He didn’t close Guantanamo Bay, end American drone strikes on foreign countries, or roll back the surveillance operations created after 9/11, but less than a month before leaving office, President Barack Obama killed at least one civil-liberties-violating program from the George W. Bush era.
The Obama administration on Thursday officially shuttered the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, or NSEERS. From 2002 until 2011, NSEERS required visitors from 25 “high risk” countries (24 of them were in the Middle East; North Korea was the other) to register with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, undergo interrogations and fingerprinting when they entered the United States, and periodically check-in at government offices while they were here.
While it was operational, some 93,000 immigrants were put through the NSEERS program without a single one being convicted on any terrorism charges.
That poor track record caused the Obama administration to put the NSEERS program into hibernation in 2011. Thursday’s action, though somewhat symbolic because the program hasn’t really existed for more than five years, was important because it makes it more difficult for the incoming Trump administration to resurrect NSEERS.
Via Reason