Privacy advocates cautioned Tuesday against "mission creep" as lawmakers prepared to review a Bush administration plan to shift responsibility for records on millions of Americans and foreigners into one central office.

The president’s 2006 budget calls for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to create a new office of Screening Coordination and Operations that would oversee existing programs to screen travelers and transportation workers. The proposal is meant to prevent overlap among the various screening initiatives, which are now spread across the department.

Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., recently named chairman of a new congressional subcommittee focused on critical infrastructure, will hold his panel’s first hearing Wednesday to ask DHS officials about the new office.

The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) sent a letter to Lungren on Tuesday warning of a "significant risk" that the office could spin out of control. With access to huge databases of digital fingerprints, photos, eyescans and other personal information, the office is vulnerable to "mission creep," the letter said.

"We’re calling it a federal profiling agency," Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC, told CQ Homeland Security on Tuesday.

"Broadly speaking, most Americans don’t want Big Brother to know everything about them — where they travel, where they go."

DHS did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

The Screening Coordination and Operations office would consolidate several high-profile programs, including the US VISIT border screening system and the Transportation Security Administration’s Secure Flight program, designed to check airline passengers against terrorist watch lists.

Lungren said he supports the creation of a new office to run the screening programs more efficiently, but also said he will exercise tough oversight to ensure the government does not encroach on citizens’ privacy.

"That’s one of the reasons I sought to get on this committee," Lungren said.

Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, agreed that congressional oversight will be key.

"I don’t think it matters whether you create a new office or not," said Dempsey, a privacy advocate. "The congressional focus has to be on the controls — the use of limiting language, a clear definition of what the money is going to be used for, and then express limitation on further uses."

Lungren’s panel — the House Subcommittee on Economic Security, Infrastructure Protection and Cybersecurity — is slated to hear testimony on Wednesday from Jim Williams, the director of US VISIT; Carol Dibatiste, deputy administrator of the TSA; and Deborah J. Spero, deputy commissioner for the Bureau of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Ranking member Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., said she will ask DHS officials if they plan to create one large database of records within the new office to run all the screening programs, and if so, what the impact would be on privacy.

Sanchez said she would wait to hear from DHS before taking a position on the office. In particular, she intends to ask whether DHS plans to create a central database of personal records, and whether that would improve or worsen problems with Secure Flight, which has been known to tag innocent passengers for additional scrutiny.

"I’m more concerned with, How do innocent people not get stopped at the airport for three or four hours at a time?" she said. "Is this going to help innocent people caught up in the middle of all this?"

Caitlin Harrington can be reached via charrington@cq.com