Source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/traveler_screening

Leahy: Terror screening oversight a must

MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
AP
Saturday, December 2, 2006

WASHINGTON - The incoming Senate Judiciary chairman pledged greater
scrutiny Friday of computerized government anti-terrorism screening
after learning that millions of Americans who travel internationally
have been assigned risk assessments over the last four years without
their knowledge.

"Data banks like this are overdue for oversight," said Sen. Patrick
Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., who will take over Judiciary in
January. "That is going to change in the new Congress."

The Associated Press reported Thursday that millions of Americans and
foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been
assessed by the computerized Automated Targeting System, or ATS,
designed to help pick out terrorists or criminals.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk
assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.
Under specific circumstances, some or all data in the system can be
shared with state, local and foreign governments and even some private
contractors.

"It is simply incredible that the Bush administration is willing to
share this sensitive information with foreign governments and even
private employers, while refusing to allow U.S. citizens to see or
challenge their own terror scores," Leahy said. This system "highlights
the danger of government use of technology to conduct widespread
surveillance of our daily lives without proper safeguards for privacy."

Sen. Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, chairman of the
Senate Homeland Security Committee, said that while it is critical for
government to have the tools necessary to thwart terrorists, "we must
ensure that travelers privacy and civil liberties are appropriately
respected." t

The Homeland Security Department, which operates ATS, calls the system
critical to national security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks.

But privacy advocates were alarmed by it.

"Never before in American history has our government gotten into the
business of creating mass `risk assessment' ratings of its own
citizens," said Barry Steinhardt, a lawyer for the American Civil
Liberties Union. "We are stunned" the program has been undertaken "with
virtually no opportunity for the public to evaluate or comment on it."

Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea
or land is assessed based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and
other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid
for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating
preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

The use of the program on travelers was quietly disclosed earlier this
month when the department put a notice detailing ATS in the Federal
Register, a fine-print compendium of federal rules. The few civil
liberties lawyers who had heard of ATS and even some law enforcement
officers said they had thought it was only used to screen cargo.

The Homeland Security Department called the program "one of the most
advanced targeting systems in the world" and said the nation's ability
to spot criminals and other security threats "would be critically
impaired without access to this data."

But to David Sobel, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a
group devoted to civil liberties in cyberspace: "It's probably the most
invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number
of people affected."

Government officials could not say whether ATS has apprehended any
terrorists. Based on all the information available to them, federal
agents turn back about 45 foreign criminals a day at U.S. borders,
according to Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection spokesman
Bill Anthony. He could not say how many were spotted by ATS.

Officials described how the system works: applying rules learned from
experience with the activities and characteristics of terrorists and
criminals to the traveler data. But they would not describe in detail
the format in which border agents see the results or in which the
databases store the results of the ATS risk assessments.

Acting Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Paul Rosenzweig told
reporters Friday they could call it scoring. "It can be reduced to a
number," he said, but he clearly preferred the longer descriptions.

Steinhardt said the ATS was more far-reaching than the department's
trouble-plagued efforts to develop a computerized screening system for
domestic air travelers.

That data-mining project — now known as Secure Flight — caused a furor
two years ago in Congress. Lawmakers barred its implementation until it
can pass 10 tests for accuracy and privacy protection.

In comments to the government about ATS, Sobel said, "Some individuals
will be denied the right to travel and many the right to travel free of
unwarranted interference."

Sobel said in the interview that the government notice also raises the
possibility that faulty risk assessments could cost innocent people jobs
in shipping or travel, government contracts, licenses or other benefits.

The government notice says some or all of the ATS data about an
individual may be shared with state, local and foreign governments for
use in hiring decisions and in granting licenses, security clearances,
contracts or other benefits. In some cases, the data may be shared with
courts, Congress and even private contractors.

"Everybody else can see it, but you can't," Stephen Yale-Loehr, an
immigration lawyer who teaches at Cornell Law school, said in an
interview.

But Jayson P. Ahern, an assistant commissioner of Customs and Border
Protection, said the ATS ratings simply allow agents at the border to
pick out people not previously identified by law enforcement as
potential terrorists or criminals and send them for additional searches
and interviews.

"It does not replace the judgments of officers" in reaching a final
decision about a traveler, Ahern said in an interview Thursday.

This targeting system goes beyond traditional watch lists, Ahern said.
Border agents compare arrival names with watch lists separately from the
ATS analysis.

In a privacy impact assessment posted on its Web site this week,
Homeland Security said ATS is aimed at discovering high-risk individuals
who "may not have been previously associated with a law enforcement
action or otherwise be noted as a person of concern to law enforcement."

Ahern said ATS does this by applying rules derived from the government's
knowledge of terrorists and criminals to the passenger's travel records.

Ahern declined to disclose any of the rules, but a Homeland Security
document on data-mining gave this innocuous example of a risk assessment
rule: "If an individual sponsors more than one fiancee for immigration
at the same time, there is likelihood of immigration fraud."

Ahern said ATS was first used to rate the risk posed by travelers in the
late 1990s, using personal information about them voluntarily supplied
by air and cruise lines.

A post-9/11 law vastly expanded the program, he said. It required
airline and cruise companies to begin in 2002 sending the government
electronic data in advance on all passengers and crew bound into or out
of the country. All these names are put through ATS analysis, Ahern
said. In addition, at land border crossings, agents enter license plates
and the names of vehicle drivers and passengers, and Amtrak voluntarily
supplies passenger data on its trains to and from Canada, he said.

Would this mean that because I'm French-Canadian I would automatically
be classed as a separatist even though I'm not and that this would /
could be sent to my own government?