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20 December 2011

DHS Discloses Privacy Protection Hides Spying


[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 244 (Tuesday, December 20, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Pages 78934-78935]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-32483]


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DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

Office of the Secretary


Published Privacy Impact Assessments on the Web

AGENCY: Privacy Office, DHS.

ACTION: Notice of Publication of Privacy Impact Assessments (PIA).

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SUMMARY: The Privacy Office of DHS is making available seven PIAs on 
various programs and systems in DHS. These assessments were approved 
and published on the Privacy Office's web site between September 1, 
2011 and November 30, 2011.

DATES: The PIAs will be available on the DHS Web site until February 
21, 2012, after which they may be obtained by contacting the DHS 
Privacy Office (contact information below).

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mary Ellen Callahan, Chief Privacy 
Officer, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC 20528, or 
email: pia@hq.dhs.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Between September 1, 2011 and November 30, 
2011, the Chief Privacy Officer of the DHS approved and published seven 
Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) on the DHS Privacy Office web site, 
www.dhs.gov/privacy, under the link for ``Privacy Impact Assessments.'' 
These PIAs cover seven separate DHS programs. Below is a short summary 
of those programs, indicating the DHS component responsible for the 
system, and the date on which the PIA was approved. Additional 
information can be found on the web site or by contacting the Privacy 
Office.

    System: DHS/FEMA/PIA-018 Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR).
    Component: Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
    Date of approval: September 9, 2011.
    FEMA, a component of DHS, manages a process for SAR. This process, 
assigned to FEMA's Office of the Chief Security Officer, is designed to 
collect, investigate, analyze, and report suspicious activities to the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Joint

[[Page 78935]]

Terrorism Task Force, Federal Protective Service, and/or other federal, 
state, or local law enforcement authorities required to investigate and 
respond to terrorist threats or hazards to homeland security. FEMA is 
conducted this PIA because this SAR process collects, maintains, and 
uses PII.

    System: DHS/NPPD/US-VISIT/PIA-007(a) Biometric Interoperability 
Between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. 
Department of Justice.
    Component: National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) and 
United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-
VISIT).
    Date of approval: September 16, 2011.
    In 2006, the US-VISIT Program of DHS and the Criminal Justice 
Information Services Division of the FBI, Department of Justice (DOJ), 
developed an interoperability project to support the sharing of 
information among DHS, DOJ, and their respective stakeholders. This PIA 
update was conducted to reflect the expansion of DHS-DOJ 
interoperability to include new users and uses not covered. In 
addition, this PIA allows users to access more data in IDENT.

    System: DHS/ICE/PIA-031 Alien Medical Tracking Systems.
    Component: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
    Date of approval: September 26, 2011.
    ICE provides medical care to and maintains medical records about 
aliens that ICE detains for violations of U.S. immigration law. The ICE 
Health Service Corps, a division of ICE's Office of Enforcement and 
Removal Operations, has several information technology systems that are 
used to track information from medical records for aliens in ICE 
custody for various monitoring and reporting purposes. These are the 
Social Services Database, Hospitalization Database, Significant 
Detainee Illness Spreadsheet, Mental Health Coordination Database, 
Epidemiology Database, and Performance Improvement Database. This PIA 
describes the data maintained in these medical tracking systems, the 
purposes for which this information is collected and used, and the 
safeguards ICE has implemented to mitigate privacy and security risks 
to PII stored in these systems.

    System: DHS/ICE/PIA-004(a) ICE Pattern Analysis and Information 
Collection (ICEPIC) Update.
    Component: ICE.
    Date of approval: October 26, 2011.
    ICE has established a system called the ICEPIC system. ICEPIC is a 
toolset that assists ICE law enforcement agents and analysts in 
identifying suspect identities and discovering possible non-obvious 
relationships among individuals and organizations that are indicative 
of violations of the customs and immigration laws as well as possible 
terrorist threats and plots. The PIA for ICEPIC was published in 
January 2008. This PIA Update was completed to provide transparency 
related to the Law Enforcement Information Sharing Service that enables 
law enforcement agencies outside DHS to query certain information 
available through ICEPIC. Additionally, through LEIS DHS law 
enforcement personnel are able to query external law enforcement 
agencies' sensitive but unclassified law enforcement information.

    System: DHS/ICE/PIA-015(c) Enforcement Integrated Database Update.
    Component: ICE.
    Date of approval: November 7, 2011.
    The Enforcement Integrated Database (EID) is a DHS shared common 
database repository for several DHS law enforcement and homeland 
security applications. EID captures and maintains information related 
to the investigation, arrest, booking, detention, and removal of 
persons encountered during immigration and criminal law enforcement 
investigations and operations conducted by ICE, U.S. Customs and Border 
Protection, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, all 
components within DHS. The PIA for EID was published in January 2010. 
In July 2010, a PIA Update for EID was published to address an 
expansion of the information entered into EID and the scope of external 
information sharing. This EID PIA Update addresses planned changes to 
the types of information shared and an added method of sharing.

    System: DHS/S&T/PIA-006 Protected Repository for the Defense of 
Infrastructure Against Cyber Threats (PREDICT).
    Component: Science and Technology.
    Date of approval: November 8, 2011.
    The S&T Directorate's PREDICT system has undergone a PIA 3-Year 
Review. The PIA requires no changes and continues to accurately relate 
to its stated mission. PREDICT is a repository of test datasets of 
Internet traffic data that is made available to approved researchers 
and managed by an outside contractor serving as the PREDICT 
Coordination Center. The goal of PREDICT is to create a national 
research and development resource to bridge the gap between (a) the 
producers of security-relevant network operations data and (b) 
technology developers and evaluators who can use this data to 
accelerate the design, production, and evaluation of next-generation 
cyber security solutions, including commercial products.

    System: DHS/ALL/PIA-013(a) PRISM System Update.
    Component: DHS.
    Date of approval: November 10, 2011.
    DHS Management Directorate, Office of the Chief Procurement Officer 
is the owner of the PRISM contract writing management system. PRISM 
provides comprehensive, Federal Acquisition Regulation-based 
acquisition support for all DHS headquarters entities. The purpose of 
this PIA update is to reflect changes to the collection of information, 
and the addition of a classified PRISM system.

    Dated: December 12, 2011.
Mary Ellen Callahan,
Chief Privacy Officer, Department of Homeland Security.
[FR Doc. 2011-32483 Filed 12-19-11; 8:45 am]
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