ABSTRACT
The strategy of “smart borders” presented by the White House in 2002 assumed that “[t]he border of the future must integrate actions abroad to screen goods and people prior to their arrival in sovereign U.S. territory” (White House 2002). To that aim, the advanced technology was applied “to track the movement of cargo and the entry and exit of individuals, conveyances, and vehicles” (ibid.). The implementation of this policy was pursued in several ways, including the expansion of the US-VISIT program to new areas, or, most recently, through the establishment of the Electronic System of Travel Authorization (ESTA). The US-VISIT program, conceived in 1996 as a tool to help identify visa overstayers, was relaunched after the terrorist attacks of 2001 to include travelers’ biometric information, with the objective of checking them against a watch list of known criminals and suspected terrorists. The use of passenger name record (PNR) information was meant to further improve this capacity and to help identify connections between travelers on the same flight who might belong to the same terrorist group. Similarly, the ESTA system is a new pre-travel authorization program for travelers from visa waiver countries. Submitted information is checked against several law enforcement databases before a person’s departure. The purpose of this new tool is to mitigate security risks associated with the travel of persons who are nationals of visa waiver countries.
