Leahy expresses outrage at travel terror ratings

updated 8:10 p.m. ET Dec. 1, 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, 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, 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.”

Crucial to the nation's security, Homeland says
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.

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