SAN FRANCISCO--The head of Interpol believes terrorists and other
criminals are traveling freely around the globe in ways that police
agencies find difficult to track, but he says he knows how to cripple
their movements.
Interpol
Secretary General Ronald Noble on Wednesday suggested two solutions:
first, airlines should forward passenger data on international flights
to Interpol; and second, nations that arrest foreign visitors should
share those fingerprints with the international police agency as well.
Noble,
who is meeting on Thursday with American Airlines to discuss the
proposal as a pilot project, said linking databases can help detect
people flying on passports reported as lost or stolen. Ramzi Yousef,
who was convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, entered the United States carrying a stolen Iraqi passport.
"The goal is to test something, to pilot something, to have all
airlines participate in it," Noble said in an interview at CNET
News.com's headquarters here. "We're a global organization, but it's a
question of who's going to (pay for it) and go first."
Eventually, he envisions expanding the database to
encompass other forms of travel, including trains, ocean liners and
cruise ships. "It could be needed for any international travel
requiring a passport where reservations are made," said Noble, a former
New York University law professor and Clinton administration official
in the U.S. Treasury Department.
The pilot
project would gather only passport numbers and the country that issued
the passport, and not individual names or other details. (American
Airlines did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.)
The federal government has worried about fraudulent
travel documents in the hands of terrorists, especially when those
passports are issued by countries whose citizens can enter the United
States without a visa. In May, the Department of Homeland Security
announced it would begin using Interpol's database of 7 million lost or
stolen passports to screen foreign travelers. The U.S. began reporting
its own lost or stolen passports to Interpol in 2004.
Airlines on U.S.-bound flights originating abroad
already submit what's known as Advance Passenger Information System
data--including names and passport numbers--to Homeland Security before
the flight lands. Federal agents compare that information with data in
a Treasury Department computer system
that includes wanted persons, violent felons, suspected terrorists and
international fugitives. Agents can mark passengers for more intensive
screening that takes place when they go through immigration.
But there is no centralized international database of
passports used in travel, which Noble said could eventually be expanded
to track fugitives and people such as sex offenders who may be barred
from traveling to certain countries known for sex tourism as part of
their probation. "I believe that a country has a right to know where
its passport goes," he said. "Wherever a country wants to track the
passport, as long as its laws allow it, and it doesn't violate
(Interpol's) constitution, we're prepared to support it."
Important details of any pilot project remain murky, including privacy
concerns and the question of which nations could access the central
repository of passport data. Noble did suggest that the numbers would
be accessible only to the nation that issued the passport in the first
place--meaning the United States could track its own citizens but not,
say, Iranians.
Privacy advocates said they wanted more details about
a pilot project, but expressed concern that data-sharing with Interpol
could bypass U.S. privacy laws.
"If DHS held this data, it would be subject to Privacy
Act safeguards," such as notice to the public, the right to access, and
the right to correct misinformation, said Marcia Hofmann, an Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney who has filed a lawsuit against Homeland Security to obtain information about a passenger profiling system.
"But if it's Interpol," Hofmann said, "that's an international organization and it's not subject to the same Privacy Act obligations that a United States agency would be."
Interpol is not alone: a few days after failed car bomb attacks in
London and in Glasgow, Franco Frattini, the European Union's justice
commissioner, announced plans for more aggressive data collection on
air travelers. Frattini said last week
that he was drawing up a plan that would let member nations collect and
share data from air passengers in much the same way as the United
States already does through what are called Passenger Name Records. (A U.S.-European Union dispute over the use of those records was recently resolved.)
Global DNA, fingerprint databases?
In the interview on Wednesday, Noble also outlined his plans for
national police forces to share more fingerprint and DNA data with
Interpol.
"All non-nationals that are arrested should have their
fingerprints sent to Interpol and run against its database," Noble
said. That rule would include tourists, H-1B visa holders and even
permanent residents with green cards who are arrested.
When asked whether U.S. citizens who are arrested
should be included as well, Noble replied: "The data would overwhelm
Interpol, and from a political perspective, the likelihood that a
country would accept sending the criminal information of a U.S. citizen
to Interpol, I'm not sure if that's politically viable or even
advisable."
In the U.S., the FBI's Combined DNA Index System
includes more than 4.7 million DNA profiles, including 178,000 that
were taken from crime scenes. Nearly all of the rest comes from
convicted criminals.
A 2000 federal law called the DNA Analysis Backlog Elimination Act
requires that DNA samples be taken from anyone convicted of or on
probation for certain serious crimes. This was challenged in court on
Fourth and Fifth Amendment grounds, but a federal appeals court upheld (PDF) the DNA collection requirement as constitutional.
A DNA-sharing network linking all G8 nations--meaning Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United
States--was activated last week, Noble said. It already includes about
65,000 to 70,000 DNA profiles, mostly from crime scenes, and nations
can send DNA samples with or without names attached, he said.
In addition, Noble said, nations should work through
Interpol to create "a global database of convicted terrorists." He has
also recently criticized Britain for failing to check immigrants against Interpol's list of suspected terrorists, and said in an open letter
that "no country should take the risk of allowing travelers to cross
its borders without having their passports checked" against Interpol's
files.
