U.S. secretly gathers data on travelers

The Chicago Tribune reports:

A government program that secretly collects data on millions of travelers entering and leaving the United States, then assigns them terrorist-risk ratings, has raised concerns about privacy and the possibility of innocent people being mistakenly labeled terror threats.

Another source of alarm for some is that the scores produced by the 4-year-old Automated Targeting System, or ATS, aren't accessible for individual review, and so can't be checked for accuracy the way financial credit scores can be.

Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security says it will keep the information for 40 years, even for people not judged to be risks. And, the department says, the information will be available to other parts of the government, for criminal prosecutions, for instance.

Big Brother is watching you.Isn't it nice that the government just arbitrarily picks 40 years? This is a dry run for nationalized health care.