The United States has used computers to secretly generate terror risk rankings for all American and foreign travelers who have crossed US borders for the past four years. The Associated Press reports that these ratings are supposed to help tell the government if a traveler is a potential terrorist or criminal. The government intends to keep the ratings on file for 40 years, and travelers are not allowed to see or challenge whatever rating they have been given.

Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department's Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

The use of the program on travelers was quietly disclosed earlier this month when the department put a notice detailing ATS in the Federal Register, a fine-print compendium of federal rules. The few civil liberties lawyers who had heard of ATS and even some law enforcement officers said they had thought it was only used to screen cargo.

The government calls the program "critical to national security" and "one of the most advanced targeting systems in the world." Privacy advocates, on the other hand, call it "probably the most invasive system the government has yet deployed in terms of the number of people affected." They say some people will be denied the right to travel while many will be denied "the right to travel free of unwarranted interference."

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A similar data-mining system for domestic air travellers, known as SecureFlight, was barred by Congress two years ago until it could pass 10 tests for accuracy and privacy protection.

USA Today reports that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will start using a new X-ray screening machine that will see through people's clothes. TSA says it will improve searches for potential hidden weapons, but the American Civil Liberties Union has said it amounts to a "virtual strip search."

"It's time to get them out and get feedback from [screeners] and the traveling public," said Randy Null, TSA assistant administrator. The TSA has been considering the machines since 2002 while struggling with privacy issues.

Null said the TSA is now "very comfortable" with privacy protections manufacturers have built into the machines, which scatter low-intensity X-rays to peer under clothing for hidden items.

Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU's technology and liberty program, said operating the backscatter machines at airports will pave the way for widespread use - and abuse. "As this technology becomes commonplace, you're going to start seeing those images all over the Internet," Steinhardt said. "These images are going to have high commercial value."

Richard Mastronardi, the vice-president of the company that makes the machine (American Science and Engineering of Massachusetts) says the machines will be set to show only blurred images of a human body, but at a level the TSA believes will still detect hidden explosives. He said the blurred image does "trade off detection for a level of privacy." The first machine will be tested in Phoenix, and only on passengers who require an extra level of screening. Those passengers will be offered the choice of a customary pat-down or to step in front of the machine. The NSA says the machine might replace regular screening machines if the prove to be fast enough.

The New York Times reported earlier this week that it is likely that President Bush will "dig in" when it comes to the investigation by the new Democratic-controlled Congress of any of his national security programs.

Vice President Dick Cheney has vowed to rebuild executive power lost since Watergate and is unlikely to drop that effort - in the form of greater Congressional consultation on secret national security issues - because of one lost election.

If anything, Democrats have taken Mr. Bush's first moves since this month's election as more provocative than conciliatory. He plans to use the lame-duck Republican Congress to push domestic wiretapping legislation that Democrats overwhelmingly oppose..."

Reuters reports that Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Republican Senator Arlen Spectre of Penn. said the Bush administration "is unlikely to allow the incoming Democratic majority in Congress to learn details about its domestic spying program and interrogation policy."

"I look forward to what will happen next year on that subject. I have grave reservations as to how successful we will be here, given the administration's unwillingness to share those secrets," he said.

[Sen. Spectre] said the White House was also unlikely to divulge details about its treatment of detainees to the Democratic-controlled Senate intelligence and armed services panels, despite lingering concerns among lawmakers that US interrogations could still violate torture protections.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Spectre also said that while we want to do what we can to stop Al Qaeda, that does not mean the "president has a blank check."

Specter described the National Security Agency's electronic-surveillance program to intercept the phone calls of suspected terrorists as "the quintessential challenge between security and privacy."

He charged that the NSA's warrantless wiretaps violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, acknowledging that the courts have yet to rule on whether the president has the constitutional power to conduct such a program without informing Congress' intelligence committees about it.

• US warns of possible cyber biz attack (Forbes)
• 'Neocons' abandon Iraq war at White House front door (USA Today)
• Canada and US grow apart (Harvard Gazette)
• Lucent-Alcatel deal includes US national security safeguards (NorthJersey.com
• FCC sets up Homeland Security Bureau (eHam.net

Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan.