerary, but it could be pretty vague, and didn't have to be paid or confirmed. I haven't seen any reports of whether, or how, they verify the evidence of reservations that you submit with your visa application. It's probably possible to get a visa on the strength of forged vouchers or confirmations. But I wouldn't want to do time in a Chinese prison for lying on a visa application. The big question for independent travellers is when, or if, it will once again be possible to get a visa to China without reservations. In the meantime, see my tips on reserving hotels in China. But I don't know if confirmed hotel reservations will suffice to get you a visa if they aren't paid for in advance. You may need fully paid hotel vouchers, or proof of payment for an inclusive tour, to get a visa.
  
  
• No multiple-entry visas to China are being issued to anyone, anywhere. Only single or double-entry visas are currently being issued. This doesn't affect many tourists, but is a catastrophe for foreign business people, especially those who live in Hong Kong and have regular business in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, or further into mainland China. Off the record, Chinese functionaries were quoted as saying that they expected to start issuing multiple-entry visas again around October 2008, after the Olympics.
  
  
• No long-stay China visas are being issued now. The maximum duration has been steadily reduced as the Olympics approach. The most recent reports are that few, if any, visas are being issued for more than 30 days stay in China. Applications for longer-stay visas will most likely begin to be approved sometime after the Olympics, but may remain subject to heightened scrutiny -- be prepared to give a good reason why you need a longer-stay visa.
  
  
• No China visa applications are being accepted in Hong Kong except from citizens and residents of Hong Kong, with Hong Kong resident visas or passports. Until recently, it was possible -- although more difficult, slower, and more costly -- for tourists to get China visas in Hong Kong. This might become possible again sometime after the Olympics, but I wouldn't count on it. At a minimum, have a "Plan B" if you are hoping to try for a China visa in Hong Kong, in case your application isn't accepted.
  
  
• No China visa applications are being accepted except in the country of the applicant's citizenship or residence. If you are a citizen of the USA, you can only apply for a visa to China in the USA or in a country where you have proof of legal residence (not just a country you are visiting or passing through as a tourist). I doubt this will change: Your only options will be to apply in the country of your citizenship, the country of your residence, or (maybe, eventually, if things change) Hong Kong. Don't waste your time trying to apply in some other country.
  
  
• Chinese visa forms and procedures have been standardized worldwide. Procedures used to vary from embassy to embassy and consulate to consulate. No longer. Now the process is being much more closely controlled from Beijing. Don't waste your time "forum shopping" for an obscure Chinese diplomatic mission that will be more lenient.
  
  
• A new question has been added to the Chinese visa application form : "Do you have any criminal record in China or any other country?" If you answer yes, you will be required to answer additional questions and provide additional information. I don't know what the chances are of getting a visa approved if you answer, "Yes". (If you have applied for a visa to China and answered "Yes" to this question, please share your experience in the comments, including: What was your crime: Felony or misdemeanor? Violent or nonviolent? General type of offense? How long ago was your crime? How was your application handled (delay, personal interview, referral to Beijing, etc.)? Was your visa application eventually approved? What country are you a citizen of, and when and where did you apply for what type of visa: tourist, student, etc.) I suspect this question will remain on the form permanently, even after the Olympics, but it might become possible to get a visa with a criminal record, depending on the nature of your record. I'd never been asked this question before, in more than 50 countries including previous visits to China, but it seems to be becoming more common. [The USA has long asked this question of all foreign visitors, but I haven't been asked this entering the USA, because I'm a USA citizen.] I'll have more about this question -- in China, the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, and other countries -- in a separate forthcoming article.
  
  
• The fee for any type of visa to China for a citizen of the USA is now US$130. This is entirely reasonable and justifiable reciprocity for the US$130 fee for a visa to the USA for a Chinese citizen. (That's now the norm for citizens of most countries who want to visit the USA.) If you don't like paying that much for visas to other countries, get Congress to lower the visa fees, or eliminate the visa requirement, for foreign visitors to the USA.
  
  
• No Chinese visa applications are accepted by mail. You must either go to the appropriate consulate or embassy yourself to apply and again to pick up your passport and visa a few days later, have a friend or relative go there for you (make sure you have everything completed and signed for them!), or pay a visa service to hand deliver your application and pick up your passport with your visa.
  
  
• In the USA, you can only apply at the one Chinese consulate or embassy designated for the state where you reside. China has assigned each state to the territory of the embassy in Washington, or of a specific consulate. If you live in Denver, you can only apply at the Chinese consulate in Chicago. You can't apply at the consulate in San Francisco or Los Angeles, even if that would be more convenient for you. Once again, this is a matter of reciprocity with similar rules that divide up other large countries, and require their citizens to apply for visas to the USA only at the specific embassy or consulate of the USA designated for the place where they reside.

