Comment Submitted by Charles Leocha

This exemption from the privacy laws should not be allowed to go through. American citizens inadvertently caught in this information net will have no way to purge the records or protect their good name. If U.S. citizens find themselves harassed at border crossings for no apparent reason, they will be unable to learn whether information stored in the ADIS system might be the cause of their problems -- much less whether that information was gathered by our government or received from foreign "intelligence agencies." This is frightening. DHS is in fact proposing a secret database of unrestricted personal information closed to the prying eyes of the public -- a system just like those employed by the Soviet KGB, the Nazi Gestapo and the East German Stasi. This is a development that all Americans should abhor. I know that these provisions are theoretically directed only at foreigners, but if citizens cannot find out whether their name and personal information is included on these lists because the information is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, how will anyone ever know? And what about those immigrants who become citizens within the 75-year span of the information-retention rule? According to these rulemaking notices, the newly minted U.S. citizen's information will remain in this secret database. Hold on a minute. What if your personal information gets lumped in with that of some foreign nationals (who, in most cases, are innocent, upstanding citizens of their countries and are suspected of nothing -- a whole other issue)? What if there is a data-entry mistake? What if your name matches someone else's? What if someone in DHS simply has a grudge against you? You will find yourself with no place to turn for the next 75 years because the Freedom of Information Act suddenly doesn't apply. Collecting and sharing information to enforce our immigration laws, secure our borders and protect us from terrorist attacks is justifiable and the proper role of the federal government. However, hiding that information and restricting U.S. citizens' access to it is something that we expect to read about in an Orwell novel, not the Federal Register! This is starting to sound very un-American to me. Charles Leocha