US government collects overseas travel details of citizens

24 September 2007

The government of the United States is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the people they plan to stay with and the personal items they carry, including even the books they take along.

According to documents obtained by civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials, the personal travel records are meant to be stored for 15 years, as a part of the Department of Homeland Security’s effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country.

Officials say that the records, which are analyzed by the department’s Automated Targeting System, would help border officials identify potential terrorists.

But, new details suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has acknowledged, allege a group of activists who requested copies of records about their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one carried.

The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s, but data collection has been greatly expanded since 2002, according to former officials of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security officials have defended keeping the highly personal data of travelers who have not been linked to any violations of the law. Civil liberties advocates say that preserving such data raises concerns about the government’s ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people.

The millions of travelers, whose records are kept by the government, generally are unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, civil liberties activists say.

They allege that the effort to collect data, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans’ exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They are also concerned that the data could be used impede their right to travel.

“The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society,” John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco, said. Gilmore’s records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates.

The government, Gilmore went on, might be doing it with the best or worst of intentions, but “the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent.”

John Gilmore’s file included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book titled Drugs and Your Rights.

However, officials of Homeland Security say they generally are not interested in reading habits. Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke explained: “I flatly reject the premise the department is interested in what travellers are reading, but if there is some indication that leads the inspection officer to conclude that there could be a possible violation of the law, it is the front-line officer’s duty to further scrutinize the traveler.”

The Homeland Security database includes passenger name record (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers.

PNR data routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations and even the type of bed requested in a hotel.

The records the Identity Project obtained confirmed that the US government is receiving data directly from commercial reservation systems, such as Galileo and Sabre, but also showed that the data, in some cases, are even more detailed.

Edward Hasbrouck, a civil liberties activist who was a travel agent for over 15 years, said his file contained coding that reflected his plan to fly with another individual.

Hasbrouck said travel records are potentially invasive because they can suggest links – they show who a traveler sat next to, where they stayed, when they left, ands the like.