No Fly, No Ride, No Walk

Ran across this story yesterday at Majikthise, and then this morning at The Agonist.

Here's the quote Lindsay Beyerstein posted at Majikthise:

The federal government disclosed details yesterday of a border-security program to screen all people who enter and leave the United States, create a terrorism risk profile of each individual and retain that information for up to 40 years.

The details, released in a notice published yesterday in the Federal Register, open a new window on the government's broad and often controversial data-collection effort directed at American and foreign travelers, which was implemented after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

While long known to scrutinize air travelers, the Department of Homeland Security is seeking to apply new technology to perform similar checks on people who enter or leave the country "by automobile or on foot," the notice said.

I honestly thought it was from The Onion until I clicked the link. Can you say "George Orwell"?

Here's the punch-line, from Sean-Paul Kelley at The Agonist:

According to yesterday's notice, the program is exempt from certain requirements of the Privacy Act of 1974 that allow, for instance, people to access records to determine "if the system contains a record pertaining to a particular individual" and "for the purpose of contesting the content of the record."

If I really need to point out the ramifications here, you're living in the wrong country.