The CBC has an interesting story that exemplifies a significant problem with the watch lists: It is very easy to get around the lists.

Mario Labbé, an executive with a Montreal-based record company, says his Canadian passport triggers a red alert on the computers of U.S. customs agents every time he tries to board a flight to the U.S. —
which is about once a month for the past seven years. […]

Although Labbé wrote letters to the U.S. department, his efforts were in vain, prompting him to legally change his name.

“So now, my official name is François Mario Labbé,” he said.

“Then you have to change everything: driver’s license, social insurance, medicare, credit card — everything.”

Although it’s not a big change from Mario Labbé, he said it’s been enough to foil the U.S. customs computers.

In the US, there have been other examples of innocent people trying to work around the terrorist watch lists. For example, eight-year-old James Robinson has had numerous problems because he is continuing mismatch to the watch lists. His family has had to make changes in order to get eight-year-old James on to flights.

According to CNN, “Denise Robinson says she tells the skycaps her son is on the list, tips heavily and is given boarding passes. And booking her son as “J. Pierce Robinson” also has let the family bypass the watch list hassle.

The ease with which someone can circumvent the watch lists illustrates the utter futility of identity-based security programs as a whole. Rather than waste time and money, and needlessly sacrifice liberty in the process of conducting this security theater, TSA should concentrate more on its job of preventing weapons and explosives from getting on planes.

The massive U.S. terror watchlists will soon add their one millionth name and the ACLU will mark the day with an event on July 14th at the National Press Club involving innocent individuals who have been wrongly matched to the terrorist watchlists. The ACLU gets the one millionth number from a Department of Justice Inspector general report that said the watchlists included 700,000 names in April 2007 and the lists were growing by 20,000 names per month.

The Transportation Security Administration recently stated on its blog, “While the exact number of ‘no-flys’ is secret, there are many, many less than 500, 000.” The agency did not point to any documentation, merely asking the public to believe its numbers. The agency also did not estimate the number of individuals on the “selectee” list.

The Terrorist Screening Center maintains two terrorist watchlists, the “no fly” and “selectee” lists. Individuals on the “no fly” lists are deemed too dangerous to fly by the U.S. government. Individuals on the “selectee” lists must endure more invasive security screening before they are allowed to fly by the U.S. government. How individual names are added to the list is unknown. The government claims there is a redress process for individuals who are “mistakenly matched” to the watchlists, but it is cumbersome and opaque.

A number of innocent individuals including a nun, Senator Ted Kennedy, and former presidential candidate John Anderson have all been wrongly deemed suspects. Have you been caught in the watchlist web? Tell us your story. E-mail jph AT papersplease DOT org

The New York Times has obtained a report showing that US and European negotiators are nearing an agreement on international sharing of private data.

The United States and the European Union are nearing completion of an agreement allowing law enforcement and security agencies to obtain private information — like credit card transactions, travel histories and Internet browsing habits — about people on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. […]

Negotiators, who have been meeting since February 2007, have largely agreed on draft language for 12 major issues central to a “binding international agreement,” the report said. The pact would make clear that it is lawful for European governments and companies to transfer personal information to the United States, and vice versa.

The negotiators remain at odds on some issues, such as “what rights European citizens will have if the United States government violates data privacy rules or takes an adverse action against them — like denying them entry into the country or placing them on a no-fly list — based on incorrect personal information.”

It is unclear what standards both sides believe would adequately protect individuals’ civil liberties, including free speech and the right to travel.

David Sobel, a senior counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to data-privacy rights, said the administration’s depiction of the process of correcting mishandled data through agency procedures sounds “very rosy,” but the reality is that it is often impossible, even for American citizens, to win such a fight.

The story refers to transfers of data directly from entities in the the EU to the US government, and that’s where most of the attention has focused in recent EU/US disputes.  But in many cases, data is first transferred from the EU to commercial entities in the US (for example, from airline and travel agency offices in the EU to computerized reservation systems in the US) and only later, if at all, accessed by the US government from those US commercial entities.  Those commercial transfers violate EU data protection law, regardless of whether the US government also accesses the data.  It’s unclear form the Times story if the draft agreement would purport to immunize commerical entities engaging in such transfers.

It’s also unclear if the draft “agreement” would take the form of a treaty — ratified by the U.S. Senate, and enforceable in U.S. courts — or whether it would be another nonbinding DHS “undertaking” without legal effect.

The full New York Times story is here.