Motel 6 To Pay Out Another $12 Million For Handing Guest Info To ICE

from the going-to-make-it-tough-to-pay-the-light-bill dept

A handful of Motel 6 owners and operators suddenly decided the best use of their guest info was as fodder for law enforcement agencies. In Connecticut, a Motel 6 just decided to start faxing its guest list over to the local cop shop every night. After this questionable practice was made public, the PD announced it never asked for this info and was going to route it right into the shredder going forward.

Other Motel 6 owners decided ICE needed to know about every suspected illegal immigrant being housed overnight at their franchises. Using a highly-technical process that narrowed forwarded guest lists to those with foreign-sounding surnames, Motel 6 owners sicced ICE on paying customers in an effort to… I don't know… earn good citizenship awards or something.

It may have netted ICE a few busts and warmed the cockles of meathead managers who had discovered a way to increase occupancy turnover rates with the federal government's help, but it also netted Motel 6 a handful of lawsuits.

Last November, Motel 6 agreed to pay a $7.6 million settlement for sending guest lists to ICE offices in Arizona. NPR reports the chain is now about $20 million lighter, thanks to a similar settlement being reached in Washington.

The hotel chain Motel 6 has agreed to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the state of Washington after several locations gave information on thousands of guests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement without warrants.

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said Thursday that Motel 6 shared the information of about 80,000 guests in the state from 2015 to 2017.

The chain also swore [PDF] it would never allow its franchisees and operators to deputize themselves as Lil' ICE Helpers, and would tell them to keep their guest lists to themselves.

Defendants shall maintain a policy ("The Policy") that they will not share 24 guest information with law enforcement, including ICE agents, without a judicially enforceable warrant or subpoena, except where there is a credible reason to believe that a guest, employee, or other individual is in imminent danger.

[...]

Defendants will train and require their employees not to provide guest information in response to any request, warrant, or subpoena from law enforcement, including DHS/ICE agents, without first obtaining authorization and directions from Defendants' legal department or other trained individual(s) designated by Defendants.

$10 million of the settlement will be going directly to Motel 6 guests whose information was given to ICE, whether or not they actually had to suffer through any interactions with the overzealous agency. Hopefully, the substantial settlements will encourage Motel 6 to keep better tabs on the activities of its site operators -- some of which apparently believe they're operating ICE honeypots rather than short-term housing for travelers.

Filed Under: guest info, ice
Companies: motel 6

Motel 6 Agrees To Pay $7.6 Million Settlement For Sending Guest Lists To ICE

from the come-for-the-limited-amenities!-stay-for-the-unprovoked-roustings! dept

Motel 6 franchise owners suddenly decided it was their job to play part-time cop/immigration officer and use their paying customers as grist for the laughably-named criminal justice system. One branch began faxing guest lists to the local PD without any prompting from the recipient agency. Another decided anyone who didn't look American (guess what that means) should be reported to ICE.

This drew the attention of the internet. It also drew the attention of the Washington state attorney general. Finally, it drew the attention of the federal court system, but not for the reasons these self-appointed posse members expected. The chain was hit with a class action lawsuit alleging privacy violations related to the unprompted reporting of Hispanic guests to ICE.

This is going to cost the motel chain some of its light money, as Reuters reports.

Motel 6 will pay up to $7.6 million to Hispanic guests to settle a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that it violated their privacy by regularly providing guest lists to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

The chain (of course) admitted no liability nor agreed that it had engaged in unconstitutional activities. Instead, it mumbled something about "recognizing the seriousness of the situation" and that it would, at some point in the near future, respect the privacy of its guests.

The respect will be mandatory if the full settlement is approved by the court.

Motel 6 also agreed to a two-year consent decree barring it from sharing guest data with immigration authorities absent warrants, subpoenas, or threats of serious crime or harm.