So is it worth jumping through all these hoops to get a visa to China? If you can only get a visa by joining a tour, maybe not. But if it becomes possible once again to get a visa to travel on your own, and you haven't been to China before (or not recently), I think the cost and hassle of getting a visa are a small price to pay for permission to visit what is, once you get there, a remarkably easy, safe, and affordable place to travel -- not to mention a big, interesting, diverse, and important place. The difficulty and discomfort of travel in China are grossly exaggerated in the public image of China as a Third World country.

Many of the new hotels built for the Olympics are empty even now (partly as a result of the visa rule changes), and they'll be even emptier and hungrier for business when the games are over. See my tips on reserving hotels and finding your way around in China if you don't speak Chinese.

China is already one of the best-value destinations in the world Many of the fixtures and materials that go into the construction of a hotel in the USA these days are made in China, and they are all cheaper for hotel builders in China who get them closer to the source. Labor is cheaper in China too. By keeping the value of the Yuan low against the U.S. Dollar, China's government not only has kept the price of China's exports low on world markets, but has kept the cost of tourist services in China low for foreign visitors. There are plenty of US$50 hotels in China that have at least the comfort and amentities you'd expect of a US$100 hotel in the USA, or a €100 (US$150+) hotel in Europe.

Most importantly, don't judge a country by its government. Most people in the world (including me) didn't choose the government that rule over them, and don't like them. The attitudes toward foreigners of border guards and bureaucrats are rarely a indication of the attitudes of ordinary people you meet as a tourist. That's as true (or more) of the differences between ordinary Chinese people and the Public Security Bureau as it is of the differences between ordinary Americans and the Department of Homeland Security. I've found ordinary Chinese people consistently willing to go out of their way to help an ignorant, illiterate foreign guest.

Foreigners now need USA permission to leave their home countries

Since I got home, I've spent much of my time (aside from unpacking and moving back into our house from storage) analyzing the Electronic Sysem for Travel Authroization (ESTA) and preparing formal comments on the ESTA filed this week by the Identity Project. You can read the summary or our full comments (30 page PDF file) as well as some earlier background notes about the scheme.

The essence of the ESTA is a requirement that foreign citizens who "intend" (so much for spontaneous travel!) to visit the USA will be required to get permission from the government of the USA before they leave their own home countries. As we point out in our comments, and as airlines have objected in similar cases, the USA has no jurisdiction over foreigners leaving foreign countries. And their right to leave any country is expressly protected by human rights treaties signed, ratified, and binding on the USA.

In their comments, airlines and travel agencies have objected that the CBP is “wrong” to implement the ESTA on an emergency basis, without the public notice and opportunity for public comment normally required for new Federal regulations. But the CBP began accepting “voluntary” applications for travel authorizations this week, through a (still buggy) Web interface. The CBP says they plan to issue an order later this year to make the ESTA system mandatory starting sometime in January 2009.

Countries that participate in the USA Visa Waiver Program (VWP), mainly in Europe, are still considering whether it amounts to a de facto visa requirement for their citizens to visit the U.S. This could prompt them to reciprocate by ending visa-free entry to their countries for U.S. visitors, and requiring U.S. visitors to apply for permission before embarking for Europe.

The DHS admits that the ESTA "travel authorization" partially duplicates the international APIS travel permission regulations that went into effect in February 2008. But airlines' comments on the ESTA rules suggest that they may not yet have been able to build the real-time messaging links and other systems necessary to implement the APIS requirement for DHS "clearance"before each boarding pass is issued on an international flight to the USA. Earlier, airlines warned the DHS that its APIS timetable was technically impossible, and I suspect they may have been right.

Already furious at the billions of dollars they are having to spend on APIS implementation, airlines and travel agencies are now even angrier that the DHS plans to require three different, overlapping, permission systems for international travelers -- APIS clearance, ESTA travel authorizations, and Secure Flight requirements supposedly due to be published soon -- each announced at a different time (so that systems couldn't be designed once to accommodate them all), and each requiring different data to be collected and submitted, and a different type of permisison, obtained through a different mechanism, at a different stage of the travel reservation, ticketing, check-in, and travel process.

Would-be travellers who don't receive a "travel authorization" won't have any recourse under USA law: in late 2007, the DHS got Congress to exempt decisions to issue or withhold "travel aurthorizations" from the jurisdiction of Federal courts. As we note in our comments, however, the courts retain jurisdiction to decide whether the requirement for a "travel authorization", or the specifics of the ESTA rules, are themselves Constitutional or authorized by law.

The attempt to keep DHS travel "permission" decisions from being reviewed by the courts has been an explict, long-term, goal of Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. In a speech in 2006 (worth reading in its entirety for its contemptuous but detailed analysis of international law as it relates to human rights, travel, and Passenger Name Record data), Chertoff had this to say about DHS decisions not to allow people to fly:

Question: Mr. Secretary, my question concerns no-fly lists. How do you get on a list? How do you get off a list? And why not give the American citizen his day in court to contest the proposed action of your department?

