Secret Service's New Threat Tracker Underway
A secret service agent looks on as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2016. Evan Vucci/AP
The agency is trotting out a new system that replaces two old ones.
The Secret Service has a new database for storing threats against the nation's highest-profile individuals.
In a privacy assessment, the Homeland Security Department described the new system that contains information about verbal, nonverbal, written and electronic threats related to past, present and former presidents and vice presidents, their families, presidential candidates, foreign heads and other people whose safety is the responsibility of the Secret Service.
The Protective Threat Management System, or PTMS, lets agents look up people who have threatened protectees or people the Secret Service has previously examined. Broadly, the information in the database is used to establish "leads that are subsequently investigated by special agents," according to the assessment.
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PTMS includes information about "overflights of restricted airspace, civil disorder, exclusions from sites, natural occurrences, bomb incidents or hoaxes, hijackings, incidents affecting motorcade movements, security compromise, uncorroborated source reporting, assassination or attempts, and other incidents judged to be of interest to protective operations," according to its privacy assessment. It also has capabilities for record keeping, electronic document attachments and other newer features, according to the assessment.
The system replaces two legacy ones: the Protective Research Information Management System, known as PRISM-ID, and the Counter Surveillance Unit Reporting database, or CSUR, both of which were "costly to update and maintain."
Because the database contains personally identifiable information for people associated with these threats, including "physical identifiers, criminal history, health history, employment history, military service history, education history [and] immigration status," the privacy assessment emphasized that only Secret Service members with a "legitimate need to know" can access the system. PTMS users are only authorized to share that information with others with a need to know and who are listed on a systems of records notice.