Do you know if the U.S. embassy has access to the in- and outgoings of the citizens of foreign countries?

Question

In other words, can they find out if, say, a Nica has ever left Nicaragua?

Answer 1

dognhorsemom is generally correct -- and ought to know. But she may not be aware (as I am, although admittedly my personal knowledge relates to the early 1980s as to much of it; my more recent experience is as lawyer with some sight of the results of Government access) that the airlline computers are fully accessible to USG agencies. That is the way one would search for departure by air. (Under new rules, passenger manifests will be more comprehensive, better indexed, and collated with credit-card and other personal information. I am sure that Homeland Security will have access to records quite beyond travel to/from the USA. And today's UK newspapers discuss the forthcoming US practice of fingerprinting all 10 digits of incoming Visa Waiver travelers to the US (and presumably all nondiplomatic alien travelers as well, although that wasn't mentioned).

What is unclear to me (I haven't cared enough to research the point) is how much data from passport and ID-card swiping at ports of entry around the world is kept and shared. My guess is that it's more than we would like, and more than we know.

((And having just signed up at http://www.cclondon.com/ for congestion charge I know how easily it is to monitor vehicle movements. (The late Prof. Wiliam S. Vickrey of Columbia University, he of the Nobel prize in Economics who died 3 days after he learned of the award, was one of the major theoretical promoters of the concept: but he did not, as I recall, ever talk of the privacy issues involved. Think also of ATM, CCTV and cellular phone records.))

However, why would intelligence agencies such as the CIA or NSA, or police agencies like the FBI and Interpol get involved except in the most urgent cases? For one thing it might reveal "sources and methods" and so be unusable in court. For another it is costly in terms of skills and professional time.

Finally: most countries don't keep track of their nationals' departures and arrivals in any organized fashion. China I think does: and they have computer terminals even at the most remote border posts. But the mass of information makes its management unwieldy.

The fact remains that the best protection we have against monitoring is anonymity. In general, privacy has been best protected in Anglo-saxon countries where migration controls are on exit and entry, but there are no residence controls and weak employment controls. In Europe -- France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany and many or most other civil-law countries -- there is weak (under Schengen, no) control on movement within the area and poor control at land ports of entry. But there is strong control of residence and economic activity. (Which is not to say that in places like Italy there is much undocumented labor and much off-the-books work, and tax evasion. But that's a matter of weak legal enforcement, and corruption.)

Answer 2

If the US embassy wanted to know such a thing, they would ask Nicaragua's immigration service. The US government has no other way of knowing who enters or leaves another country; only who enters and leaves the US.