One of the weapons in controlling terrorism is the monitoring of border points. The United States has wanted data bases from the international community to check the foreign nationals entering the country. This includes travel from its northern neighbour, Canada.

It seems that Canada has concerns about the privacy and security of the shared data base with the United States:

“The federal government is repatriating a database of personal information about Canadian citizens after warnings that the U.S. government might misuse it.

The database with details about several hundred British Columbians was turned over to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency last year as part of a controversial project to issue “enhanced driver’s licences” instead of passports for land border crossings.”

link: Ottawa recalls sensitive database in border project

The United States will have limited access to the data base. It will no longer be unfettered access in that the Canadian officials have possession of the data. It is, however, simple enough to made covert copies of the data. As the security community knows, once electronic data are released, the level of security drops - dramatically.

Catherine Forsythe