I guess the feeling must be that two years of not screwing paying customers out of their privacy will result in the creation of good habits. That seems unlikely to have a permanent effect, so it would have been nice to see this consent decree govern the chain's behavior in perpetuity, but you take what you can get.

This isn't necessarily Motel 6's fault -- at least not at the corporate level. There's no indication the chain's owner, G6 Hospitality, ever instructed franchise operators to engage in these activities. These appear to have been initiatives specific to some Motel 6 locations in Arizona. They were uncovered by the Phoenix New Times's examination of court records and confirmed by Motel 6 employees who said they "just pushed a button" to send guest lists to ICE.

These freelance ICE operative have screwed the Constitutional pooch so badly their parent company will be paying out the equivalent of ~110,000 overnight stays. Whatever discomfort they caused their guests will hopefully pale in comparison to the heat they're feeling now.

The proposed order [PDF] is embedded below.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, guest lists, ice, motels, privacy
Companies: motel 6

Washington State AG Sues Motel 6 For Handing Over Guest Registry Info To ICE

from the keep-it-in-your-proverbial-pants,-moteliers dept

At some point in the recent past, Motel 6 owners decided they were deputized law enforcement personnel. So what if people paid for a night's worth of uninterrupted sleep and expected that visits from federal and local officials would be kept to a minimum. These owners -- which the Motel 6 corporation takes great pain to point out are "independent" owner/operators -- have decided to ingratiate themselves with untrustworthy organizations like ICE… or the local PD.

Some Motel 6s decided to fax guest lists to police departments every night. Others decided they'd turn over every name that looked slightly non-Caucasian to ICE. In both cases, Motel 6 (the corporation) brought the hammer down, swearing it had never given franchisees the permission to turn guest lists into tip sheets for law enforcement. The post-facto corporate rollback wasn't enough for Washington's Attorney General. The state looked into local policies after hearing about rogue ICE relationships in Arizona. It found more of the same occurring in Washington, resulting in a state lawsuit against company for turning guests list into ICE fodder.

The hotel chain Motel 6 routinely gave federal immigration agents guest lists with personal information that it used to make arrests, according to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday by Washington’s attorney general.

At least six Motel 6 locations in the state provided the information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents — some on a near-daily basis — without any reasonable suspicion, probable cause or search warrants, the lawsuit charges. Agents would then single out guests by their national identity, at times circling “Latino-sounding” names on the list, according to the court complaint.

The lawsuit [PDF] requests an injunction preventing Motel 6 employees from passing on information to ICE agents without being provided with at least some legal reason to do (probable cause) by government agents. If this were filed at a federal level, it wouldn't likely find a sympathetic court. A Supreme Court decision overturning a Los Angeles statute granting law enforcement constant, unchallengeable access is about the only restriction on sharing guest lists with law enforcement.

The allegations the Washington AG raises are concerning, but they're not actually illegal... at least not under federal law.

Since at least 2015, Motel 6 has had a policy or practice of providing to ICE agents, upon their request, the list of guests staying at Motel 6 the day of the agents' visit. The guest lists included some or all of the following information for each guest: room number, name, names of additional guests, guest identification number, date of birth, driver's license number, and license plate number.

ICE's usual practice was to come to Motel 6's reception desk and request the guest list from the receptionist. The receptionist would print out the guest list and give it to the ICE agent, along with a "law enforcement acknowledgment form" for the agent to sign, acknowledging receipt of the guest list. The ICE agent would review the guest list and identify individuals of interest to ICE. Motel 6 staff observed ICE identify guests of interest to ICE, including by circling guests with Latino-sounding names.

On a number of occasions after reviewing the guest list, ICE agents arrested or detained Motel 6 guests.

Motel 6 trained its new employees to follow the practice described above to provide guest lists to ICE agents upon request, without requiring the agents to show any reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or search warrant for the guest registry information.

However, at the state level, this appears to be a violation of local statutes.

