Critics calling on DHS to halt passenger profiling program
By Dennis Schaal, Travel Weekly, 12/11/2006
Several business travel and civil liberties organizations are calling on the Dept. of Homeland Security to abandon a little-known screening system that creates risk assessments of travelers.
Critics objected to the Automated Targeting System because they claimed there was no way to correct misinformation and because the profiles the system creates were available to a wide audience, ranging from foreign governments to certain students.
The DHS has said it intends to keep ATS profiles, fed by PNR data, for 40 years.
Amid a firestorm of protest over ATS, the DHS has extended the comment period almost four weeks, until Dec. 29.
In comments filed after the DHS provided details about ATS in the Federal Register on Nov. 2, critics charged that it was a secretive and intrusive data-mining program that broadly disseminated risk assessments and data on travelers, including U.S. citizens, to third parties with few safeguards and no redress procedure.
Critics said DHS, which runs ATS through its Customs and Border Protection unit, erroneously claimed sweeping exemptions from the Privacy Act of 1974 and has clandestinely implemented a program that makes the stillborn Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System, or CAPPS II, seem relatively benign.
The Association of Corporate Travel Executives, the Business Travel Coalition, ARTA and the American Civil Liberties Union were among the groups that called on the DHS to withdraw the program pending more public comment. The National Business Travel Association expressed concerns about privacy and the potential impact on business travel.
Like several other organizations, the ACTE blasted the DHS for revealing ATS through a Federal Register notice instead of engaging in a broader rulemaking process with congressional hearings.
"The ATS circumvents the Privacy Act of 1974 in assigning secret risk assessment numbers to international travelers," ACTE said. "While travelers are denied access to this data and the option to correct inaccuracies, the federal government will make this information available to state and foreign governments -- and in some cases, private contractors."
Noting that ATS began as a widely supported cargo-screening program four years ago, the BTC charged that its evolution into "a secretively implemented global traveler screening program represents Exhibit A in the case against mission creep."
According to the notice in the Federal Register, the ATS database, which is housed at the CBP's data center in Washington, screens people and cargo entering or exiting the U.S., looking for terror threats.
Foreign and domestic airlines electronically feed up to 39 fields of data, including seat information, travel agent names, passenger payment details and e-mail addresses into ATS, beginning 72 hours before departure.
If, for example, intelligence reveals that an international traveler bound for the U.S. booked a flight with a cell phone that appears on a terror watch list, ATS enables officials to connect the dots and screen the passenger further upon entering the U.S.
Jarrod Agen, a DHS spokesman, clarified statements in the Federal Register describing ATS as "a new system of records" that screens "inbound and outbound." He said ATS had been operational, and monitoring cargo shipments, since the early 1990s and had been screening passengers since the mid-1990s.
The DHS, Agen said, recently reviewed notices that had been published in the Federal Register before the creation of DHS in 2002 and felt it was necessary to file a new notice about ATS.
Agen said although ATS received PNR information about outbound travel, "this system is used specifically for inbound travel."
The DHS receives advance manifests listing cargo and travelers headed into the U.S. and checks their names against "any kind of terror watch list that we have," Agen said.
The CBP also receives up to 39 fields of PNR data, depending on the airline, plugs it into ATS and checks it against other intelligence and law enforcement information to analyze terror risk.
ATS risk assessments of travelers can be disclosed to federal, state and local agencies; foreign governments; courts; third parties for law enforcement purposes; congressional offices; and to "contractors, grantees, experts, consultants, students and others" working on federal matters related to ATS.
The U.S. government negotiated a new PNR agreement with the European Union last summer that upgrades the fields of data and the timeliness of their receipt, Agen said.
ATS is distinct from the Transportation Security Administration's Secure Flight pre-screening program, which checks passenger names against terror watch lists and covers domestic flights only.
Agen said travelers could submit requests to see what information ATS had about them. As for redress for passengers experiencing trouble during screening, he said that they could follow up with CBP redress representatives. "You would explain the situation to them. They would run through some of the data that they have stored, and you could give additional data about yourself, and therefore it would clear up any mishaps in the future," he said.
Nevertheless, the NBTA said ATS lacked a clear redress procedure and privacy safeguards, running "the risk of damaging the U.S. economy by discouraging business travel across U.S. borders."
The NBTA noted that Congress had mandated oversight of Secure Flight as it relates to issues of privacy, redress procedures and data security, and that these areas of focus should apply to ATS, as well.
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