Homeland Security's Data Vacuum Cleaner In Action
An Investigation by the Identity Project
I. ATS, APIS, Secure Flight: Different Bottles, Same Water
A. The Bottles
For years, DHS ran a secret travel surveillance program called the Automated Targeting System. This data mining program came to light earlier this year when DHS announced plans to openly monitor the international comings and goings of Americans with a legal version of the scheme called the Automated Passenger Information System, or APIS.
APIS, which is now fully operational, places requirements for government-issued travel credentials on all Americans as well as individualized, explicit, prior, per-flight permission to travel ("clearance") by DHS on every American citizen wishing to leave or enter the United States. In conducting APIS, DHS pulls in huge amounts of data on every passenger.
Secure Flight will put these same requirements on all Americans for domestic travel. Under Secure Flight, an American wishing to fly within the United States will need permission from DHS for each segment of his travels.
B. The Water
The main source of information DHS uses to determine whether to grant an American permission to travel by air comes from their flight reservation, or PNR. The PNR contains a wealth of deeply personal information, as this report will soon show. For DHS to argue that the APIS foreign travel surveillance program and the Secure Flight domestic travel surveillance program are separate and distinct is a fiction, if not an outright falsehood. They are but two bottling plants drawing water from the same spring.
II. The Identity Project Investigation...... LINK FOR REST