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Feds Purchasing Commercial Data to Track Foreign Citizens

By Jeralyn, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Mon Apr 14, 2003 at 05:08:58 AM EST
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Questions are being raised about the U.S. purchase of data collected on hundreds of millions of Latin American citizens:
During the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries --apparently without their consent or knowledge --allowing myriad federal agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States.

A suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint Inc., collects the information abroad and sells it to U.S. government officials in three dozen agencies, including immigration investigators who've used it to arrest illegal immigrants.

U.S. officials consider the foreign data a thread in a security blanket that lets law enforcers and the travel industry peer into the backgrounds of people flowing into the United States. The information can also be used with other data-mining tools to identify potential terrorists or simply unmask fake identity documents, company and government officials say.
The Justice Department has a $67 million, four-year contract with Choice Point. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection have refused to provide information about how the Border Patrol uses the data. In 2002, INS paid $1 million for unlimited access to the company's foreign databases.

The U.S. also uses Choice Point's databases to track fugitives.

Federal and state governments pay about $50 million a year to comb through ChoicePoint's databanks, also marketed under such names as AutoTrack, KnowX.com and ScreenNow.

The company compiles and sells personal information on U.S. residents, such as motor vehicle and credit records, car and boat registrations, liens and deed transfers and military records.

The files can be used by the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service or Internal Revenue Service to check employee backgrounds, track fugitives or piece together clues to a person's potential for terrorism.

...New federal demand for the data can be seen in forthcoming programs such as Total Information Awareness and Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, which seek to prevent acts of terror by poring over financial transactions, court records and government watch lists.

Privacy experts are dismayed by the U.S. government's use of such commercial data. They say it circumvents the spirit of the 1974 Privacy Act, which prohibits routine data collection on ordinary Americans.

"The Privacy Act passed because of fears in the 1960s of a federal data center. That data center was created after all, but it's in private hands," said Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
This is scary stuff and we're glad EPIC is on top of it. But the rest of us need to be attuned to it as well. Today it's Latin Americans and fugitives, tomorrow it is us.
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