The Trump administration is preparing to end a federal domestic surveillance program for travelers that’s meant to ferret out terrorist threats but has sometimes ended up saddling Americans with inconvenient or invasive searches at U.S. airports.
President Trump plans to discontinue the Transportation Security Administration’s “Quiet Skies” program, multiple sources told CBS News.
An announcement could come as soon as Thursday, one U.S. official said.
Aides have debated how to shut down Quiet Skies without any lapses in security, another U.S. official said.
Quiet Skies works to identify travelers who could present an elevated risk to aviation security. The program, which began in 2010, employs analysts and undercover air marshals to monitor people in airports and during flights, using outstanding warrants, facial recognition software, identification of suspicious travel patterns and behaviors and other data to try to prevent terrorist attacks.
It has caught up some high-profile people in its dragnet, including Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who is now Mr. Trump’s director of national intelligence, and led to debates about what has appeared at times to be an uneven application of the rules.
TSA’s surveillance efforts have long attracted criticism for tracking U.S. citizens not suspected of any crimes. The circumstances that land an individual on the Quiet Skies list — or what gets them removed — have been mostly concealed from the public.
Some Americans undertake exhaustive efforts to get themselves removed from the list — with some even engaging in protracted legal fights.
CBS News reported Tuesday that the husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, landed on the TSA’s watchlist in 2023. He was removed shortly after Shaheen spoke with the TSA’s then-director. A spokesperson for the senator said she was not aware William Shaheen had been monitored under Quiet Skies.
It was unclear Wednesday whether Quiet Skies staff would be shifted elsewhere in the administration or whether the undercover federal air marshals would continue their work.
