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US picks Sept. 11 as launch date for controversial
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US picks Sept. 11 as launch date for controversial security system
By Bret Ladine, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2002
ASHINGTON - A new security system that will fingerprint and photograph tens of thousands of foreign visitors upon their entry to the United States will be launched on the anniversary of last year's terrorist attacks, the Justice Department announced Monday.
The program will be implemented by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at undisclosed ports of entry beginning Sept. 11. After a 20-day trial, the system will become operational at all ports of entry on Oct. 1.
Under the program, visitors designated by the Justice Department as a national security concern will be fingerprinted, photographed, and required to register with the INS within 30 days of their entry into the country and every year thereafter. Those subject to the regulations include all citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria, and nonimmigrant visitors determined by the State Department. Anyone refusing to comply will be deported.
''The vulnerabilities of our immigration system became starkly clear on Sept. 11,'' Attorney General John Ashcroft said. ''This system will expand substantially America's scrutiny of those foreign visitors who may present an elevated national security risk and will provide a vital line of defense in the war against terrorism.''
Arab-Americans, civil liberties groups, and immigration lawyers have criticized the National Security Entry-Exit System since it was proposed in June and are even more troubled by the decision to implement the program on Sept. 11. They say the security measures are discriminatory and question their usefulness.
In landmark antiterrorism legislation passed last year, Congress required the Justice Department to develop an entry-exit system to provide greater protection and to assist immigrants in fulfilling legal responsibilities. Federal law has long required immigrants who stay in the United States for more than 30 days to be registered and fingerprinted, but such requirements had been unenforced for decades.
The new system will supplement other changes in immigration rules. Among changes that already have been announced are tighter controls over student visas and shorter periods that visitors can stay in the country before having to apply for a new visa.
Jean AbiNader, managing director of the Arab American Institute, said the security program will result in racial profiling and will overwhelm what she called the FBI's already suspect ability to handle large amounts of information.
''Here we are talking about more databases, and we can't even manage the ones we have now,'' AbiNader said. ''If this system were in place last year, it would not have stopped those guys from doing what they did.''
The timing of the implementation drew a negative reaction from AbiNader and others opposed to the policy, who say the vast majority of visitors to the United States from the Middle East are simply coming to see their relatives.
''It is highly offensive that this is going forward on Sept. 11,'' said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. ''It's discriminatory and will single out people not because of their behavior, but simply because of who they are and that they match up with a certain set of characteristics that we're not going to be told about.''
Those characteristics will be developed using criteria based on patterns of activities by terrorist organizations. The criteria will change as intelligence reports dictate, said Jorge Martinez, a spokesman for the Justice Department.
Earlier this year, test runs of the new system using the same fingerprint technology on criminals trying to reenter the United States resulted in more than 70 fingerprint hits per week, leading to the arrest of more than 2,000 felons between January and July.
Despite the preliminary success, counterterrorism specialists are not convinced that the security measures will be particularly effective. They point to porous US borders with Canada and Mexico, which cannot be closely watched without backing up traffic for miles.
''The new rules force a terrorist to become slightly more sophisticated, but given their sophistication already, I don't see it as a major deterrent,'' said Ian Cuthbertson, director of the counterterrorism project at the World Policy Institute.
Cuthbertson warned that the policy could have anything but the intended affect if terrorists become accustomed to working as illegal immigrants in countries like the United States, learning to move freely with time and to utilize inadequately patrolled borders.
''It's a short-term gain and maybe a long-term problem,'' Cuthbertson said.
This story ran on page A3 of the Boston Globe on 8/14/2002.
c Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
[ Send this story to a friend | Easy-print version | Search archives ]
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/226/nation/US_picks_Sept_11_as_launch_date_for_controversial_security_system+.shtml
Search the Globe
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By Bret Ladine, Globe Correspondent, 8/14/2002
ASHINGTON - A new security system that will fingerprint and photograph tens of thousands of foreign visitors upon their entry to the United States will be launched on the anniversary of last year's terrorist attacks, the Justice Department announced Monday.
The program will be implemented by the Immigration and Naturalization Service at undisclosed ports of entry beginning Sept. 11. After a 20-day trial, the system will become operational at all ports of entry on Oct. 1.
Under the program, visitors designated by the Justice Department as a national security concern will be fingerprinted, photographed, and required to register with the INS within 30 days of their entry into the country and every year thereafter. Those subject to the regulations include all citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria, and nonimmigrant visitors determined by the State Department. Anyone refusing to comply will be deported.
''The vulnerabilities of our immigration system became starkly clear on Sept. 11,'' Attorney General John Ashcroft said. ''This system will expand substantially America's scrutiny of those foreign visitors who may present an elevated national security risk and will provide a vital line of defense in the war against terrorism.''
Arab-Americans, civil liberties groups, and immigration lawyers have criticized the National Security Entry-Exit System since it was proposed in June and are even more troubled by the decision to implement the program on Sept. 11. They say the security measures are discriminatory and question their usefulness.
In landmark antiterrorism legislation passed last year, Congress required the Justice Department to develop an entry-exit system to provide greater protection and to assist immigrants in fulfilling legal responsibilities. Federal law has long required immigrants who stay in the United States for more than 30 days to be registered and fingerprinted, but such requirements had been unenforced for decades.
The new system will supplement other changes in immigration rules. Among changes that already have been announced are tighter controls over student visas and shorter periods that visitors can stay in the country before having to apply for a new visa.
Jean AbiNader, managing director of the Arab American Institute, said the security program will result in racial profiling and will overwhelm what she called the FBI's already suspect ability to handle large amounts of information.
