[Infowarrior] - Privacy groups bristle at expanded Customs database

[Richard Forno]

Privacy groups bristle at expanded Customs database

By Julian Sanchez | Published: August 27, 2008 - 07:15PM CT

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080827-privacy-groups-bristle-at-expanded-customs-database.html

A new border patrol policy made public late last month is raising  
hackles at the Center for Democracy and Technology. The civil  
liberties group is urging Customs and Border Patrol to scrap rules  
that would allow the retention of information about American citizens  
entering or leaving the the US—whether by land, sea or air—for up to  
15 years.

In a System of Records Notice issued at the end of July, Customs and  
Border Patrol disclosed that personal information and photographs of  
all persons crossing U.S. borders would be stored in a separate Border  
Crossing Information database. Records pertaining to US citizens and  
permanent residents would be retained for 15 years, those of  
noncitizens for 75 years. The data could be broadly shared with both  
domestic and foreign government agencies.

While information has long been kept about persons entering the US by  
air and sea, traditionally, permanent records have not traditionally  
been made for the vast majority of border crossings that occur by  
land. But increasing prevalence of machine-readable ID documents—which  
will be required as of June 2009—now makes it practical to include  
land travelers as well. A spokesman for the Department of Homeland  
Security describes the expanded record-keeping rules as a way to "help  
frontline officers to connect the dots" in the war on terror.

The privacy mavens at the Center for Democracy and Technology are  
somewhat less sanguine, however. In a pair of comments filed with DHS  
earlier this week, CDT Senior Counsel Greg Nojeim warns that Congress  
has never explicitly granted the agency explicit statutory authority  
to establish such a broad database. Nojeim argues that the 15-year  
retention period is excessive, and that the new rules fail to provide  
adequate restrictions on the sharing of information with other  
agencies, foreign governments, or members of the press.

Perhaps most troubling, Nojeim notes that the new System of Records  
does not appear to distinguish between the sort of basic biographical  
information present on a passport or driver's license and the  
potentially far more sensitive data that might be gleaned from  
intrusive "secondary inspection" of border crossers. This is  
especially disconcerting in light of a recent ruling by the Ninth  
Circuit Court of Appeals that the traditional "border search"  
exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement applies to  
inspection of laptops and other digital storage devices, which are  
capable of storing vast amounts of personal data.