Terrorist
Screening Center homepage
Safeguarding Civil Liberties
The TSC's primary responsibility is to ensure that the
identity data that is already known to the U.S. government
is held in one location where it can be queried by those
who need it, including federal, state, local, territorial,
and tribal law enforcement, and border control officers
in certain foreign countries. While doing so, the TSC
is dedicated to ensuring that data is maintained in a
manner consistent with protecting privacy and civil liberties.
The TSC regularly conducts comprehensive and case-specific
quality assurance reviews of its data to ensure that
terrorist identity data meets the U.S. government's substantive
criteria for watch listing and is thorough, accurate,
and current. The TSC also participates in redress
procedures established by agencies that perform terrorist
screening to ensure that complaints and misidentifications
are addressed and any errors are corrected.
The TSC has no authority to conduct intelligence collection
or other operations. The TSC does not collect intelligence,
but only receives identity information collected by other
governmental entities authorized by law to do so, with
their own policies and procedures to protect privacy
rights and civil liberties. The TSC maintains information
on known or appropriately suspected terrorists only;
it does not maintain information on persons who have
no nexus to terrorism.
