curiosity killed the…
cat wanderlust.* international man of travel sean o’neill used his free time for something interesting and invoked the freedom of information act (foia) to get a look at his file maintained by the department of homeland security. he shared his findings via newsweek. here are a few some things you may (or may not) want to know:
what’s in your file
- any international trip you’ve taken since at least 2002 (the government mandated that airlines hand over the records in ‘02 but many companies handed it over beginning in the 90s)
- in addition to your name (the traveler), a record includes the name of the person who submitted the information while arranging the trip, and details about how the ticket was purchased
- list of layovers/transfers overseas
- the names of any travel companions
- the ip address (unique identifier) of the computer from which the ticket was ordered
who has access to your file
- commercial airlines
- foreign governments and law enforcement agencies
- local governments and local law enforcement agencies
what do they do with it?
- information in your file is matched via computer with federal departments (treasury, agriculture, and homeland security) and those local departments and can be used to track you down for things other than terrorism.
- if you aren’t involved in an investigation, the records are destroyed after 15 minutes
if you request it, you may not see some of your file cause it’ll be blacked out for security purposes, so say the security people.
this really begins to confirm my theory about why he doesn’t get outside the country much.
* did you know there’s a magazine called wanderlust
image courtesy of dictionary.com
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