Report - Guardian

90 The LSE Identity Project Report: June 2005treaties or regulations and assisting other Federal agencies to protectnational security and carry out other Federal missions.” 235This information will then be shared with other government departments and used inother programs of surveillance. 236 The US Government has already made visainformation available to law enforcement officials across the country, includingphotographs of 20 million visa applicants. This ‘sensitive’ information will be sharedwith 100,000 investigators across the country, and they will have access to seventerabytes of data on foreigners. 237The Government Accountability Office, the US equivalent to the National Audit Office,assessed US-VISIT in March 2004 and declared that it is:“inherently risky because it is to perform a critical, multifacetedmission, its scope is large and complex, it must meet a demandingimplementation schedule, and its potential cost is enormous.”Pointing to other data collection and mining initiatives, the GAO warned that the projectis “increasingly risky”.The project is also quite costly, particularly as it grows larger and more complex. TheUS Government has commissioned a $15 billion contract to fully develop VISIT into asystem that creates detailed dossiers on all visitors to the US (even though DHS hadoriginally budgeted $7.2 billion) 238 . The system is likely to include other biometrics inthe future; according to the contract winner, Accenture:“Part of our approach is to continually assess technology innovations.For a 10-year contract that's a generation or two of technology, andbiometrics is a very hot area.” 239In its Privacy Impact Assessment, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hascontended that VISIT actually protects the privacy of foreigners. When VISIT was firstput into operation, however, there were no rights of redress for individuals who facedany sort of adverse consequences. 240 Following a review by the GAO (and some outcryby legal and civil rights advocates) there is now a limited appeal process, including ahuman review of the fingerprint matching process, and provision for some correction offaulty information.A further assessment by the GAO was carried out in February 2005 241 . This found that asecurity risk assessment has not yet taken place, and that the privacy impact assessmentwas lacking. The problems arose particularly because VISIT is made up of various pre-235 Ibid.236 Ibid.237 Lee, Jennifer 8. 2003. State Department Link Will Open Visa Database to Police Officers. The New York Times,January 31.238 GAO. 2004. Data Mining: Federal Efforts Cover a Wide Range of uses, GAO-04-548, May.239 Lichtblau, Eric, and John Markoff. 2004. Accenture Is Awarded US Contract for Borders. The New York Times,June 2.240 CDT. 2004. Comments Of The Center For Democracy And Technology on US-VISIT Program, Increment 1,Privacy Impact Assessment, Center for Democracy and Technology. February 4.241 GAO. 2005. Homeland Security: Some Progress Made, but Many Challenges Remain on US Visitor andImmigrant Status Indicator Technology Program, GAO-05-202, February