Passenger Profiling: CAPPS II

gabec writes "'Initial rollout of what may eventually become the world's largest silicon repository of personal data could be less than 90 days away....The Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II (CAPPS II) is designed to scan multiple public and private databases for information on individuals traveling into and out of the United States. The system will feed the results to an analysis application that mathematically ranks travelers' potential as security threats.' It will happen by the end of the year, if nothing is done to stop it: And here are some articles on this."

Comments

Lets hope the Pentuim bug is really gone

[Zipster]

"mathematically ranks travelers' potential as security threats"

Lets just hope none of those F00F bugs start popping back up...

Damn!

[Marijuana al-Shehi]

They'll never let me on a plane, what with my nick and all.

Let me throw a curve ball

[cscx]

What if the entire system ran on Linux? Now you don't know what the hell to do, do you?

I managed to get part of the source code...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here it is.. Passenger p = getPassenger();

// positive means they are bad guys. let's initalize to zero.
p.securityThreatScore = 0.0;

if (isMiddleEast(p.nationality)) { p.securityThreatScore += 10.0; }
if (isMiddleEast(p.destination)) { p.securityThreatScore += 10.0; }
if (isMiddleEast(p.origin)) { p.securityThreatScore += 20.0; }

if (hasDarkSkin(p.race)) {
p.securityThreatScore += 20.0;
} else {
// TODO: are there any white terrorists?
p.securityThreatScore -= 50.0;
}

// TODO: there may be more religions..check on that
if (p.religion == Religion.CHRISTIAN || p.religion = Religion.JEWISH) {
p.securityThreatScore -= 100.0;
} else {
p.securityThreatScore += 100.0;
}

// Thank goodness the source code is closed!!
if (p.gender == Religion.FEMALE && p.age >= 18 && p.age <= 28) {
p.securityThreatScore += 500.0;
p.searchOptions.fullStrip = true;
p.searchOptions.bodyCavities = true;
}

// TODO: should known terrorists be considered security threats?
if (knownTerroristsDatabase.contains(p)) {
p.securityThreatScore = Math.random(-100.0, 100.0);
}

// TODO: why is this here again? better leave it for now..
if (Math.random() > 0.5) {
p.securityThreatScore = -p.securityThreatScore;
}

// Book em, danno
if (p.securityThreatScore > 0.0) {
Dialog d = new Dialog(SUSPECTED TERRORIST!!);
}

New Target For SPAM...

[mbogosian]

Great. Now I'm going to get SPAM that reads:

"Have a poor terror score? No problem!"
"Get plane tickets with bad or no terror info!"
"Poor terror index? No terror index? We can help!"
"Repair your terror history instantly!"

I can see it now

[autopr0n]

Customer: "I thought you said the ticket was $125!"

Ticket Girl: "Well, yes. But you owe taxes for 1987, have five unpaid parking tickets in NYC, and you, (pauses), heh, have an unpaid citation for, heh, urinating in public that you got in June of '92."

Customer: (red faced). "Uh, look, I was drunk, I mean, i looked.... *sigh*, just whatever. How much?"

Ticket girl: "that'll be $790.45"

Customer: "Fine, whatever" (hands her the money)

Ticket girl: "Remember, there are bathrooms conveniently located at the fore and aft of the plane" (makes stewardess hand gestures.

Customer: "Just, just shut up."