There are 3 reports from the U.S. that should give us all cause for concern, both sides of the Atlantic.

Reported in The Washington Post is that the Department of Justice is building a national Database code named DOJOne, and is moving towards the same kind of electronic surveillance of its population that we are seeing in Britain.

The system already holds approximately 1 million case records and is projected to triple in size over the next three years, Justice officials said. The files include investigative reports, criminal-history information, details of offences, and the names, addresses and other information of criminal suspects or targets, officials said.

Access would be available to state and local police officers around the country to search millions of case files from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal law enforcement agencies, according to Justice officials.

But civil-liberties and privacy advocates -- many of whom are already alarmed by the proliferation of federal databases -- warn that granting broad access to such a system is almost certain to invite abuse and lead to police mistakes.

To make matters worse, the FBI announced that it would no longer meet the Privacy Act's accuracy requirements for the National Crime Information Center, its main criminal-background-check database, which is used by 80,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.

Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the main problem is one of "garbage in, garbage out," because case files frequently include erroneous or unproved allegations.

It is worth noting though that the plans for sharing case files are far less intrusive, and far less of a danger than many of the database schemes currently being proposed or implemented by the British government, which typically involve sharing information related to the entire population across government departments, without regard to innocence. Unlike Britain, the DOJ files are at least limited to those who have been investigated for crime.

Until, we look at the second of the massive databases being developed in the USA.  Under the aegis of the Real ID Act, the new database brings together all of the data currently stored in the various departments of state, on the whole population. 

It ignores the greater privacy implications. One is that the states will have to collect a much greater array of information from individuals than they currently do. Another is that they're required to maintain it both electronically (that should make your skin crawl) and in hardcopy.

Yet another is that they'll be forced to communicate with a number of other databases (leaking personal information) every time you need to interact with a card-issuing agency.

It requires that citizens carry around a large chunk of machine-readable information on the identification card, and what's worse, makes no limitation on who can read that information and how it can be used.

And finally, the Act requires that the states open up their databases to all of the other states.

Enrolling in the Real ID system saps a big chunk of privacy away.

Unfortunately, it adds no privacy protections (it even took some away.)

The guy who can walk around with papers with my personal information isn't prevented from doing so with Real ID in place.

There are no added limitations on the use of social security numbers, or of sensitive transactions, or the release of personal records. There's no protection of state records release laws under Real ID, and it seems probable that any state in the Union could decide to start selling the records of any other state.

Finally, the illegal government database, originally called "Total Information Awareness.",

When this programme was halted by Congress, the Department of Homeland Security simply renamed it CAPPS II and started again. 

When the programme was shot down by Congress a second time, not to be outdone, Homeland security renamed it yet again as ‘Secure Flight’ and ran the programme again illegally.

Under a filing in the Federal Register that popped up in November, it has been discovered that not only did they rename the programme for a 4^th time, now calling it Automated Targeting System, or ATS, but the federal government has been secretly collecting information on both Foreign and U.S. citizens who have travelled in and out of the country -- for the last four years. 

It may be worth noting that this is the programme that the EU, including Britain has to comply with in providing the US with passenger information.

Retired Adm. John M. Poindexter who was responsible for the original database, maintains that TIA hasn't really gone away; it's just gone undercover.

Want to see whether you have been profiled.  Sorry, but not allowed.  

According to the Associated Press, in the Federal Register, the department exempted ATS from many provisions of the Privacy Act designed to protect people from secret, possibly inaccurate government dossiers. As a result, it said travellers cannot learn whether the system has assessed them. Nor can they see the records "for the purpose of contesting the content."

We wonder how long it will be before the ID Card scheme in the UK is hooked up to the U.S. databases.