Michael Chertoff is incompetent. He has an editorial in this morning’s Washington Post that is almost completely incoherent. It’s entitled A Tool We Need to Stop the Next Airliner Plot, but he never precisely identifies the tool, nor what we might do to get the tool. Instead he just engages in whining.
The U.S. government has collected PNR [passenger name record] data on travelers aboard international flights to the United States since the early 1990s. This information is of such value that after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Congress mandated its continued collection. But in the past few years European privacy concerns have limited the ability of counterterrorism officials to gain broad access to data of this sort.
For example, under an agreement with the European Union, U.S. Customs and Border Protection receives this information regularly, but it cannot routinely share it with investigators in another DHS component, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or with the FBI — never mind with our allies in London. This information might yet identify associates of those arrested in the plot in Britain, but the rules blind us in routinely searching for that connection.
The key word here is ‘routinely’. The European Union gives the DHS the information, but requires that some kind of probable cause is established before it is disseminated throughout the government. Chertoff would like to use that data without probable cause and as a matter of routine. So, what kind of things will Chertoff do with that information? He is a little vague.
…by using more of the detailed information collected by airlines and travel agencies when an individual books a flight…These passenger name records contain information, such as travel itineraries and payment details, that can be analyzed in conjunction with current intelligence to identify high-risk travelers before they board planes.
They basically want to troll through all the records related to a purchase of an airline ticket, including the phone used to buy the tickets and the credit card. Then they want to data mine all that data to identify suspicious characters. The theory is that we can prevent another 9/11 this way, even if it involves violating the privacy of every cross-Atlantic traveler. That might look like a good deal if you never travel abroad, but it doesn’t look too great to foreigners considering a trip to Disney Land or the Grand Canyon.
And what, exactly, does Michael Chertoff expect us to do about it? It is for the Europeans to decide what information they want to share with our intelligence agencies and how they want that information protected. Is Chertoff asking the American public to write to European Union members and ask them to be more cooperative?
And I am not even mentioning that the Brits are furious that we blew the whistle on their terrorism investigation prematurely and compromised their cases.
