Congress and DHS Debate Legality of Traveler Scoring System

Two Congress members are contending that a recently announced -- though long running -- program to give risk scores to international passengers is unlawful because of language in a funding bill that they argue applies equally to international and domestic security programs, according to the Associated Press. Rep. Martin Sabo (D.-Minn.), who wrote the section of the bill that seems to ban such a program, told the AP "It clearly goes contrary to what we have in law."

The possibility of that the Automated Targeting system was illegal was raised in filings by a privacy group and first brought to public attention in my story yesterday. Homeland Security officials contend that the language applies only to Secure Flight,the ongoing attempt to revamp domestic air travel security, and is also saying that they have talked very publicly about how they profile international travel for years.

Which in fact they have...

A Homeland Security spokesperson sent me this list of 21 instances where the program had been explained publicly.

For instance: Robert Bonner's written testimony in a hearing before House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Homeland
Security (March 25, 2004) included this:

The Automated Targeting System (ATS), which is used by
[National Targeting Center] and field targeting units in the United
States and overseas, is essential to our ability to target high-risk cargo and passengers entering the United States. ATS is the system through which we process advance manifest and passenger information to pick up anomalies and “red flags” and determine what cargo is “high risk,” and therefore will be scrutinized at the port of entry or, in some cases, overseas.

The funding increase sought for ATS in the FY ’05 budget will allow for the continued improvement of the system as well as provide it with the capacity to process the electronic data related to the ever-increasing number of people and goods entering the United States.
For example, the funding will allow us to develop and implement a version of ATS that, for the first time, will be able to identify potentially high-risk travelers in passenger vehicles. It will also be used to upgrade our passenger targeting system by improving the amount of government data that the system can access and analyze as well as provide us with the capacity to train more people on the use of the system. On the cargo side, the funding will permit ATS to increase its capacity and upgrade its capabilities by utilizing cutting edge information analysis technologies developed by CBP and the private sector.

So why didn't journalists like myself and privacy groups know this was happening?

And even better, in the longstanding battle between the U.S. and the
E.U. over how many fields of airline passenger data would be sent to the U.S., why didn't anyone actually ask what the U.S. would do with fifty fields of data?