Thinking about traveling abroad...? Fine... Thinking about coming back...? Read this...

given the amount of international travel i do, and given the fact that my laptop was seized coming through u.s. customs in june and not returned for three weeks, this hits home...

Without notifying the public, federal agents for the past four years have assigned millions of international travelers, including Americans, computer-generated scores rating the risk they pose of being terrorists or criminals.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

The scores are assigned to people entering and leaving the United States after computers assess their travel records, including where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

The program's existence was quietly disclosed earlier in November when the government put an announcement detailing the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, for the first time in the Federal Register, a fine-print compendium of federal rules. Privacy and civil liberties lawyers, congressional aides and even law enforcement officers said they thought this system had been applied only to cargo.

i've been through u.s. customs twice since june without incident, but, i can tell you, i approached both of them with no small degree of trepidation...

(thanks to john at americablog...)

Submit To Propeller
Tweet