I try not to get too worked up over the hassles of airport security. Officials are well-intentioned and trying to provide a crucial public service.
But when federal officials maintain travel records on Americans that keep track of everything from destinations, to travel companions, to reading materials, one can’t help but wonder if some reasonable lines are being crossed.
The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.
The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department’s Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.
The Automated Targeting System isn’t exactly new; it’s been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s. Apparently, though, officials are monitoring personal travel habits in a way that hadn’t been acknowledged before.
For what it’s worth, the Department of Homeland Security insists it is completely uninterested in passengers’ reading habits. There’s some evidence to the contrary.
DHS officials said this week that the government is not interested in passengers’ reading habits, that the program is transparent, and that it affords redress for travelers who are inappropriately stymied. “I flatly reject the premise that the department is interested in what travelers are reading,” DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said. “We are completely uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be reading.”
That certainly sounds encouraging, but then there’s the case of John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco.
Gilmore’s file, which he provided to The Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book “Drugs and Your Rights.” “My first reaction was I kind of expected it,” Gilmore said. “My second reaction was, that’s illegal.”
Defending the Automated Targeting System last year, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that “if we learned anything from Sept. 11, 2001, it is that we need to be better at connecting the dots of terrorist-related information. After Sept. 11, we used credit-card and telephone records to identify those linked with the hijackers. But wouldn’t it be better to identify such connections before a hijacker boards a plane?” Chertoff said that comparing passenger name record data with intelligence on terrorists lets the government “identify unknown threats for additional screening” and helps avoid “inconvenient screening of low-risk travelers.”
Maybe so. But why, then, include a book called “Drugs and Your Rights” in some guy’s file?