BUSH REGIME TO USE ORWELLIAN DATABASE TO TRACK TRAVELLERS

ELLEN NAKASHIMA AND SPENCER S. HSU, WASHINGTON POST - 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 department intends to use a program called the Automated Targeting 
System, originally designed to screen shipping cargo, to store and 
analyze the data. . . 

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.". . . 

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.

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."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/02/
AR2006110201810_pf.html


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