Motel 6's privacy policy also states that Motel 6 may disclose guest registry information to law enforcement agencies pursuant to a court order or in compliance with any applicable law, regulation, rule, or ordinance.

Under Article 1, § 7 of the Washington Constitution, motel guest registry information constitutes a private affair protected from disclosure without probable cause. Motel 6 guests in Washington have a reasonable expectation of privacy that their guest registry information will not be disclosed to ICE without probable cause.

Motel 6 guests in Washington also have a common law right to the privacy of their guest registry information.

This is where the State AG hopes to prevent Motel 6 from using guest lists for ICE bait: at the state level where guest registry info is given more privacy protections than other places in the nation. It seems like ICE shouldn't be too put out by having to show a little probable cause paperwork before it starts browsing registries, but the government doesn't roll like that. It would be pretty easy for Motel 6 to get out from under this lawsuit. All it has to do is tell Washington franchisees to knock it off. It's unclear what benefit Motel 6 receives from this possibly-illegal relationship with ICE. So why not just institute a policy that actually complies with local laws?

It certainly won't make ICE happy. No federal agency likes having to ask permission from judges to perform searches. ICE is not a party to this lawsuit, but I'm sure it will find some way to make its presence felt. It may argue the Fourth Amendment does not require warrants to access third party records. Hopefully, the court presiding over this will remind ICE (and Motel 6) state laws can provide more protection than the Fourth Amendment without damaging federal authority. The Fourth Amendment is the baseline. Everything else above that -- established at the local level -- is a completely legal bonus for the state's residents.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, ice, motel guests, privacy, washington
Companies: motel 6

Arizona Motel 6 Branches Start Handing Out ICE To Unsuspecting Customers

from the KNOCK-N-TALK-Room-Service™ dept

Motel 6 sure seems to love handing over guest info to law enforcement. A couple of years ago, a Rhode Island branch decided to start faxing its guest list to local police every night -- something the PD had never asked it to do. This pleased the mayor, who proudly noted he knew everyone who was staying at the motel every night. Backlash followed and the police chief announced he would no longer accept Motel 6's guest list faxes.

Two years later, Motel 6 branches in Arizona are doing pretty much the same thing. This time, however, the info appears to be going straight to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Free ICE in motel rooms never goes out of style. An undocumented motel guest detained under suspicious circumstances led to local journalists digging into public records.

A Phoenix New Times review of court records found that between February and August, ICE agents made at least 20 arrests at Motel 6s, showing up roughly every two weeks. (Since many of the documents we reviewed contained only vague details about where ICE encountered an individual, the actual number is likely even higher.)

All took place at one of two Motel 6 locations: 4130 North Black Canyon Highway or 1530 North 52nd Drive. Both are in predominantly Latino neighborhoods. New Times was unable to find records indicating that ICE conducted arrests at other local motels during this same time period.

So far, nothing all that conclusive. Some things can be inferred from the New Times' investigation of public records, but there's nothing specifically noting ICE agents are working from motel guest lists. However, nothing in the records indicates how ICE is locating these undocumented motel guests. The only thing stated in the documents is agents were "following up on tips."

The New Times decided to go right to the source -- motel employees -- and got some very straightforward answers.

“We send a report every morning to ICE — all the names of everybody that comes in,” one front-desk clerk explained. “Every morning at about 5 o’clock, we do the audit and we push a button and it sends it to ICE.”

[...]

[F]ront desk staff at multiple Motel 6 locations in the Valley said that they regularly share guest information with local police.

“I don’t know how it works, but if you check in and you have a warrant, you’re going to get picked up,” one young woman explained.

ICE has refused to comment on the veracity of these employees' claims, saying doing so would compromise investigative techniques. However, if this is what's happening, it's neither "investigative" nor much of a "technique." It's just someone running a list against DHS/ICE databases and hoping for a hit. The motel is doing all the legwork, and there's precious little of that being done.

