Traveller screening 'against privacy laws' in US

America’s Homeland Security Department is breaking the law by not telling the public how personal information is used to screen international travellers, government investigators say.

One of the screening programmes at issue is a computer-based system called the Automated Targeting System, used by the Customs and Border Protection agency to rate the risk posed by travellers coming to and leaving the US.

In its report, the Government Accountability Office said the department was not complying fully with privacy laws that required agencies to tell the public how the government uses personal information.

“CBP’s current disclosures do not fully inform the public about all of its systems for pre-screening aviation passenger information,” the GAO report said. “Nor do they explain how CBP combines data in the pre-screening process, as required by law.”

The GAO, Congress’ auditing agency, also said Customs had not disclosed publicly all the sources of data it reviewed about passengers, including information obtained from commercial sources. It did not explain what those commercial sources may be and government officials would not comment.

But Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke defended the programme.

“The GAO in this case is woefully uninformed, and I think that Congress and the public are being poorly served by this report,” Knocke said.

The programme, he said, “has been the subject of more than 20 speeches or testimonies at hearings”.

Except for two footnotes to documents sent to Congress, however, the administration’s public references primarily described the system as a cargo and passenger screening system without details of its operations. Many officials were aware only of the cargo aspect of the screening system until last autumn.

The other pre-screening process about which the GAO expressed disclosure problems was the Advance Passenger Information System, APIS, which uses information derived from passports or other government-issued documents such as visas.

The Associated Press disclosed late last year that the Automated Targeting System used by Customs had been developing risk assessments of millions of Americans over the last four years without their knowledge. AP also reported that those assessments were to be kept for 40 years and could be shared with state, local and foreign governments.

The ATS programme compares passenger data, such as a passenger’s name, address, credit card information and data from government databases, such as a terrorist screening database, with a set of rules derived from the government’s knowledge of terrorists and criminals.

Government officials have refused to detail those rules for security reasons. But the comparison results in a risk assessment, which can prevent someone for boarding a plane or require additional screening at the airport.

While the GAO found that Customs had disclosed aspects of the programme, it said the agency had failed to publish a “system of records notice or a privacy impact assessment that comprehensively describes the entire pre-screening process”.