The Data Liberation Project — Automated Targeting System Documentation

The Automated Targeting System is a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “decision support tool that compares traveler, cargo, and conveyance information against law enforcement, intelligence, and other enforcement data using risk-based scenarios and assessments.” It stores a wide range of records on people and cargo, collected directly as well as copied from other government data systems. (For more details, see CBP’s 2017 Privacy Impact Assessment update.)

Among those records are data that CBP extracts from individuals’ electronic devices — the subject of a recent letter from Sen. Ron Wyden to the agency, as well as coverage in the Washington Post.

Our FOIA request 📄 seeks all records that document the ATS, such as database diagrams and user guides. Such records are essential to (a) providing the public with a clearer and more specific understanding of the types of information DHS/CBP may hold about them, and (b) enabling the public to construct productive, efficient FOIA requests for particular slices of non-exempt database material in the future.

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Updates

Appeal Denied • On September 11, 2024, CBP rejected our appeal. The FOIA Appeals & Policy Branch affirmed that the FOIA Division properly understood our request and denied it as overburdensome. They added that, in any case, the records “would likely be withheld pursuant to FOIA exemption (b)(7)(E), because release of such information would cause harm to the agency by exposing to the public how ATS is designed and operated.”
Denial Appealed • On May 16, 2024, the Data Liberation Project submitted an appeal of CBP’s denial 📄, arguing that CBP misinterpreted the scope of the request and did not give the DLP an opportunity to discuss and/or narrow it.
Request Denied • On February 20, 2024, CBP sent an email denying our request 📄, arguing that “we have determined that your request is too broad in scope and it is being closed as overburdensome on the agency as it is estimated that pulling the data will take one full-time person over four years and will cause interruptions to normal operations.”
Request Acknowledged • On December 20, 2022, CBP sent an email acknowledging our request 📄.