U.S. Readies Program to Track Visas


Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2003; Page E01

The federal government is about to unveil a blueprint for one of its largest
information technology projects ever, a vast automated system that will
track every foreigner entering the United States with a visa.
The program, which is designed to prevent terrorists and criminals from
obtaining visas, is likely to cost $3 billion to $10 billion, analysts said.
Under the system, U.S. consular officials will fingerprint and photograph
visa applicants in their home countries and check their profiles against
terrorist watch lists and criminal databases. Border agents will
electronically scan travelers' index fingers to make sure their prints match
those on their visa documents. And a massive computer system storing travel
and visa data will automatically alert the government to individuals whose
visas have expired.
The Homeland Security Department plans to release details of the project in
November. Companies will then submit bids to design and build the system.
The department plans to award the contract in May and to begin using the
system to screen foreign visitors at the 50 largest land crossings by 2005,
though experts warn such ambitious projects often take more time than
expected.
The project, called U.S. Visitor and Status Indication Technology, or U.S.
VISIT, has a budget of $380 million this year, and the Homeland Security
Department has asked for $380 million next year for the contract. Lockheed
Martin Corp., Computer Sciences Corp. and Accenture Ltd. each plan to lead a
team of companies bidding on the project.
"I think it's safe to say for non-[Defense Department] programs this is one
of the largest efforts to integrate databases together," said Dick Fogel,
director of strategic initiatives for Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin's
transportation and security solutions unit.
Civil rights advocates warn that a fingerprint system that can access so
much personal data could easily be expanded to target other groups. "This
will inevitably abridge the privacy of Americans, not just foreigners," said
Timothy H. Edgar, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Homeland Security officials counter that the government needs a broad new
system to identify dangerous visitors, and they stressed that there are no
plans to screen American citizens.
Because immigration officials do not now record departures, they have no way
of knowing how many people have overstayed their visas. In the past year
alone, the State Department issued 5 million visas to foreigners for short
visits. The program would plug that information gap by monitoring for the
first time when people leave the country, said Robert A. Mocny, deputy
director of the program.
Skeptics say that collecting information about so many visitors is pointless
unless the government dedicates more money and agents to finding and
deporting foreigners who are a threat to national security. In the past four
years, 400,000 people ordered to leave the country have fled before they
could be deported.
We have a very small number of people who want to kill us in large numbers
and close to half a billion that walk across our shores in any given year,"
said Stephen E. Flynn, a former Coast Guard commander and expert on border
security. With so many resources focused on the border, he said he fears the
rest of transportation security could get lost.
Asa Hutchinson, Homeland Security's undersecretary for border and
transportation security, acknowledged those concerns but said that
intelligence analysts and investigators will review the data generated by
the systems. The department has requested $100 million to hire more analysts
and investigators next year.
"We need to handle the information that is created so we can follow up
leads," Hutchinson said in a phone interview from Brussels, where he was
meeting with European officials on sharing air-passenger information.
Congress first ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to develop
an "entry-exit system" to check in and check out hundreds of millions of
noncitizens in 1996, after learning that terrorists implicated in several
plots, including the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, went undetected
after their visas expired. The program's timeline was postponed in 1998 and
again in 2000, as security fears waned and concerns about reduced tourism
and trade snarled its progress.
The project regained urgency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when
investigators discovered that at least two of the hijackers were in the
country on expired visas. Congress moved up deadlines for including
biometric equipment, such as fingerprint scanners. By law, the Homeland
Security Department is required to fingerprint and photograph all
visaholders passing through airports and seaports by Jan. 1.
Because U.S. VISIT focuses on visaholders, it will screen only one in five
foreign travelers to the United States. Most visitors do not need visas
because they come from 27 countries, mostly in Europe, judged to be a lower
security risk.
The system also cannot spot people who sneak across the border. "The problem
we're fixing may not be the al Qaeda problem," said James A. Lewis, director
of technology policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Groups like al Qaeda could circumvent the system by avoiding legitimate
border crossings or sending in people with clean records.
The system is also complicated by the same obstacles to sharing information
that have hampered other national security efforts. In this case, the
program will have to be able to access information from 19 separate networks
designed to improve border security, such as existing fingerprint databases
and fast passes for workers who commute to the United States from Canada.
The Homeland Security Department is also trying to persuade other
governments to open up their files to make the system more effective. For
example, if Germany does not share its files, American officials may
unknowingly wave through a man Germany considers a security risk. But any
discussions could get tied up in a knot of European privacy concerns,
experts said.
"Information management will be critical to the success of the program,"
said Ben Gianni, vice president of homeland security for Computer Sciences.
He said his company has a lot of experience uniting incompatible systems for
the government.
Industry experts, however, warn that glitches and budget overruns are
inevitable in an undertaking of this scope.
"Expect delays," said Jim Kane, a consultant to federal contractors. He
compares the U.S. VISIT contract to the multibillion-dollar projects that
brought the Internal Revenue Service into the digital age and connected the
Navy and Marine Corps.
The latter project, known as the Navy-Marine Corps intranet, cost $7
billion. Begun in late 2000, the military initially thought the electronic
network would be finished by the end of this year. But it has hit snag after
snag as engineers have discovered that linking and replacing thousands of
older systems was much harder than they thought. The Bush administration has
pointed to the intranet as a model for the technological challenges faced by
the Department of Homeland Security, a hodgepodge of agencies and
responsibilities.
The company building the intranet, Electronic Data Systems Corp., has yet to
make a profit on the network.

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