Even if you consider the employees' statements to be unreliable hearsay, there's the corporate response to the New Times story, which makes it explicitly clear sending guest lists to ICE was exactly what was happening:

Regarding your media story on the Phoenix-area location, this was implemented at the local level without the knowledge of senior management. When we became aware of it last week, it was discontinued. We are currently further investigating and will provide more information shortly.

This is better but far from completely comforting. ICE can't demand any motel hand over guest lists in perpetuity, but there's nothing in the law (or even on-point Supreme Court decisions) that forbids agents from popping in and checking out lists in person. The same goes for local law enforcement, which may take its own look-see and pass that on to the feds if anything catches their eye. Motel 6's corporate rollback of an extremely localized unofficial policy may return a little privacy to its guests, but the law and the courts see very little that's protected in information turned over to third parties.

Filed Under: hotels, ice, law enforcement, privacy
Companies: motel 6

Police Department Says It Will No Longer Be Accepting Motel 6's Nightly Guest Lists

from the too-much-potential-downside,-apparently dept

In a remarkably swift turnaround -- no doubt prompted by some media backlash -- the Warwick, RI, police department has announced it will no longer be accepting late night guest list faxes from Motel 6.

Police Chief Stephen M. McCartney has discontinued the short-lived practice of accepting a copy of the Motel 6 daily guest list to see if any of the lodgers should be investigated.

He said he was concerned about the legal ramifications of the practice, including the possibility that the list could become a public record under the state’s Access to Public Records Act. He said an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit against the city also would have been possible.

“The information is sensitive,” McCartney acknowledged Friday. “All we’re doing is raising a lot of eyebrows about things that we quite frankly don’t need to have.”

It should be noted that the Warwick PD never asked for this information in the first place. This was all on Motel 6, with an assist from Mayor Scott Avedisian. While there were concerns about criminal activity at the motel, it appeared to be mayoral and council pressure that prompted Motel 6's move, rather than demands from the police department.

It was Mayor Avedisian who smugly announced "We know everyone who is staying in the motel tonight," and it was Mayor Avedisian who was hoping to use Motel 6's obsequiousness as leverage to obtain similar nightly lists from other hotels and motels in the area. But it appears all of that is now off the table. If the police aren't going to accept or use the lists, what's the point in making anyone send these over?

The mayor -- who immediately claimed the faxed guest list was already leading to arrests -- has his assertion toned down by the police chief when he stated his department wasn't actually running criminal background checks on guest names.

On April 14, Mayor Scott Avedisian reported that there had been four arrests on undisclosed charges arising from the motel having provided the guest list. On Friday, McCartney qualified that statement, saying that the arrests over nine or 10 days might or might not have been the result of checking the list.

Receiving the information would have allowed the police to inquire about each name in their own records or in criminal databases, but McCartney said that since the policy was announced, that had not been done.

“I was collecting the data but I was not doing anything with it,” he disclosed.

The police still retain the privilege of stopping by and taking a look at the guest list whenever it wants to -- something similarly enjoyed by police departments across the nation. This warrantless access to motel records is currently being challenged in the Supreme Court, but for now, these are still nothing more than "business records" afforded no expectation of privacy thanks to the Third Party Doctrine.

The policy going forward will be checking on motel guests lists only when there's a "reasonable suspicion" that a guest may be wanted for or involved in criminal activity, which is certainly more protective of guests' privacy than running guests lists against criminal databases every 24 hours.

The Motel 6 has also posted a sign notifying potential guests that their information may be turned over to law enforcement, something that may encourage criminals to stay elsewhere and give the privacy-conscious heads up that renting a room nullifies a lot of privacy expectations.

