Dashboard

By Brian Bennett

Washington Memo Several State Department workers and contractors stirred national controversy by snooping through the confidential passport records of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama. But beyond those high-profile intrusions is a much larger government push to make everyone's passport data more readily accessible to a host of federal agencies. The same database that the prying workers peered into is being opened up to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service and other federal bureaucracies. The stated aim: To tap into the records "for counterterrorism and other purposes such as border security and fraud prevention."

DHS is pushing State to integrate the passport database with a DHS program called E-Verify. The Web-based program is now mandatory for companies in several states and voluntary everywhere else. It helps some 52,000 employers make sure that workers are in the country legally (even though it has a 10% error rate for foreign-born U.S. citizens). Linking E-Verify to the passport records--especially passport photos--"will help reduce data mismatches," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke says, and help ensure that employees are who they say they are.

But will data-sharing lead to data-snooping? DHS found that employers were improperly using the tool to screen employees before they were hired, which could lead to discrimination. And identity thieves could pose as an employer to confirm that stolen Social Security numbers will pass the system. At the moment, says a DHS-commissioned study, the safeguards in place do not prevent these misuses. "It's another stitching together of the national identity infrastructure," says Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute. "We have to worry about the privacy consequences for average Americans." Not just presidential candidates.