Word: interpolates
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...much better now. Six years after Interpol began collecting stolen document details, its list contains about 8 million passports and 6 million identity documents - the only such international database in the world. Aside from J.F.K. Airport, Miami and Los Angeles airports have begun to make routine checks of passports against Interpol's list while passengers are still in the air. And the system will roll out at U.S. ports within the next few months, says Interpol's Washington director, Martin Renkiewicz. "We process between 10,000 and 12,000 messages monthly from various officers seeking assistance on investigative matters," says...
...power of this enormous cache of personal data is evident from some of Interpol's recent actions. In January last year, 11 people presented their Cypriot passports at Monterrey airport in Mexico. The numbers that flashed up on Interpol's database revealed that these documents came from a batch of 850 blank passports stolen in Cyprus; it turned out that the men were Iraqi citizens trying to slip into the U.S. Last April, masked gunmen executed a jewelry heist in Dubai. They left behind DNA samples, which matched those that Interpol had in its database for two Serbian armed robbers...
Inside the Nerve Center Despite such successes, the data has serious limitations, which become evident the moment one steps into Interpol's command center. One morning in January, Javier Sánchez, an Interpol operational assistant from Barcelona, sat hunched over a computer in the Lyons office, attempting to find a man who had traveled across three continents on stolen documents, and then vanished in São Paolo. Two days earlier, Mexican officials had spotted his stolen Portuguese passport on Interpol's list when he flew into Mexico City from Frankfurt. They deported him back to Germany, where...
...That uncertainty as to whom Interpol is tracking has roused strong unease among civil-rights groups. They point out that, unlike law-enforcement services such as Scotland Yard or the FBI, Interpol does not report to any government. "There is a principle of openness and accountability at stake here which is extremely vital," says Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, a London-based advocacy group that tracks surveillance of civilians. Davies worries that the data collected from countries is sometimes faulty, potentially targeting innocent people. "At least on the national level there is some accountability," he says. "But in Interpol...
...Interpol officials say they encourage countries to send detailed data about wanted citizens in order to avoid such mistakes, and they stress that its constitutional rules allow for strict independent oversight of its activities and finances. Yet Western governments - typically with plenty of money to invest in their own national police and intelligence services - often prefer to keep tight control of their data rather than share it with Interpol, not least because its members include countries with which they have tense relationships, such as Cuba and Syria. "The irony is that countries which Interpol would like to cooperate most with...