ABC does a followup piece on the "Automated Targeting System"--the automated tracking of travelers into and out of the U.S. that was revealed through a Privacy Act Notice in the Federal Register. As best we understand, the system gathers information on people (destinations, how paid for, etc.), accumulates it over time and generates an "assessment" which is capable of being expressed as a numeric score. Senator Leahy and others have problems with it.
I don't, not really. Yes, there's problems because the system was set up years ago and they just got around to publishing the required FR notice on "systems of records". That was wrong. But the basic idea is okay by me--tracking someone's history is a good and valid way of assessing them and the data captured doesn't seem particularly sensitive to me.
I do have problems with the Privacy Act itself--it should be updated in the light of the Internet to require government agencies to make accessible, ideally notify people, of the information they have on file. (It was written in the 70's.) Look at the credit scores that credit reporting bureaus keep. We've finally advanced to the point where people are entitled to a free credit report yearly. Social Security gives you a yearly report summarizing the wages they've recorded for you. Why shouldn't other agencies do similar things? If HSD were doing that, they'd have a lot more support and a lot less paranoia in the country. IMO transparency is key.
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