By Kenneth J. Theisen, 8/21/07
Recently there has been a lot of attention paid to the
“Protect America Act of 2007” which gave the Bush regime legal cover for its
massive spying operations against Americans.
But the regime has also quietly, and many times illegally, instituted
many other “national security programs” which affect millions of us. One such program is “The Automated Targeting
System” (ATS) which is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs
and Border Protection (CBP). Earlier
this month the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted on its web site new
information about this system and how it will be utilized.
This profiling system was originally established to assess
cargo that may pose a threat to the United States. But under the Bush regime’s Department of
Homeland Security the system was expanded to establish a secret terrorism risk
profile for millions of people, many who are U.S. citizens. It is unclear when this expansion from cargo
to persons took place. But Customs and
Border Protection has used the ATS to conduct background checks on tens of
millions of travelers and assigned them secret terrorist ratings. The plan is to have the ATS assign a “risk
assessment” to every person and container seeking to enter or exit the U.S.
The risk assessment will then be used to determine whether
persons will be allowed to enter or exit the country, or be subjected to
invasive searches of their persons or property.
The risk assessment profiles may also be shared with other government
agencies and databases. Eventually tens
of millions of American will have these assigned to them and the government
will decide how to use them against us.
On November 2, 2006 the Department of Homeland Security
published a “Notice of Privacy Act system of records” for the ATS. The notice was published in the Federal
Register. It described ATS as a system
which “performs screening of both inbound and outbound cargo, travelers, and
conveyances.” This new description of
the database differed significantly from an earlier one. In March 2006 the Bush regime referred to ATS
as “a computerized model that [Customs and Border Protection] officers use as a
decision support tool to help them target oceangoing cargo containers for
inspection.” Sometime
between March and November 2006 ATS expanded from screening shipping cargo
to scrutinizing land and sea travelers.
In the new description of ATS, the DHS stated it assigns a
“risk assessment” to all persons “seeking to enter or exit the United States,”
“engag[ing] in any form of trade or other commercial transaction related to the
importation or exportation of merchandise,” “employed in any capacity related
to the transit of merchandise intended to cross the United States border,” and
“serv[ing] as operators, crew, or passengers on any vessel, vehicle, aircraft,
or train who enters or exits the United States.” In other
words, cargo is no longer the only target. The target was expanded to hundreds
of millions of people entering and exiting the country. In 2005 CBP processed “431 million pedestrians
and passengers.” This expansion, like
much of the Bush regime’s spy activities, went virtually unnoticed.
Under this system, terrorist risk profiles will be secret
and unreviewable. Persons will not have judicially enforceable rights to access
information about them contained in ATS, nor to request correction of
information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, untimely or incomplete.
Other governmental databases will be utilized or “data
mined” to create your terrorist risk assessment. Information will come from databases such as the
Treasury Enforcement Communications System which has 5.3 billion records
including most of your financial data. It
is unknown what other databases will be similarly mined to create the risk
assessments.
The government will also retain your risk assessment and
other relevant data in its databases even if you are currently “judged” to be a
low risk of being a terrorist. Customs
and Border protection says, “All risk assessments need to be maintained because
the risk assessment for individuals who are deemed low risk will be relevant if
their risk profile changes in the future, for example, if terrorist
associations are identified.” Who knows,
you may bump elbows with Osama some day.
And do not worry, the government will not just waste
valuable resources collecting this information and assigning you a terrorist
risk assessment. No, the government will
make adequate use of the information they gather on you. Disclosure of the data may be made to “appropriate
Federal, State, local, tribal, or foreign governmental agencies or multilateral
governmental organizations” where there is a need to “utilize relevant data for
purposes of testing new technology and systems designed to enhance border
security or identify other violations of law.”
Disclosure may also be necessary to investigate or prosecute violations of a statute,
rule, regulation, order, or license or the information would assist enforcement
of civil or criminal laws. In effect the information may be
shared for just about any reason the government wants. But do not worry you can
trust your government, right?
Maybe all of this seems
a bit too much like “Big Brother” is a little too involved in your life. Well you are not alone in thinking there may
be problems with ATS. Earlier this year,
the Government Accountability Office (GAO) raised questions about ATS. According to the GAO, Customs and Border
Protection “currently does not have reasonable assurance that ATS is effective”
according to testimony provided to the Senate.
Richard Stana of the GAO questioned the accuracy and reliability of ATS
assessments in his testimony. “CBP does
not yet have key internal controls in place to be reasonably certain that ATS
is providing the best available information for targeting and inspecting
containers”” And the scary thing is that
GAO was only talking about the containers being given risk assessments. GAO was
apparently not even award that such assessments were also being assigned to
tens of millions of people. If they can
not even do the job for cargo, how can they do it with people?
Do you want some
bureaucrat determining your terrorist risk assessment and then having it stored
in Washington, D.C.
in the CBP National Data
Center for who knows what
purposes? Well unless stopped, that is what the Bush regime will do.