''Here we are talking about more databases, and we can't even manage the ones we have now,'' AbiNader said. ''If this system were in place last year, it would not have stopped those guys from doing what they did.''
The timing of the implementation drew a negative reaction from AbiNader and others opposed to the policy, who say the vast majority of visitors to the United States from the Middle East are simply coming to see their relatives.
''It is highly offensive that this is going forward on Sept. 11,'' said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. ''It's discriminatory and will single out people not because of their behavior, but simply because of who they are and that they match up with a certain set of characteristics that we're not going to be told about.''
Those characteristics will be developed using criteria based on patterns of activities by terrorist organizations. The criteria will change as intelligence reports dictate, said Jorge Martinez, a spokesman for the Justice Department.
Earlier this year, test runs of the new system using the same fingerprint technology on criminals trying to reenter the United States resulted in more than 70 fingerprint hits per week, leading to the arrest of more than 2,000 felons between January and July.
Despite the preliminary success, counterterrorism specialists are not convinced that the security measures will be particularly effective. They point to porous US borders with Canada and Mexico, which cannot be closely watched without backing up traffic for miles.
''The new rules force a terrorist to become slightly more sophisticated, but given their sophistication already, I don't see it as a major deterrent,'' said Ian Cuthbertson, director of the counterterrorism project at the World Policy Institute.
Cuthbertson warned that the policy could have anything but the intended affect if terrorists become accustomed to working as illegal immigrants in countries like the United States, learning to move freely with time and to utilize inadequately patrolled borders.
''It's a short-term gain and maybe a long-term problem,'' Cuthbertson said.
This story ran on page A3 of the Boston Globe on 8/14/2002.
c Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.
[ Send this story to a friend | Easy-print version | Search archives ]
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/226/nation/US_picks_Sept_11_as_launch_date_for_controversial_security_system+.shtml
Search the Globe
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Comments
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Congressional Bureau Chief
August 14, 2002
Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - The Justice Department has retooled its website to correct "misinformation" about its Operation TIPS program, but the American Civil Liberties Union called the changes "public relations damage control."
The website no longer contains references to specific occupations that will be asked to volunteer for the program, and now includes two mentions that Operation Tips activities are intended only for "public places."
The Operations TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) site originally included specific details about who would be expected to participate in the program and exactly what kind of "tips" they would be expected to provide authorities.
"Operation TIPS - the Terrorism Information and Prevention System - will be a nationwide program giving millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others a formal way to report suspicious terrorist activity," the site stated, as late as July 16.
The site also proclaimed, "Operation TIPS is coming in August 2002," in boldface type, along with the admonition to "Volunteer now!" That statement was hyperlinked to an online form through which interested citizens could make their interest in participating in the program known and submit their contact information.
But visitors to the site Tuesday found a different message.
"Operation TIPS will be a national system for reporting suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related activity," the site now states. "The program will involve the millions of American workers who, in the daily course of their work, are in a unique position to see potentially unusual or suspicious activity in public places."
The new copy deletes references to specific occupations, refers to "suspicious, and potentially terrorist-related activity" rather than "suspicious terrorist activity," and adds references to the reporting of such activities that occur in "public places."
The site's text is also less definite about the start date for the program, indicating that, "Operation TIPS is scheduled to be launched in late summer or early fall 2002." In addition, the call to "Volunteer now!" has been eliminated.
A Justice Department spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the changes are "an effort to clear up any misinformation or public misperceptions" about Operation TIPS.
"The Department [of Justice] never intended that workers calling the hotline would report on anything other than publicly observable activities," she said.
The spokeswoman also noted that DOJ leaders have heard the concerns of those who feared Operation TIPS could be used to get around the requirement that law enforcement agencies obtain a search warrant before entering private property.
"Given concerns raised during the program development phase about safeguarding against all possibilities of invasion of individual privacy," she added, "the hotline number will not be shared with any workers, including postal and utility workers, whose work puts them in contact with homes and [other] private property."
But Rachel King, an attorney with the ACLU, said officials have merely made a bad program a little less bad.
"The Department of Justice has scaled back its program of government-sanctioned peeping toms, but has done little to fix the underlying problem," she said.
"While it is a relief that utility workers or letter carriers will not be recruited to snoop on private activity in our homes, it is still troubling that armies of truckers, dockworkers and railway personnel - untrained in the demands of our civil liberties - will be enlisted to snoop," King added.
The Justice Department has taken one additional step to discourage overzealous volunteers from violating private property rights.
The original version of the Operation TIPS website said that participants would be given an "information sticker to be affixed to the cab of their vehicle or placed in some other public location so that the toll-free reporting number is readily available." That is no longer the case.
Companies volunteering to participate will be given literature describing the program. How they choose to post or distribute that documentation is entirely up to them, as is whether or not individual employees choose to participate. The number will not be made public.
King said, despite the changes, Operation TIPS still risks turning neighbor against neighbor and potentially generating thousands of "unreasonable and unwarranted charges" against innocent people.
"America should never be a place where citizen is pitted against citizen," she concluded.
Justice Department officials stress that is not their intention for the program. They say Operation TIPS is intended merely to coordinate information received from the public about potential terrorism-related activities, and to see that such information is routed to the appropriate local agency for any necessary investigation.
As CNSNews.com previously reported, the House of Representatives barred the Justice Department from implementing Operation TIPS in the "Homeland Security Act of 2002."
Title VII, Subtitle G, Chapter 97, Section 770 of the Act states:
"Any and all activities of the Federal Government to implement the proposed component program of the Citizen Corps known as Operation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) are hereby prohibited."
The Senate did not vote on its version of the bill prior to the August recess. The legislation is the first item on the agenda when the Senate returns Sept. 3.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=\Nation\archive\200208\NAT20020814a.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878