Filed Under: guest lists, hotels, privacy, rhode island, warwick
Companies: motel 6

Motel Decides It Should Just Start Faxing All Guest Info To Local Police Every Night

from the corporate-suckup dept

The Third Party Doctrine is ridiculous. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies routinely exploit this loophole to warrantlessly access all sorts of data because of the stupid assertion that anything you "voluntarily" turn over to a third party carries no expectation of privacy. The agencies blow right past the reality of the situation: that any "voluntary" exchange of personal data for services is anything but voluntary. Service providers won't provide you with an internet connection or cell phone service without collecting massive amounts of usage data. Hotels and motels won't rent you a room unless you tell them who you are and provide documentation to back up your claims.

So, it's stupid all over and no one's in any hurry to fix it because drugs need to be warred against and terrorists must be handcrafted by FBI undercover agents and the rest of whatever. The courts have generally refused to stretch the Fourth Amendment to cover the data created by these involuntary exchanges. That's a problem and one that is only very slowly being addressed.

Motel 6 has just decided to make it worse. While warrantless access to motel records is being challenged in the Supreme Court, the chain has decided to preemptively strip away any privacy expectations that may result from court rulings and just hand it all over to law enforcement because sometimes criminals stay in motel rooms.

City police have arrested four people staying at the Motel 6 on Jefferson Boulevard as a result of the hotel chain's agreement to provide police with a daily guest list, Mayor Scott Avedisian said Tuesday.

The names of Motel 6 guests, which police then check for outstanding warrants, is one of five steps Motel 6 corporate managers agreed to take in response to a string of high-profile incidents and concerns the establishment was becoming a haven for passing criminals.

Everything about this is pure bootlicking dickishness. See if you can finish reading this statement without looking for something to wipe all the "smug" off you.

"We know everyone who is staying in the hotel tonight," [Mayor Scott] Avedisian said in a phone interview after a meeting with Motel 6 executives that also included Warwick police chief Col. Stephen M. McCartney and Seekonk, Mass., Town Administrator Shawn E. Cadime.

Great. And that's your business why? Oh, because some arrests were made. A modicum of successful law enforcement cures all privacy ills, etc.

Motel 6's spokesmouths aren't exactly coming across as champions of the people either.

As of now, guests who check-in at Warwick’s Motel 6 will not be told their names are on a list that goes to the police station every night.

Alerting motel guests that local police know their whereabouts "is not a normal process of our check-in,” said Victor Glover, a vice president of safety and security for G6 Hospitality, the parent company for Motel 6. “I don’t know that we have any plans of instituting that as we move forward.”

Now that Motel 6 has stepped up to serve as a purveyor of moderately-priced rooms and a fully compliant police informant, law enforcement's foot is completely wedged in the door between room rentals and personal privacy. Mayor Avedisian plans to use Motel 6's kowtowing as leverage against other hotels and motels in the area.

Avedisian said now that Motel 6 has agreed to share its national "do not rent" list of problem guests, he intends to reach out to the Rhode Island Hospitality Association to see if other establishments in the city would be willing to do the same.

I have no problem with private businesses maintaining lists of customers they won't do business with and passing on this information to police if the list contains suspected criminals. But that's miles away from what Motel 6 has agreed to do -- hand over information on everybody who rents a room before the police even ask for it. That's just begging for a lawsuit.

The Warwick police chief says his department never demanded this level of compliance. This was Motel 6's own offering in response to a couple of high profile sex trafficking arrests and pressure from the city, which threatened it with lawsuits and additional regulation. Rather than recognize it as the sort of unfortunate thing that happens from time to time and just move on, Motel 6's execs decided the solution was to fax over a list of guests every evening. The police have no idea on what sort of privacy protections it will put into force -- if anything. Police Chief Stephen McCartney has passed the buck to the state attorney general... as if that mainly-prosecutorial office is going to issue tough restrictions on data retention or meaningful privacy protections.

The Third Party Doctrine is already terrible enough. What it doesn't need is do-gooders like Motel 6 erasing what minimal line there is between its customers' data and law enforcement.

Filed Under: hotel records, law enforcement, police, privacy
Companies: motel 6