Lately I’ve been on something of a public records binge. I asked for records about my license plate reader data from local law enforcement agencies. I asked for complaint records from the Federal Trade Commission about a sketchy Bitcoin mining hardware maker. A few more requests are still pending.

And last summer, I asked United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency for my travel records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Recently, I got an answer back—sort of.

As someone who enters and exits the country with some decent regularity, I figured there had to be some records.

Specifically here’s what I requested:

My name is Cyrus Farivar (Passport: [REDACTED] / SSN: [REDACTED] / DOB: [REDACTED]) and I hereby request any and all Passenger Name Records, Secondary inspection records, IE Entry/Exit Records, I94 records, HR records, ITRAC, inspection records, accounting of disclosures. I also request any electronic data shared from any financial/lodging websites to the federal government (including IP addresses, user agents, browser data, etc). I also request any and all records that any of this data was shared with any foreign government agencies. I swear under penalty of perjury that I am the undersigned person.

Back in July 2013, I originally sent my FOIA request to cbpfoia@cbp.dhs.gov, including a request for a fee waiver as a member of the media acting in the public interest. This process has since changed to include an online interface where your request can be tracked.

Primarily, I was interested in receiving the Passenger Name Record (PDF), or PNR. That data record specifically includes all kinds of detailed information about a person: payment and billing information, potentially any IP address used when booking the ticket, baggage information, seat information, hotel information, and more.

Data goes back 20 years

What I got back was incomplete and a bit baffling. Last month, I received 72 pages by mail and later found out the information was sent to me electronically via the CBP's new online FOIA tool as well. It all came with a letter explaining why some of the information was being kept from me in order to protect my own privacy. This contained lines like:

The privacy interests of the individuals in the records you have requested outweigh any minimal public interest in disclosure of the information. Any private interest you may have in that information does not factor into the aforementioned balancing test.

Besides the opening letter, the documents included 10 pages of passenger activity, with a somewhat hard-to-follow list of redacted information. What precise kind of information was being redacted, I still don’t know. But those first pages contained what appeared to be a list of every single time I entered and exited the United States dating all the way back to 1994, when I was 12 years old.

Why there was nothing before that—and I know I left the country before I was 12—remains a mystery.

The next 62 pages provide a bit more detail as to each time I entered and exited. Those records seemed to be organized in no discernible order—a 2002 flight followed a 2008 flight, which was then followed by a 2012 flight. Each record included what airline I was on, where I was traveling to and from, the flight number, the date and time of my flight, and more mysterious redactions.

Page 64 of the 72-page packet included something interesting, however. That record showed that on October 26, 2005, when I was returning to the United States from Turkey via France, I received a four-minute long “Secondary Inspection” at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC. (I have no memory of this happening, but apparently it did.)

The record seems to show that neither my bag nor my person was searched. On the second page, under “Inspection Report,” it mysteriously read: “JOURNALIST IN SAN FRANCISCO. NEGATIVE EXAM.” Again, there were more cryptic redactions at the bottom of the page.

“72 pages of shit”

So I ran these documents by a few people who I thought might be able to help me interpret them.

“No, I didn’t see anything unusual. It was a pretty standard-issue FOIA response,” Catherine Crump, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, told me. “Unfortunately, incomplete responses to FOIA requests are par for the course.”

I then asked Edward Hasbrouck, a traveler and writer who has extensively researched passenger data and who has even sued the CBP for failing to hand over data about himself.

“You got 72 pages of shit, to put it crudely,” he said, explaining that the CBP didn’t give me the crown jewel of what I asked for: my own PNR records. His own PNR records, as he demonstrated in 2009, included far more detailed information, including the IP address used when he booked an airline ticket.

“Why they didn’t include that when you explicitly asked for it, I can’t tell you,” he added. Hasbrouck agreed with Crump’s assessment that the agency’s lack of response was to be expected. “It’s completely erratic. Some people get just the PNR and not the entry and exit data. Whether it’s gross incompetence, malign neglect, or if they’re overworked, whether it’s that they don’t understand the nature of what the data is—[it] suggests that the people doing the redacting don’t know what the data is.”

Hasbrouck also found the 2005 record of my being a journalist rather curious. He even wondered if this data point may be in violation of the United States Privacy Act, which states:

“Each agency that maintains a system of records shall…maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity.”

In other words, the fact that the Customs and Border Protection recorded—at least for almost nine years now—that I’m a journalist could be in violation of federal law. Hasbrouck suggested that I appeal, which I did earlier this week, via postal mail.

If the first response took nine months, it may be a while before I hear back about the appeal. Stay tuned.