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Stasi HQ UK... where details of all your journeys are secretly logged
and kept for a decade
By Jason Lewis
21st March 2009
This anonymous office building on a business park near Heathrow Airport
is where the Government has begun monitoring millions of British
holidaymakers using its controversial new 'terrorist detector' database.
The top-secret computer system - tied into the airlines' ticketing
network - makes judgments about travel habits and passengers' friends
and family to decide if they are a security risk.
Like something from a science-fiction film, the Home Office has designed
it to spot a 'criminal' or terrorist before they have done anything
wrong.
Status Park 4
Snoop centre: The 'Status Park 4' building near Heathrow monitors
travellers
The building's address is, some might say sinisterly, called Status Park
4.
But the intrusiveness of the system at the heart of Government's
so-called 'e-Borders' scheme has provoked such fury among civil
liberties campaigners that some consider it akin to a modern-day Stasi
headquarters.
All the information passengers give to travel agents, including home
addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, passport details and the
names of family members, is shared with an unknown number of Government
agencies for 'analysis' and stored for up to ten years.
But even as the 'profiling' system goes live, its reliability is being
called into question.
An internal Home Office document obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveals
that during testing one 'potential suspect' turned out to be an airline
passenger with a spinal injury flying into Britain with his nurse.
'Suspect' requests likely to cause innocent holidaymakers to get 'red
flags' as potential terrorists include ordering a vegetarian meal,
asking for an over-wing seat and travelling with a foreign-born husband
or wife.
The system will also 'red flag' passengers buying a one-way ticket and
making a last-minute reservation and those with a history of booking
tickets and not showing up for the flights.
A previous history of travel to the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan
or Iran will also trigger an alarm, as will those with a record of
sponsoring an immigrant from any of these countries.
Starting during the Easter holiday rush, millions of people will be
checked by the new National Border Targeting Centre (NBTC).
By the end of the year the NBTC, which is recruiting 250 staff, will
have been relocated to another office near Manchester Airport and will
be analysing the movements of 120million UK travellers.
Initially it will target airlines but will be expanded to check
passengers on ferries and trains, including some journeys within the UK.
At the heart of the system is a highly classified computer algorithm
designed to pick out people to be searched, questioned by security staff
or barred from flying.
An internal Home Office Border and Immigration Agency document explains
how Britain's new system will work.
Written by Tim Rymer, head of the Joint Border Operations Centre, the
forerunner to the new NBTC, it explains how it will use 'Passenger Name
Record' (PNR) information given when travellers buy a ticket.
The document, written in March last year after a trial examining
30million passengers, reveals: 'PNR is checked against profiles of
behavioural patterns which indicate risk activity.
Status Park 4 sign
Not welcome: The sign at the entrance to the HQ
'Profiles are run to identify behaviour, not to identify individuals,
and are based on evidence and intelligence.
Mr Rymer revealed that the information secured from the airlines for
e-Borders would then also be available to other unnamed Government
departments and held for up to ten years.
He wrote: 'E-Borders acts as a single window for carriers to provide
data to Government.'
The system is bound to cause concerns about the handling of confidential
personal data.
But Mr Rymer reported that he was 'confident our use of PNR data is
proportionate and complies with robust data-protection safeguards'.
Intending to show how his team double-checked the computerised suspect
reports, Mr Rymer admitted: 'Profiling identified a potential suspect;
however further examination of his booking details revealed that the
passenger was suffering from a spinal injury and was being escorted by a
nurse.
'In this way the PNR information enabled the passenger to be eliminated
from the profile match.'
Others flagged up then eliminated as suspects included travellers with
comments on their bookings including: 'Please treat passenger with
sensitivity - death in the family' or 'Wheelchair requested - broken
leg'.
The system was originally designed to identify suspect freight
shipments.
Until now international no-fly lists have been based on painstaking
intelligence and people's criminal records.
But the Border and Immigration Agency's new 'rule-based targeting'
system works by building up a complete picture of passengers' travel
history and the detailed information they give to airlines and travel
agencies when booking a flight.
It compares these answers and requests to other government databases and
also shares the information with other countries around the world. The
computer then makes value judgments about whether peculiar decisions and
requests fit its secret terrorist or criminal profiles.
In the United States, where the Department of Homeland Security has been
running a similar system for several years, people with a poor driving
record have been subjected to further checks.
The American system has also been criticised for awarding so-called
'terrorism points' to passengers depending on their level of
'suspicious' travel activity.
The Home Office argues the e-Borders system will 'transform our border
control to ensure greater security, effectiveness and efficiency'.
'To do so,' the department says, 'we will make full use of the latest
technology to provide a way of collecting and analysing information on
everyone who travels to or from the United Kingdom.'
But the UK system, and others across Europe that all share their
passenger data, are facing increasing criticism.
The EU's Home Affairs Committee is currently carrying out an inquiry
examining whether the use of profiling, particularly when it focuses on
particular ethnic groups, is illegal.
In searching for terrorists, and flagging people who have travelled to
the Middle East or Pakistan, the system is likely to pick out a high
proportion of Muslims.
In its initial report the EU committee says using this data is against
EU regulations and the practice is leading to a lack of trust in law
enforcement and the fear of discrimination.
It adds that it is 'concerned [the] system providing for the collection
of personal data of passengers travelling to the EU could provide a
basis for profiling...
And the EU report continues: 'Repeated concerns raised by the [European]
Parliament in connection with racial, ethnic and behavioural profiling
in the context of data protection, law-enforcement co-operation,
exchange of data and intelligence, aviation and transport security,
immigration and border management and anti-discrimination measures have
not so far been adequately addressed.'
Sunday, 22 March 2009
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