Gov’t Surveillance Under ‘Quiet Skies’ is Dead. Keep It That Way.

At today’s Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing, journalist Matt Taibbi laid bare the full absurdity of the Transportation Security Administration’s Quiet Skies program.

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What he described was not a serious counterterrorism tool, but a sprawling surveillance dragnet that trampled civil liberties, burned through taxpayer money, and delivered nothing in return.

It’s long past time for this program — and anything that remotely resembles it — to be permanently dismantled.

As Taibbi testified, the TSA spent $200 million a year monitoring as many as 50 people a day under Quiet Skies.

Yet in the entire history of the program, it never led to a single arrest or prevented a terrorist attack.

Instead, it created a culture of surveillance for its own sake. “This is what our government does now,” Taibbi said. “It gathers information on its own citizens as an end in itself.”

One striking case involved former Hawaii congresswoman and combat veteran Tulsi Gabbard, who, as Taibbi reported, was placed under surveillance that included bomb-sniffing dogs and teams of three Federal Air Marshals shadowing her on domestic flights.

The TSA stonewalled when asked for justification, insisting that “matching to a risk-based rule does not constitute derogatory information.”

In other words: being flagged doesn’t mean you did anything wrong — but we’ll treat you like a suspect anyway.

Sen. Rand Paul, chairing the hearing, underscored how Quiet Skies went beyond waste and ineffectiveness into outright political targeting.

Records revealed that Tulsi Gabbard was surveilled on at least five domestic flights — despite her known identity as a sitting public figure.

“If this can happen to a combat veteran, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, and now Director of National Intelligence,” Paul said, “it can happen to anyone.”

It wasn’t just Gabbard. According to documents released in Paul’s investigation, Quiet Skies was used to target Americans for First Amendment-protected activities.

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A Catholic schoolteacher from Texas was watch-listed as a “domestic terrorist” merely for attending Trump’s January 6th rally — even though location data and facial recognition confirmed she never entered the Capitol.

Other Americans were flagged for removing masks on airplanes during COVID mandates. Incredibly, three sitting Republican members of Congress were also swept into the related “Silent Partner” program.

This is not counterterrorism. This is the weaponization of federal resources to chill dissent and punish political opposition.

The larger problem is that Quiet Skies is not an isolated case but part of a post-9/11 drift toward normalizing warrantless mass surveillance.

Taibbi reminded senators of James Clapper’s infamous “least untruthful” answer to Congress about NSA data collection — a moment that confirmed lying about domestic spying carries no penalty.

Once the government starts collecting data on innocent citizens (especially 2A supporters), it creates a perpetual justification to do it again and again.

One Federal Air Marshal put it plainly to Taibbi: “The air marshal’s job is to protect the cockpit and the pilots. Let somebody else do the intelligence.”

Instead, marshals trained for critical security missions were conscripted into following ordinary Americans around airports, clipboard in hand.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has announced the termination of Quiet Skies, but as Paul warned, that is not enough.

“We must make sure that this program does not come back under another name,” he said. Programs built on secrecy, vague authorities, and political bias will always be tempted to resurface.

Ending Quiet Skies must be paired with accountability. Every official who directed surveillance of Americans for political or expressive activity should be removed from office.

Transparency should be the default — not something won through years of congressional inquiry.

The Quiet Skies program epitomized what happens when security agencies abandon the distinction between “bad thoughts” and “bad acts.” It drained public resources, violated core constitutional rights, and undermined trust in the very institutions meant to protect us.

As Taibbi told the committee: “It’s time to stop being numb to this outrage.” Eliminating Quiet Skies must be the beginning of reform, not the end.

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