State Department Link Will Open Visa Database to Police Officers

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

State Department Link Will Open Visa Database to Police Officers

January 31, 2003
By JENNIFER 8. LEE 




 

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 - Law enforcement officials across the
country will soon have access to a database of 50 million
overseas applications for United States visas, including
the photographs of 20 million applicants.

The database, which will become one of the largest offering
images to local law enforcement, is maintained by the State
Department and typically provides personal information like
the applicant's home address, date of birth and passport
number, and the names of relatives.

It is a central feature of a computer system linkup,
scheduled within the next month, that will tie together the
department, intelligence agencies, the F.B.I. and police
departments. 

The new system will provide 100,000 investigators one
source for what the government designates "sensitive but
unclassified" information. Officials see it as a
breakthrough for law enforcement, saying it will help
dismantle the investigative stumbling blocks that were
roundly criticized after the Sept. 11 attacks.

At the same time, they acknowledge the legal and policy
questions raised by information sharing between
intelligence agencies and local law enforcement, and
critics have cast a wary eye as well at the visa database.

One other effect of the new system is that for the first
time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other
agencies linked by it will be able to send one another
encrypted e-mail. Previously, security concerns about the
open Internet often caused sensitive information to be
faxed, mailed or sent by courier.

The changes come as the F.B.I. continues working to upgrade
its entire computer system, which is so antiquated and
compartmentalized that it cannot perform full searches of
investigative files. The bureau's director, Robert S.
Mueller III, testified at a Senate hearing last summer that
the technology allowed for single-word searches, for
example for "flight" or "school," but not for a phrase, for
example "flight school."

For all the ambitious technological proposals being debated
in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks, the new unified
system was cobbled from existing networks and has required
little new spending. "These are the networks that people
are already using," said Roseanne Hynes, a member of the
Defense Department's domestic security task force. "It
doesn't change jobs or add overhead."

A primary feature of the system is the State Department's
enormous visa database, whose seven terabytes give it a
capacity equivalent to that of five million floppy disks.
Until now, that database has been shared only with
immigration officials.

"There is a potential source of information that isn't
available elsewhere," said M. Miles Matthew, a senior
Justice Department official who works with an interagency
drug intelligence group. "It's not just useful for
terrorism. It's drug trafficking, money laundering, a
variety of frauds, not to mention domestic crimes."

Local law enforcement agencies seeking photographs have
typically had immediate access only to their own database
of booking photos. But to get photos of people not
previously charged or arrested, an investigator would make
a request to a motor vehicle department or the State
Department. 

So officials emphasize that the State Department database
is not making any information newly available to law
enforcement, simply making such information easier to
acquire. But that increasing ease of accessibility raises
some concern from civil liberties groups.

"The availability of this information will change police
conduct," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has advocated
more Congressional oversight of domestic security
operations. "You are more likely to stop someone if you
have the ability to query a database."

Or, as Mr. Rotenberg also put it: "The data chases
applications." 

Critics also point to what they call the unwelcome
precedent of foreign-intelligence sharing with local law
enforcement, even if the intelligence community's initial
contribution to the new system may seem somewhat innocuous.
That component is the Open Source Information System, a
portal where 14 agencies pool unclassified information.
Such material in the new system will includes text articles
from foreign periodicals and broadcasts, technical reports
and maps. 

Two domestic law enforcement networks are also being tied
in: Law Enforcement Online, a seven-year-old system
established by the F.B.I., and the Regional Information
Sharing Systems, six geographically defined computer
networks that help local law enforcement agencies
collaborate on regional crime issues like drug trafficking
and gangs. 

Becoming part of a collaborative computer network is
unusual for the F.B.I., which has been criticized for its
insular nature and technological sluggishness. As some
agents joke, the bureau "likes to have yesterday's
technology tomorrow." Many agents do not have direct access
from their desks to the Internet, because of security
concerns. Instead, some field offices have separate areas
that agents refer to as "cybercafes," where they can log on
to the Internet. 

The bureau is now engaged in a multibillion-dollar effort
to upgrade its computer system. A recent report by the
Justice Department's inspector general cited mismanagement
of the project, though Director Mueller gave reporters a
sunny assessment today, saying among other things that
parts of the upgrade would go on line in March as
scheduled. 

As for the new interagency system, other large security and
law enforcement computer networks are scheduled for
integration with it within the next year.

These include an unclassified part of the Defense
Department computer network, as well as the National Law
Enforcement Telecommunication System, which is used to
disseminate criminal justice information nationwide.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/national/31COMP.html?ex=1044984005&ei=1&en
=c9e668399f11c986



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