The program lets you come in to the country on a fast path when you're a low-risk traveler. For that to work you need constant evidence of being a low-risk traveler.
They're not standing outside your home to see if you're smoking weed. They're scanning DBs to see if you've gone from low-risk person to "currently being investigated".
A friend lost her GE recently and the only link I can think of is that a relative of hers was being investigated for visa fraud.
I have all of Global Entry, TSA Pre, and Clear and it's obviously a voluntary choice between convenience and privacy. The last of them has face and eye scans and fingerprints and the rest of them have my photo and fingerprints and consent to do whatever.
I wouldn't consider searching through PACER "spying".
This seems like what I would have expected.
Germany has an opt-in policy for these programs: I would have to go to the Bundespolizei (federal police) at an Airport to declare that I am fine with regular data transfer of my police records. Only afterwards can I join these programs. Sorta double opt-in: opt-in in Germany, opt-in in the US.
So I am surprised this is news as it is exactly what I am told the program is doing. It's also not like this is a search on social media and alike (something that could also happen and would be a huge privacy breach).
Is the main issue here not the US but that other countries share this without better explanation / opt-in controls? And to be fair I hate that I would have to go to an Airport to kick this off. It's horrible UX but good privacy defaults.
Being featured by Newsweek under new hollowing ownership has become a much lower bar since the era when Paul Simon name-checked it
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JVdlpZ4M-Hw&pp=ygUXcGF1bCBzaW1...
Sounds pretty reasonable. These people voluntarily signed up for more scrutiny in exchange simplified screenings at the airport. Monitoring law enforcement databases daily to see if they are still eligible seems like something that they should be doing.
I really don’t think this is unreasonable given the tradeoff at the border.
This dovetails beautifully with today's parallel thread on automakers collecting and selling personal information from their customers (and customers' passengers).
Doing their job.
Saving you a click: the government has a cron job that runs once each night checking for new entries in law enforcement databases across the US.
Wouldn't we be concerned if a trusted traveller program didn't do this?