US may require European visitors to register online

Europeans who visit the U.S. will be required to fill out an online questionnaire two days before they enter the country under a proposal being studied by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The department has been discussing the idea internally for about a month, said Hugo Teufel III, chief privacy officer for the DHS, in a meeting with journalists in Paris on Thursday. He could not say when the registration system might be introduced.

The proposal will likely increase tensions between the U.S. and Europe at a time when the two sides are already in heated debate over U.S. demands for data about air passengers flying from Europe to the U.S.

The U.S. says it needs access to more data to prevent suspected terrorists from entering the country, while European regulators counter that the demands are excessive and worry how the data will be used.

The online registration would complement the Automated Targeting System, or ATS, a program disclosed by the DHS in November that assigns a "risk assessment" to people entering and leaving the U.S., to determine the likelihood that they pose a security threat.

The registration system would likely require approval by the U.S. Congress before it could be introduced, Teufel said. "It's a fairly new initiative in that we've been discussing it internally for about a month," he added.

He offered few other details Thursday, but Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff discussed the proposal earlier this week in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel. Chertoff said the U.S. wanted to "elevate the security level generally" for foreign visitors, particularly in light of its looser visa requirements for some countries.

The online registration "would be similar to what they do in Australia where visa waiver travelers would register online in advance, and they would, therefore, know before they arrive in the United States whether there was going to be a problem with their being admitted," Chertoff told the newspaper. "The registration would have a shelf life of some years. It wouldn't be something you do every trip, you would do it periodically," he added.

The DHS will prepare a "privacy impact assessment" on the registration plan, Teufel said Thursday. Such assessments cover issues like how data is used, who can access it and for how long it will be retained.

Teufel suggested that the assessment report would be made available to the public, although U.S. law makes exceptions for reports about systems used by the intelligence community, he said.

Teufel was appointed by Chertoff in July last year and is responsible for the DHS's privacy policies.