They’re watching what you read at US airports

NEW YORK: International travellers concerned about being branded a terrorist by secret US Homeland Security department computers may want to be careful about what books they read on the plane.

Newly-revealed records show the US government is storing such information for years, wired.com reported on Thursday.

Privacy advocates obtained database records showing that the government routinely records the race of people pulled aside for extra screening as they enter the country. In one case, the records note Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore’s choice of reading material.

The breadth of the information obtained by the Gilmore-funded Identity Project (using a Privacy Act request) shows the government’s screening program at the border is actually a “surveillance dragnet,” according to the group’s spokesman Bill Scannell.

“There is so much sensitive information in the documents that it is clear that Homeland Security is not playing straight with the American people,” Scannell said.

The documents show a tiny slice of the massive airline-record collection stored by the government that assigns terrorist scores to travellers entering and leaving the country, including US citizens.

The so-called Automated Targeting System scrutinises every airline passenger entering or leaving the country using classified rules that tell agents which passengers to give extra screening to and which to deny entry or exit from the country.

The system relies on data ranging from the government’s 7,00,000-name terrorism watch list to data included in airline-travel database entries, known as Passenger Name Records, which airlines are required to submit to the government.

ATS was started in the late 1990s, but was little known until the government issued a notice about the system last fall. The government has subsequently modified the proposed rules for the system.