News Is DHS Admitting to Illegal Activity for National Security?

[Rach3]

Who cares? It's for your own protection. Stop reading this thread, you spineless terrorist-supporters!

Go away.

 

[Rach3]

Specifically, DHS-TSA has been using customer information from commercial sources in secret, without reporting the usage as required by federal law.

WASHINGTON - The Homeland Security Department admitted Friday it violated the Privacy Act two years ago by obtaining more commercial data about U.S. airline passengers than it had announced it would.
...
Instead, the privacy office said, "TSA announced one testing program, but conducted an entirely different one." In a 40-word, separate sentence, the report noted that federal programs that collect personal data that can identify Americans "are required to be announced in Privacy Act system notices and privacy impact assessments."

TSA spokesman Christopher White noted the GAO's earlier conclusions and said, "TSA has already implemented or is in the process of implementing each of the DHS privacy office recommendations."

But the contractor, EagleForce, used data obtained from commercial data collection companies Acxiom, Insight America and Qsent to fill in missing information in the passenger records and then sent the enhanced records back to TSA on CDs for comparison with watch lists.

This was "contrary to the express statements in the fall privacy notices about the Secure Flight program," Homeland Security's privacy office concluded. "EagleForce's access to the commercial data amounted to access of the data by TSA."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061222/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/secure_flight_privacy

 

[Rach3]

Gokul, your link is to exactly the same Associated Press article as mine.

 

[Gokul43201]

Gokul, your link is to exactly the same Associated Press article as mine.

Yeah, noticed that and pulled it. When I was posting there was only the OP, with no context.