Secretary Chertoff: Well, if you want to get on the list, I think I probably can put you on....

[W]e judge through an inter-agency process whether someone ought to be put on the no-fly list. And the list is then transmitted to the airlines and winds up then being a basis to deny people....

People can -- if they have an issue with it, they can raise an issue with it. But we don't conduct court hearings on this. We don't believe first of all, almost all the information is classified; second, because I'm quite sure that the 19 hijackers, if we could replay history, would have contested being on a no-fly list, and we're not about to let them do that; and third, because we would be inundated with proceedings....

[W]hen we actually have identified a person ... and we put them on the list ... it's not a subject for litigation.

Chertoff reiterated that view in an interview this week:

Wired.com: At what point do stops by law enforcement and four-hour holdups at the airport become a punishment that you can actually protest?

Chertoff: ... [I]f they do raise an issue, we will take a look at what the basis is. And sometimes we will make adjustments.

But if you are asking if we would do a court process where we litigate it, I mean, that effectively would shut it down.

And then I guarantee what would happen is this: If you stopped using the watch list and basically anybody could get on a plane without knowing their identity, sooner or later something would happen -- and people would lose their lives, and then there would be another 9/11 Commission and we'd hear about how you had this system and you would have kept them off and these people lost their loved ones on a plane.

In effect, Chertoff -- himself a former Federal judge -- is admitting that he is running a program he knows wouldn't stand up to scrutiny by a Federal judge. And he is so confident of the superiority of his own judgement over those of his former colleagues on the bench that he isn't willing to take the "risk" of making his case to one or more of them.

[Adendum, 11 August 2008: The most interesting of the other comments on the ESTA rule are those of the international airline trade association, IATA. The airlines raise many of the arguments raised by the Identity Project, and others, including the incompatibility of ESTA with EU data protection law. Despite public claims by the DHS that would-be travellers without "travel authorizations" could be denied boarding, the airlines don't agree. On the contrary, they say they would be liable for damages to anyone they refused to transport because they didn't have a travel authorization: "[T]he legal requirement for ESTA does not require that a passenger must be denied travel if a valid ESTA is not in place. However, if the passenger is transported, then they will be denied entry and the carrier held financially liable under Section 273 of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Carriers may be faced with a significant number of passengers in this situation. To further complicate matters, in the absence of a regulatory requirement to deny boarding in these instances, carriers could incur significant liabilities for payment of Denied Boarding compensation under existing national legislation in place in the countries of origin." Regulations.gov doesn't allow sirect links to individual documents, but you can find the IATA comments by choosing "comments closed" (the default is "open for comments") and searching for document USCBP-2008-0003-0020.1.]

There's no place like home

We slept in our own bed last night, for the first time in 13 months of travel around the world since we left our home in San Francisco in June 2007 .

Since we got back to the USA in June 2008 we've driven almost 10,000 miles across North America and back, through 30 states of the USA and 4 Canadian provinces, for a total of 28 countries and 80,000 miles in our entire trip.

Just as themes had emerged in the overseas portion of our journey (the legacy of the Ottoman empire in many places we visited; rising prices of food and to a lesser extent energy; the growing role of China and the European Union in Africa, Asia, and Latin America; the decline of the US dollar; the decline of US hegemony or "leadership" in every aspect except military and cultural; the shift from geographically separated First and Thirds Worlds, or global North and South, to a world in which Northern and Southern wealth and ways of living coexist, albeit unstably, within the same countries), so there were themes to our North American road trip (friends and relatives our age facing issues of parenting teenagers, caring for increasingly infirm parents, and going through midlife crises and in some cases divorces).

It's good to be home, but there's a lot for me to do both in my writing (look for major updates to this Web site) and in my work for the Identity Project .

Another round of illegal USA travel controls

Recently, while I've been travelling, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the USA Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a press release announcing new, illegal, identity verification procedures for travellers at airports in the USA, while the DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division has published a formal proposal for a new, illegal, Electronic System for Travel Authorization for visitors to the USA. See my comments on both proposals in the linked articles in the Identity Project blog.

[Update, 27 July 2008: New evidence confirms the illegality of the TSA's new identity verification procedures.]

6 continents; 27 countries; 70,000 miles

We've been back home (sort of) in the San Francisco Bay Area this week for the first time in a year, visiting friends and family and getting organized for the next leg of our trip. We even went to our house to get some things out of storage, although someone else is still living there until next month.

After visiting 27 countries on six continents (all but Antarctica) and travelling 70,000 miles around the world in the past year, we leave this morning for a month-long road trip across North America and back. It will be a separate trip, but also part of the same one as our trip around the world . We look forward to what we'll learn from seeing our home country and continent with eyes sensitized to the comparisons with other places we've been this past year. We'll be back home (until next time) at the end of July.