The ATS, as it is known, supposedly takes the Passenger Name Records (PNR), basically a flight reservation record, of international travelers, and gives each passenger a score on the likelihood that he or she could be a terrorist. Fundamentally, I don't see a problem with this.
I should make a few disclaimers, though. If there are laws being violated, or if the activity requires a law to allow for it, then the program should be immediately halted. This means that the program is illegal, and the appropriate investigations should be performed.
Likewise, I think the ATS needs to be studied to determine whether too many people are irrationally singled out as potential terrorists. This doesn't mean the program should be abandoned. It just means that the weaknesses in the program should be identified and fixed. I also believe the 40-year retention of records is a major waste of resources.
I recently got back from a trip to Europe, and after hearing the worst about ATS, I have to admit that I came to appreciate it. I probably score very low on the terrorist scale, so for me, the system creates a fast path through customs and immigration, just like it apparently did for many individuals who were also racing through international arrivals.
I would have to assume that the factors in my favor include a high-level status in frequent-flier programs, paying for tickets with established credit cards, and ironically, making frequent international trips. The only time I had a problem going through customs and immigration, since the ATS was implemented, was when an overly suspicious immigrations agent had a hard time believing that I traveled to Amsterdam for less than a day and wasn't bringing drugs back into the country.
Frankly, this is the way it should be. You don't want government employees having to make a lot of their own evaluations of people on the spot, especially when they have the reality of hundreds, maybe thousands, of passengers going through the system every hour. A system that looks at the available facts and automates the thought processes of experienced agents can help agents of all experience levels. Even the best agents cannot consistently deliver quality evaluations. The ATS, in principle, just makes a lot of sense.
Many people may remember that I was highly critical of the U.S. National Security Agency's . Let's compare the two programs, so you can see what the major differences are, with the ATS being infinitely more legitimate than the NSA's "program."
First, the NSA's program was blatantly in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). While I am not sure if the ATS is a technical violation of law, I don't think it should be. However, if it is, it should be halted immediately.
From an operational perspective, the scope of the NSA program has yet to be identified. Fundamentally, it uses computer algorithms to search for new terrorist suspects among the U.S. population. Rather than attempting to narrow down a specific group of people who may be terrorists, the NSA system keeps adding new people to the potential list. If, for example, you are looking for a needle in a haystack, the NSA program makes the haystack exponentially bigger. This wastes the resources of FBI agents who have more imminent crimes to address.
The ATS does the opposite. Immigration agents have to evaluate everyone entering the country. If the system were not in place, the agents would have to make the decisions on their own. Computer scoring, which should represent the opinions of the most experienced agents, simplifies the process for them. Frankly, I believe that you want to take the guesswork away from the agents who are supposed to do a good job as fast as possible.
More importantly, the ATS can incorporate more factors than might be readily available to a border agent. This information, such as a record of previous trips, can better identify people who could represent higher risks. Likewise, more information can better weed out people who shouldn't go through additional screening.
This is the important concept: ATS reduces the number of people who will have to go through additional screening more than it adds people who have to go through the hassle. While the purpose is to stop a terrorist from entering the country, the number of potential terrorists is miniscule. For every person who is unnecessarily screened, the process not only a personal inconvenience, it is a waste of government resources and taxes.
Again, I am not saying that the current evaluation criteria is perfect. However, it appears that except in a case of clear stupidity, such as when a 4-year-old is singled out, if border agents are given all the information they should get, they should single out the same people that the computer does.
The solution at this point is not to disagree that the system should be in place, but that the system should be progressively improved.
Privacy concerns
Many people argue that the ATS is based on privacy concerns. I really want to know what expectation of privacy they think people have in this case. PNRs are available to a wide variety of people, including thousands of airline employees; foreign governments; employees of foreign airlines that you might also be traveling on; credit card company employees; offshore and outsourced call centers; and maintenance staff. There is little privacy with regard to that data.
I believe that as long as there is no law against it and the information is helpful to the government, why should the government be the only group not allowed access to the data? I have significantly more faith in the government using the information properly than I do in random, low-paid, high-turnover offshore employees from a dozen companies who also see the data.
Clearly, improvements can be made. However, it makes more sense to improve the ATS than it is to contend that we should have border guards make their own random decisions based upon incomplete information. That's really the choice we have.
Ira Winkler is president of the Internet Security Advisors Group. He is a former National Security Agency analyst and the author of Spies Among Us (Wiley, 2005).