Opposing a Department of Homeland Security proposal to exempt its new anti-terror database from Privacy Act provisions, a coalition of privacy, consumer rights, and civil rights organizations filed comments on Aug. 5, 2011. The groups argue that the Terror Screening Watchlist Service carries “substantial” risks both to security and privacy, and call for it to be withdrawn. The database will contain individuals’ names, dates and places of birth, biometric and photographic data, passport information, driver’s license information and “other available identifying particulars,” but will not be subject to basic safeguards or review. Read more about it at OMB Watch: Secret Watchlists: Don’t Ask, Because Uncle Sam Won’t Tell

The database is problematic, the statement said, because “secretive government lists without any meaningful safeguards present a very real risk of ‘mission creep,’ in which a system is pressed into unintended or unauthorized uses. Under this proposal, the agency would have the right to maintain and rely upon information it does not know to be accurate, relevant, timely, or complete without recourse.”

Groups signing the comments include the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Privacy Rights Now Coalition.