US buys ID data on Latin American citizens

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin () law miami edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 08:29:38 -0400 (EDT)
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: for IP: US buys ID data on Latin American citizens

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/5627768.htm

Posted on Mon, Apr. 14, 2003

U.S. buys Latin American citizen data Security need is cited, but some
question its legality BY JIM KRANE Associated Press

Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on
hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries --
apparently without their consent or knowledge -- allowing myriad federal
agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States.

A suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint, collects the information abroad
and sells it to U.S. government officials in three dozen agencies,
including federal immigration investigators who have used it to arrest
illegal immigrants.

The practice broadens a trend that has an information-hungry U.S.
government increasingly buying personal data on Americans and foreigners
alike from commercial vendors including ChoicePoint and LexisNexis.

SECURITY BLANKET

U.S. officials consider the foreign data a thread in a security blanket
that lets law enforcers and the travel industry peer into the backgrounds
of people flowing into the United States. The information can also be used
with other data-mining tools to identify potential terrorists, or simply
unmask fake identity documents, company and government officials say.

''Our whole purpose in life is to sell data to make the world a safer
place,'' said James Lee, ChoicePoint's chief marketing officer. ``There is
physical danger in not knowing who someone is. What risks do people coming
into our country represent? You may accept that risk, but you want to know
about it.''

Privacy experts in Latin America question whether the sales of national
citizen registries have been legal. They say government data are often
sold clandestinely by individual government employees.

ChoicePoint appears to be the largest -- perhaps the only -- vendor of
foreigners' personal details, selling entire national identity databases
from Latin America since 2001.

''It's the globalization of a very unfortunate American consumer
problem,'' said Robert Ellis Smith, a lawyer who monitors credit agencies
as publisher of Privacy Journal.

Smith says Latin governments ought to protect their citizens by passing
privacy laws similar to European statutes that prohibit wholesale
purchases of personal data.

The files appear to originate in agencies that register voters or issue
national IDs and driver's licenses. ChoicePoint provided partial copies of
contracts, which required contractors to certify they have bought the
information legally.

The company is prohibited from buying data troves in Europe and other
regions with strict privacy laws, or where governments refuse to sell
citizen data. Another obstacle is primitive record-keeping by governments,
such as those in the Middle East that still use paper, or where records
are kept in non-Roman script such as Arabic or Japanese, Lee said.

USAGE UNKNOWN

At U.S. agencies with access to ChoicePoint's Latin American data,
officials often said they didn't know how it was used. The Bureau of
Customs and Border Protection, for example, declined to respond to
repeated Associated Press requests for information on the Border Patrol's
use of the data.

The Justice Department's $67 million four-year contract with ChoicePoint
is the largest among federal agencies. But most of that is spent by
agencies looking up U.S. records, not data from foreign governments.

Last year, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now part of the
Department of Homeland Security, paid $1 million for unlimited access to
ChoicePoint's foreign databases, according to a contract provided by the
Electronic Privacy Information Center.

An agency official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the files
were used by its investigators and Quick Response Teams to round up
undocumented immigrants in nonborder areas of the United States.

Broad government contracts for ChoicePoint's Latin American data would
also make the information available to federal drug agents working in
Colombia, Mexico and elsewhere, along with U.S. personnel in embassies and
consulates.

U.S. intelligence agencies also have access, under ChoicePoint deals with
the departments of Justice, Treasury, State and Energy.

Increased use of the foreign data, coupled with new rules giving
immigration inspectors wide leeway to decide whether or not to allow a
traveler to enter the country, could mean more Latin Americans will be
blocked from the United States.

Immigrant advocates say this could eventually hurt economies dependent on
money sent home by Latins working in the United States.

''These will be people who have visas to come here, but based on some
information that's in the possession of the U.S. government, they're
simply turned back without a hearing,'' said Joan Friedland, an attorney
with the National Immigration Law Center in Washington, D.C.

``It's the worst of all possible worlds. It weeds out the people who
should be allowed to come here and doesn't do anything to weed out those
who shouldn't.''

AP researcher Randy Herschaft and AP correspondents Traci Carl in Mexico
City and Vanessa Arrington in Bogotá contributed to this report.

-- 
        Please visit http://www.icannwatch.org
A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin () law tm
U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
+1 (305) 284-4285  |  +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax)  |  http://www.law.tm
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