WASHINGTON (AFP) - Starting Monday every person entering and leaving the United States will be evaluated as terrorist threats without their knowledge, and the results will be held for 40 years, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.
A US civil liberties group warned against the plan on Thursday, calling it "invasive."
The US "government is preparing to give millions of law-abiding citizens 'risk assessment' scores that will follow them throughout their lives," said David Sobel, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
"If that wasn't frightening enough, none of us will have the ability to know our own score, or to challenge it," he said in a statement.
A Homeland Security spokesman confirmed that computers of the Automated Targeting System will do the screening.
"We use it to improve the collection, use and analyze intelligence that would help us target and identify potential terrorists or terrorist weapons from entering the US," department spokesman Jarrod Agen told AFP.
The US government quietly placed notice of the program in the November 2 Federal Register.
"The Automated Targeting System performs screening of both inbound and outbound cargo, travellers and conveyances," the notice said.
The foundation calls the system an "invasive and unprecedented data-mining system," in which computers look for suspicious persons and score them as potential risks by trolling information from a multitude of sources, such as airline passenger information, the US Treasury, the Commerce Department, credit card numbers and the meals eaten on flights all help add up the score.
Travellers may not review -- or challenge -- their scores for the next 40 years, according to the November 2 notice.
However, "routine uses of the records" are: sharing with "federal, state, local, tribal or foreign government agencies maintaining civil, criminal or other relevant enforcement information or other pertinent information, which has requested information relevant or necessary to the requesting agency's clearance, license, contract, grant or other benefit and disclosure is appropriate to the proper performance of the official duties of the person making the disclosure," the notice said.
Persons who may see the information on a "routine" basis are: "a court magistrate, or administrative tribunal"; "third parties during the course of a law enforcement investigation"; an "agency, organization or individual for the purpose of performing audit or oversight operations"; "a Congressional office"; and "contractors, grantees, experts, consultants, students and others," according to the announcement.
A invasão da privacidade parece não ter limites nos tempos atuais, veja.
