Be careful when exiting the country

Dropping into my inbox this morning – a Home Office press release proudly announcing:

The UK's latest weapon in the fight against terrorists, known criminals and would-be illegal migrants was opened today by the Home Secretary Alan Johnson.

The National Border Targeting Centre (NBTC) is the UK Border Agency's hi-tech hub where watch-list checks on passengers entering and leaving Britain will be carried out.

The unit, based in Manchester, will replace the smaller Joint Border Operations Centre (JBOC) at Heathrow as the operational hub for e-Borders, which electronically checks passenger data before they even set foot on a plane.

As the release explains, the NBTC used to be housed at Heathrow in a building bearing the suspiciously Orwellian title 'Status Park 4'. From there it used a 'terrorist detector' database which – tied into the airlines' ticketing network – made judgments about travel habits and passengers' friends and family to decide if they were a security risk.

As a Mail on Sunday article from last year found, as well as being intrusive the system is beset by flaws and inconsistencies:

All the information passengers give to travel agents, including home addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, passport details and the names of family members, is shared with an unknown number of Government agencies for 'analysis' and stored for up to ten years.

An internal Home Office document obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveals that during testing one 'potential suspect' turned out to be an airline passenger with a spinal injury flying into Britain with his nurse.

'Suspect' requests likely to cause innocent holidaymakers to get 'red flags' as potential terrorists include ordering a vegetarian meal, asking for an over-wing seat and travelling with a foreign-born husband or wife.

The system will also 'red flag' passengers buying a one-way ticket and making a last-minute reservation and those with a history of booking tickets and not showing up for the flights.

A previous history of travel to the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iran will also trigger an alarm, as will those with a record of sponsoring an immigrant from any of these countries.

While there does need to be careful monitoring of the people travelling in and out of the country, this system is based on building a very intrusive picture of a passengers' travel history and the information they give to
airlines and travel agencies when booking a flight. It is then logged on a government database and held for a decade.

The e-Borders scheme represents a very real threat to our freedom of movement. As journalist Alan Pearce wrote in a post for this site last year, there are already plans to force us to apply for an 'Exit Visa' before leaving the country.

By Dylan Sharpe