The U.S. State Department recently released a new set of guidelines for foreign nationals seeking to travel to the U.S., requiring their countries of origin to provide additional data and information. The Cipher Brief spoke with Todd Rosenblum, former Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense about these new reguations as well as how U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel ban has affected the United States’ global image.
The Cipher Brief: How unusual is it to require traveler biometric and biographical data from all countries worldwide? How likely do you think it is that these countries will comply with this order?
Todd Rosenblum: The requests in the State Department guidance are not unusual and strike me as largely legitimate. It is reasonable for nations to have robust protocols for reporting lost and stolen passports to INTERPOL, active plans for electronic passports with biometric markings, and for them to share data about prospective travelers’ links to terrorism.
Not all criminal data is pertinent to national security, and I suspect the request to share non-terror related criminal data on prospective travelers will be more problematic. Most nations retain information on prior arrests and warrants even if they are later dismissed for lacking merit or if they pertain purely to civil matters. It is not clear if the guidance is meant to capture this in data sharing rules. Presumably, and hopefully, the answer is no.
Regardless, I concur with those that believe there may be an unfair backlash abroad against this specific guidance because of the Administration’s poor international standing and prejudicial ban targeting people of the Islamic faith.
TCB: How does this, in your view, address the terrorist threat? Does this strike you as “extreme vetting” – and if so, is it likely to be effective?
Rosenblum: These specific measures will strengthen international counterterrorism threat identification and prevention. More reliable, pertinent data improves artificial intelligence and data correlation machines’ ability to detect the anomalies and non-obvious relationships vital to law enforcement and intelligence. It also helps the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State refine their methodologies for identifying threats.
I have never liked the term “extreme vetting.” It is a political phrase that implies tilting the balance among law enforcement, national vitality, privacy, and civil liberties radically in one direction. Radical tilting is never sustainable and invites backlash at home and abroad. Our security does not exist in a vacuum. It relies on cooperation from international partners and local communities, and we must keep this in balance. Reasonable data sharing is sustainable.
I also do not like the term “extreme vetting” because it implies, by broad brush, that current efforts are too soft toward traveler categories of particular concern. Our vetting efforts need to be smart, targeted, and sustainable if we are to best ensure economic vibrancy and national security. They can always be improved and modified to circumstance and new forms of information, but it is a disservice to those in the field to imply that they are soft on keeping bad actors out of the country.
Of course, a darker interpretation of the term is that it is a ruse for banning certain categories of people because of their faith. No vetting will ever be one hundred percent foolproof, so if the term is meant to mean that we will only allow people of a certain faith into the country if we are one hundred percent confident of their bona fides, then we are moving in that darker direction.
TCB: Does this order complement or even expand on the Trump Administration’s travel ban that recently went into effect?
Rosenblum: The new State Department guidance seems reasonable and well thought out. It does not appear to be linked or related to the pernicious and poorly conceived travel ban. Indeed, strengthening global risk-based vetting and making data sharing more resilient and reliable is exactly the way we should be going.
The new guidance has the feel of a planned, debated, and consensus effort that involved the entire U.S. interagency, from FBI to State, DHS, the Intelligence Community, Commerce, HHS and DoD. There are so many equities and stakeholders involved in effective traveler security that all players need to be at the table and part of the debate. It appears that this is the case with the new guidance.
TCB: How does the travel ban fit into the Trump Administration’s larger Counterterrorism strategy?
Rosenblum: The travel ban fits into the broadly dark world view of the Trump White House that people of a particular faith are inherently a danger to American security. Of course, we must impose robust screening of all travelers to our country, and five of the six nations in the ban have weak central governments. But they are far from the only nations with weak central governments and terror concerns. Travelers from ungoverned space is a vexing challenge for those charged with evaluating the bona fides of their documentation. This is a global challenge.
The President’s most pronounced change in counterterror policy was in breaking with Presidents Bush and Obama by shifting rhetorically in describing the threat. In practice, not much has changed. The Trump Administration’s counterterrorism policy in practice rightly emphasizes denial of safe havens, proactive targeting of known terrorists, nurturing an international coalition to fight kinetically and share information about threats, and giving law enforcement and the intelligence community as many tools as is reasonably possible to detect and mitigate threats.
TCB: How can the U.S. measure the effects of the travel ban? Will it be the case of the dog that didn’t bark?
Rosenblum: The travel ban was an initiative in search of a counterterrorism rationale. The ban essentially remains a plot to ban Muslims from traveling to the United States. The ban does not address where terrorists have hit the homeland or the threat posed by radicalization. t has been used in ISIS and al Qaeda propaganda. It has made Muslims in the United States feel less secure and supported by their government. We must have trust and cooperation between local communities and law enforcement, and the ban works against this trust. Nothing is more insulting to a person’s dignity than being typecast exclusively because of their race, creed, or color. The ban worsens this insult.
