"[4]Shearson v. Department of Homeland Security In June 2006, Julia Shearson, Executive Director of the Cleveland Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) filed suit pro se against the DHS under the Privacy Act, seeking disclosure of records about herself from ATS and the correction of erroneous records falsely characterizing her as a terrorist.
"That is a radical new step with far-reaching implications – but one that has been taken almost thoughtlessly by expanding a cargo-tracking system to incorporate human beings, and with little public notice, discussion, or debate.
[10]Bruce Schneier, noted security specialist and writer, wrote about ATS: There is something un-American about a government program that uses secret criteria to collect dossiers on innocent people and shares that information with various agencies, all without any oversight.
[11]The Electronic Frontier Foundation expressed their concerns: The Automated Targeting System (ATS) will create and assign "risk assessments" to tens of millions of citizens as they enter and leave the country.
But once the assessment is made, the government will retain the information for 40 years -- as well as make it available to untold numbers of federal, state, local, and foreign agencies in addition to contractors, grantees, consultants, and others.
Among other things, we’ve pointed out that Congress has expressly forbidden the DHS from spending a penny on any system like this to assign risk scores to airline passengers, and that the Privacy Act forbids any Federal agency form collecting information about how we exercise rights protected by the First Amendment — like our right to travel — except as expressly directed by Congress.