The Automated Targeting System (ATS) has been in operation since
2002 but has only just come to light. It uses airline and
government databases to compile a profile of air passengers and
assign them a risk assessment.
Following a past controversy about passenger screening
technology, though, the House of Representatives specifically
barred the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s use of public
funds for automatic risk assessment programmes. No funds from the
appropriations bill could be used to develop systems "assigning
risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists",
the AP news wire reported.
"We went through many years of debate over this notion of
probing into the background of every passenger and assigning them a
threat rating," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the America
Civil Liberty Union's Technology and Liberty Project. "Congress
enacted a specific prohibition on rating innocent travellers and
instructed DHS to focus only on those who were on a government
watch list. So it is unconscionable for the government to then
create this kind of a system in violation of that ban, and without
proper notice to Congress or the public."
"There is growing concern in Congress that this program invites
abuse, and that the administration is ploughing ahead with it in
apparent violation of the law,'' Patrick Leahy told AP. Leahy is a
Democrat senator and the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
The Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said that
he believes that the programme is legal. "I don't think it can be
read as applying to this program. The statute doesn't bar the use
of funds for the purpose of analyzing the risks for people entering
the country," Chertoff told AP.
The controversial system maintains records on passengers for up
to 40 years and is designed to analyse their movements over time to
detect movements similar to those of terrorists or criminals.
Citizens will not have the right to view or amend the records held
on them.
This is just the latest controversy to hit the US's increasing
monitoring of personal data. Europe and the US have been in dispute
for some time over the transfer of flight information on European
passengers to US authorities.
A number of European data protection bodies have found that a
deal cut between the European Commission and the US broke European
data protection rules. One of those rules is that data can only be
transferred to countries with as good or better data protection
than Europe.
