The Foreign Service Journal, January 2005

have sparked the same arguments as were advanced for and against the Web itself a number of years ago — or, for that matter, the invention of the printing press centuries ago. While freedom of the press is vastly expand- ed and “everyman” empowered, some worry that with no auditing, editing or fact-checking it will be harder than ever to find the truth. No matter on which side of this debate one finds oneself, the blogging genie is out of the bottle, and is bound to grow in both scope and signifi- cance. Traveler Security Moves Provoke Privacy Fears The US-VISIT program to mod- ernize border procedures and strengthen the immigration system, arguably one of the government’s biggest IT challenges to date, is mov- ing ahead. But when it comes to new security measures for American trav- elers, efforts have met with strong resistance from privacy advocates. Despite a one-year postponement (until October 2005) of the require- ment that the 13 million foreign trav- elers from Visa Waiver Program coun- tries include biometric identifiers in their passports, Customs and Border Protection officials began enforcing the requirement that these travelers present either machine-readable pass- ports or nonimmigrant visas to enter the U.S. in October, albeit with a one- time exemption for those lacking doc- uments. Starting in April, carriers who transport non-compliant travel- ers from 22 VWP countries will be fined. And in November, the Depart- ment of Homeland Security’s pro- gram to collect fingerprints and pho- tos at U.S. borders began at Port Huron, Mich., Laredo, Texas, and Douglas, Ariz. It has been expanded to operate at the 50 busiest crossings by the end of 2004. But in July, the Transportation Security Administration announced that its CAPPS II program to subject every airline passenger to a back- ground check was being delayed indefinitely due to privacy concerns. While less contentious, the State Department’s planned e-passports have also come under fire. Privacy advocates led by the American Civil Liberties Union point out that the new passports will be vul- nerable to “skimming,” a kind of elec- tronic snooping from several feet away by anyone with a radio frequen- cy identification reader. Internal State Department documents, obtained by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act, show that Canada, Germany and Britain have raised the same concern. “This is like putting an invisible bull’s-eye on Americans that can be seen only by the terrorists,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program ( http://www.aclu.org/Privacy/ PrivacyMain.cfm ). T he ACLU wants State to take security precau- tions like encrypting the data. “We are certainly still working hard on the question of whether additional securi- ty measures should be taken,” Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Passport Services Frank E. Moss told the New York Times. In October, four manufacturers were given $373,000 to design pass- ports that would contain chips that stored all the printed data on the pass- port as well as digitized data on the traveler’s face. At an immigration checkpoint, an antenna could read a passport waved several inches away and a digital camera could look at the traveler’s face and compare it with the data from the passport chip. The State Department hopes to begin issuing a limited number of e- passports early in 2005, initially to government employees. New Salvos in Public Diplomacy Debate A report by the Defense Science Board Task Force on Strategic Communication, a Pentagon advisory panel, is the latest contribution to the debate over public diplomacy that has J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 5 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 13 C YBERNOTES I understand the need for greater scrutiny after 9/11. But it has given already cautious bureaucracies a new rule: ‘When in doubt, deny the application.’ Every visa officer today lives in fear that he will let in the next Mohamed Atta. As a result, he is probably keeping out the next Bill Gates. — Fareed Zakaria, www.washingtonpost.com , Nov. 23, 2004.