Pubdate: Fri, 03 Nov 2006
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A18
Copyright: 2006 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Authors: Ellen Nakashima and Spencer S. Hsu., Washington Post Staff Writers
Cited: Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/homeland+security

U.S. PLANS TO SCREEN ALL WHO ENTER, LEAVE COUNTRY

Personal Data Will Be Cross-Checked With Terrorism Watch Lists; Risk
Profiles to Be Stored for Years

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a
border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the
United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and
retain that information for up to 40 years.

The details, released in a notice published yesterday in the Federal
Register, open a new window on the government's broad and often
controversial data-collection effort directed at American and foreign
travelers, which was implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

While long known to scrutinize air travelers, the Department of
Homeland Security is seeking to apply new technology to perform
similar checks on people who enter or leave the country "by automobile
or on foot," the notice said.

The department intends to use a program called the Automated Targeting
System, originally designed to screen shipping cargo, to store and
analyze the data.

"We have been doing risk assessments of cargo and passengers coming
into and out of the U.S.," DHS spokesman Jarrod Agen said. "We have
the authority and the ability to do it for passengers coming by land
and sea."

In practice, he said, the government has not conducted risk
assessments on travelers at land crossings for logistical reasons.

"We gather, collect information that is needed to protect the
borders," Agen said. "We store the information we see as pertinent to
keeping Americans safe."

Civil libertarians expressed concern that risk profiling on such a
scale would be intrusive and would not adequately protect citizens'
privacy rights, issues similar to those that have surrounded systems
profiling air passengers.

"They are assigning a suspicion level to millions of law-abiding
citizens," said David Sobel, senior counsel of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation. "This is about as Kafkaesque as you can get."

DHS officials said that by publishing the notice, they are simply
providing "expanded notice and transparency" about an existing program
disclosed in October 2001, the Treasury Enforcement Communications
System.

But others said Congress has been unaware of the potential of the
Automated Targeting System to assess non-aviation travelers.

"ATS started as a tool to prevent the entry of drugs with cargo into
the U.S.," said one aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because of the sensitivity of the subject. "We are not aware of
Congress specifically legislating to make this expansion possible."

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,
chaired by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), yesterday asked Homeland
Security to brief staff members on the program, Collins's spokeswoman,
Jen Burita, said.

The notice comes as the department is tightening its ability to
identify people at the borders. At the end of the year, for example,
Homeland Security is expanding its Visitor and Immigrant Status
Indicator Technology program, under which 32 million noncitizens
entering the country annually are fingerprinted and photographed at
115 airports, 15 seaports and 154 land ports.

Stephen E. Flynn, senior fellow for national security studies at the
Council on Foreign Relations, expressed doubts about the department's
ability to conduct risk assessments of individuals on a wide scale.

He said customs investigators are so focused on finding drugs and
weapons of mass destruction that it would be difficult to screen all
individual border crossers, other than cargo-truck drivers and
shipping crews.

"There is an ability in theory for government to cast a wider net," he
said. "The reality of it is customs is barely able to manage the data
they have."

The data-mining program stemmed from an effort in the early 1990s by
customs officials to begin assessing the risk of cargo originating in
certain countries and from certain shippers. Risk assessment turned
more heavily to automated, computer-driven systems after the 2001 attacks.

The risk assessment is created by analysts at the National Targeting
Center, a high-tech facility opened in November 2001 and now run by
Customs and Border Protection.

In a round-the-clock operation, targeters match names against
terrorist watch lists and a host of other data to determine whether a
person's background or behavior indicates a terrorist threat, a risk
to border security or the potential for illegal activity. They also
assess cargo.

Each traveler assessed by the center is assigned a numeric score: The
higher the score, the higher the risk. A certain number of points send
the traveler back for a full interview.

The Automated Targeting System relies on government databases that
include law enforcement data, shipping manifests, travel itineraries
and airline passenger data, such as names, addresses, credit card
details and phone numbers.

The parent program, Treasury Enforcement Communications System, houses
"every possible type of information from a variety of federal, state
and local sources," according to a 2001 Federal Register notice.

It includes arrest records, physical descriptions and "wanted"
notices. The 5.3 billion-record database was accessed 766 million
times a day to process 475 million travelers, according to a 2003
Transportation Research Board study.

In yesterday's Federal Register notice, Homeland Security said it will
keep people's risk profiles for up to 40 years "to cover the
potentially active lifespan of individuals associated with terrorism
or other criminal activities," and because "the risk assessment for
individuals who are deemed low risk will be relevant if their risk
profile changes in the future, for example, if terrorist associations
are identified."

DHS will keep a "pointer or reference" to the underlying records that
resulted in the profile.

The DHS notice specified that the Automated Targeting System does not
call for any new means of collecting information but rather for the
use of existing systems. The notice did not spell out what will
determine whether someone is high risk.

But documents and former officials say the system relies on hundreds
of "rules" to factor a score for each individual, vehicle or piece of
cargo.

According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain
requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance,
people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record
pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of
contesting the content of the record." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake