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

Profiling...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully this will help cut down on racial profiling.

Function creep isn't the half of it.

[van der Rohe]

The first article mentions the threat of function creep - the possibility that the technology will EVENTUALLY be used for purposes besides the one that it was initially designed for.
What it fails to mention, however, is that airport security has almost nothing to do with this project. It's ALL about building a huge, commercially-mineable information database filled entirely with people who aren't even a little bit of a threat.
Do you really believe that hi-jackers board planes using legit ID that leaves a paper trail right into their DMV records and credit reports? Absurd.
The only people that this system will "catch" are Joe Average and his family. Think of it as a great big grocery-store scan card system disguised as a security precaution.
This, and everything else in America right now, doesn't have a damn thing to do with security or terrorism prevention. It has to do with manufacturing more consent and getting people to march in tighter formation so that they don't spend any time thinking about how little their rights mean to the people in charge.
The fact that people are even talking about it as if it has only the POTENTIAL for abuse just shows that the media machine and their corporate/government handlers have already won.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

[IIRCAFAIKIANAL]

If anyone says to RTFA, they can eat my ass! >:] I like choice. I don't like being overwhelmed.

In any case, profiling is just too complicated to work all that well. There are going to be tons of false positives falling out of this AND it won't matter anyway. So what if the system fingers someone as a potential threat - you still can't lawfully detain them based on information provided by such a system.

There are plenty of crazy militant types itching to rip the system - how do you sift through to find the "credible" threats? You need a full psychofuckinglogical profile to even start to figure that one out.

And what about the closet psychopaths? The ones that just go off all of the sudden - maybe there was a buildup, but that doesn't mean they've been having clandestine meetings with the PLO or something, right? With a system like this in place, people will become complacent and we'll overlook the obvious signs (ie/ that twitchy, sweating guy with the laptop full of electronics jamming equipment and plastique might just make it through because he's lived and worked in Houston his whole life without a single brush in with the law and because the former guitarist from Rage Against the Machine was on the same flight).

Why don't they just sedate us and put us in little pods for the flight. Less of my rights would be violated that way and at least that would be more effective.

Re:1, 2, 3, 4, 5...

[mbogosian]

In any case, profiling is just too complicated to work all that well. There are going to be tons of false positives falling out of this AND it won't matter anyway. So what if the system fingers someone as a potential threat - you still can't lawfully detain them based on information provided by such a system.

This is exactly why profiling should be kept in advertising where it belongs. Profiling (i.e., demographics) is for taking a set of people, and tossing out those least likely to fit your market. In the set that's left, one is statistically more likely to fit your ideal customer (however, there's still a lot of noise, just less than before).

For crime, it doesn't really work, unless one is willing to prosecute a lot of innocent people. In the United States, there is the presumption of innocense. Based on this, a perfect system is one in which no innocent people are found guilty. In real life, this means that no people are found guilty. Realizing this, the founding fathers knew they had to have a compromise. It was this: for every one innocent person convicted, ten guilty people go free. Profiling strives for the scales to be tipped (i.e., for every ten innocent people convicted, one guilty person goes free).

That's not to mention that profiling is only "effective" if members of the profilied population make no efforts against being profiled (again, that's why it's effective in advertising, but not in detecting crime). I used to work for a large on-line retailer in automated fraud detection. Automated fraud detection (i.e., systems which detect the likelihood of fraud with minimal human intervention) is based on profiling.

Well guess what? As soon as fraudsters find out what they're doing doesn't work, they change the properties of their transactions to more closely mirror legitimate purchases (as seen by the profiling model). The population has incentive to become homogenous. So once the model is implemented and deployed, it reduces fraud for about a week, until people figure out what it's doing, then levels climb back up to where they were before. However, after repeatedly deploying new models, unless the number of data points increases, the incidence of false positives steadily climbs.

heh

[autopr0n]

Well, at least it's not racial profiling by morons who can't even tell one race from another.

But seriously, any kind of system that 'unevenly' applies security screening actually opens a door for terrorists. All they have to do is send their cell members on flights frequently, and see which ones get checked more often. Pack the weapons and stuff on the people who get checked less frequently, and now you're mission has a greater chance of success then with random checks.

"Well, why not just do both random and profiled checks?" you might ask, well, why not just do more random checks? I mean, either the airport can search everyone, or some other percentage. The best security would be gained by "spending" all your checks doing random checks. Any other system unevenly distributes the chances of being checked, and decreases security.
br> I saw a paper online about this a while ago. It was a bit more rigorous, but I can't dig up the link. Ah well.

Algorithm ingredients

[jetlag11235]

1) Will the algorithm be made public? Should it be? Though it would appease the privacy-folk, it may also undermine the usefulness to some degree.

2) Some things I think the algorithm should consider (this is a mathematician speaking ... it may be that some of these things are not appropriate to collect ... although I suspect that insurance agencies have access to them all):
previous flights
age/sex/nationality
recent credit history
insurance policies
police record
payment method
passenger group (family, friends, alone, etc.)

Anyone else want to add or complain?

-- jetlag --

Re:You have a lot to lose though

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you sue the government based on perceived violations of your rights, unlike the countries named in your copied rant? (Hint, yes)

Hint: no. It's called "Sovereign Immunity." Look it up, dipshit.

Shit dog, it works

[BSDevil]

but seriously, any kind of system that 'unevenly' applies security screening actually opens a door for terrorists

I'd like you to tell that to El Al security and then report back to the crowd what they say and do to you - as much as we all hate to say it (and the constitution bans it) properly-done racial profiling works. El Al is everyone's favourite case study bacsue they're so hard-core about it.

• Who are their average terrorist threats (and this is Israel - terrorists all around the neighborhood)?
  Arabs in general, specifically Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians.
• Who do these groups employ for the most part (by virtue of their ideology and appeal)?
  Arabs in general, specifically Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians.
• So who does El Al most heavily scrutenize?
  Arabs in general, specifically Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians.

Does this miss all the John Walker Lindhs out there? Not the way they do it, with their full-out systems integration between the security services and airline computers. If you've been to one of the countries that is generally on the enemies list, then you get interrogated more than usual. JWL was in Pakistan for awhile, so he would have been flagged for the list.

So can and will this system happen over here? No bloody way. Dosen't work on physical, temporal, economical, and political grounds. On a more basic level, Israel's got 60 million people and one airline, the States has 250 million and say 20 airlines that fly into it, under various flags. So that total level of security won't work here (ask anyone who has flown El Al and they'll know what I mean), but it can, and the government may try; this massive integration could be the start of the dreaded Big Brother, or at a lower level, the Man may simply record everywhere you travel (which brings up an interesting point - if terrorists are trying to destroy the American way of life, then haven't they already won if such an anti-American-ideals system comes into effect? And if we don't implement it, then they win by physically blowing everything up...)

Re:Shit dog, it works

[autopr0n]

I'd like you to tell that to El Al security and then report back to the crowd what they say and do to you - as much as we all hate to say it (and the constitution bans it) properly-done racial profiling works. El Al is everyone's favourite case study bacsue they're so hard-core about it.

oh, I had no idea that racial profiling was El-Al's only tool. The dudes with submachine guns on the plane probably don't have anything to do with it...

On a more basic level, Israel's got 60 million people and one airline

6 man, isreal has 6 million people, not 60.

Re:And?

[FredGray]

I would guess that the system would be weighted such that someone who flies alot, paid with a well used credit card or corporate billing account, has an extensive credit history (implies they've been "in existence" for a while) [...] will get "approved" [...]

Of course, the 9/11 hijackers would have been given a free pass if these were the criteria, since they had flown a lot. A friend who works for US Airways told me that one of them had a Dividend Miles Preferred card...

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

[gnovos]

...not *one* business or first class passenger was searched.

I believe most of the 9/11 terrorists were First class passengers, so I doubt First class passengers are now not being checked.

Allow me to enlighten you as to exactly how "secure" this "random" checking of passengers is. First of all, I fly often, and always on one-way tickets in economy. Since 9/11 I have been searched a total of 12 times. That's right, I have been searched on each and every plane I have been on since that day. (I have never, not once in all my 12 plane flights seen a business class passenger get pulled "randomly" out of the search line, and after about the fifth search of your's truly, I have been watching.)

When I fly, I carry two things with me: one (1) hotel sewing kit complete with aluminum scissor that cannot cut paper, and one (1) ultra hot habenero sauce that I keep in a vial inside an official "biohazard" baggie that I purloined at a doctor's office a while ago. It is heavy duty and complete with the bright orange biohazard flower and many various "danger, do not open" labels on it (and it really IS that hot, yum.)

Each and every time I fly since 9/11 I have the tiny one inch no-blade scissors thrown away with rathar contemptuous looks, and the biohazard baggie with the vial of red goo untouched, no questions asked.

THIS is your security in action, my friend.

(Just for the record, I am your typical white male 20-something in jeans and a tee-shirt, you know, the kind that obviously looks like a terrorist)

Wait until the next terrorist attack!

[ites]

If you think the US goverment has overreacted to Sept. 11, just wait.
Al-qaeida has struck 5 times against the US so far.
They will almost certainly strike again.
They hit the WTC twice, so why not planes again?
But I think simple suicide bombers are more likely.
Computer profiling may seem offensive today. But we will have to get used to it.
In a country as large and porous as the US, there are few other real options.

Lucky for me

[interstellar_donkey]

My life is so boring, even if the government was able to find out everything about me, I doubt they would care.

I actually feel sorta bad for the government guys who have to deal with this stuff. When I go through the computer, I must set off some red flags, but if they examine it closely the worst they will find is I tend to get too drunk in the airport bar before I board the plane, try to flirt with the airline attendent in a terribly clumsy way, and fall asleep.

I guess they could tap my phone, but the most contraversial thing that I've discussed was bugging my mom for spending too much money on curtans for her house.

I don't like the fact that profilling happens, but I also feel bad for the people who have to do it. On paper I'm a real bad person. In reality, I'm just dull and any investigation of my life ends up in a innane exercise in tedium.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

The system isn't about identifying terrorists so much as identifying who IS NOT a terrorist.

too bad profiling alone can not accomplish that. thought experiment: pretend you are a terrorist. now try to think of at least one way to get around a system like you've just posited. it took me all of two seconds, what was your score?

searching "teeny boppers" and "little old ladies" is not done because of "political correctness". it's done in the name of randomness. it's done so that bad guys will never be 100% certain that the little old lady (or teenybopper) they're taking advantage of as an unwitting weapons mule won't end up searched, the weapons found, and the fingers pointed at the weapons' originators. it would be better if we could search everybody, of course, but for whatever silly technical reasons we can't, so random chance is second best.

people think profiling would work better than random chance - and it might, if the bad guys were strictly nonrandomly distributed (in some way we can figure out) and unable to compensate for this so as to throw us off. the first might be true - but if the second ever were, they would not be a threat. in real life, the only kind of profiling that really works is intelligence - find out who the bad guys really are, then post mugshots behind the security counters.

Who controls what?

[HighTeckRedNeck]

Young, white, Christian men weren't scrutinized in the same way that young Muslims and Arab men are for a very sensible reason. It's a simple fact that the Arab culture is in opposition to Western culture and values. It simply makes statistical sense to keep an eye on those who are most likely to come from the country we're at war with. If you tried preventing bombings by watching all young, white, Christian men - you'd be wasting a *lot* of time. We've got LOTS of them here in the U.S. -- much more than we've got of Muslims. People screaming about "racial profiling" seem to be neglecting the numerical facts. Why focus on a single group at all, unless it's statistically beneficial to you? In this case, focusing on Arabs is.

Well actually statistically there have been only two (count them two) terrorist attacks on American soil by Muslims since 1776. You can look that statistic up for yourself. What we have here is a country being controlled by the press (find me one politician that isn't) and a press that is not controlled by the American population. If the numerical formulas were based on historical evidence then Muslims in America would be given a free pass while born again white male Christians (like the president and much of congress) would all be strip searched. As a Muslim that works as a subcontractor for the military I can tell you about a lot of problems with "hate crimes" and the military being used by hate groups as a training ground.

My wife works with law enforcement (she has worked with the same PI firm that found the flight school in Florida, which happened to be run by a Lebanese that was called back into service by the Coast Guard ) and I have read their training books on profiling. It is a big negative. The extreme amount of false positives creates such a hassle for the officers that they are told not to do it. The false positive rate causes them to become lax and inattentive to the things they really ought to be looking for. And you can only imagine the social problems profiling creates. This is not what this country should stand for.

None the less racism is alive and well in DC. Profiling is just a way for "them" to be institutionally harassed (like in the 60's). And if they complain then they can be labeled as "anti-American". No this in not democracy this is tyranny in all its standard forms. I have to ask you, do you really think our present president would not have George Washington shipped off to Camp X-ray for suspicion of terrorism without right of redress or habious corpus. Read the deceleration of independence people and see how many of the grievances mentioned within it can not be leveled against the present US.

If you wish for these United States to represent the God given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness you need to be vigilant against all enemies to a government of the people, by the people and for the people both foreign and domestic. We have seen the enemy and he is us. When we start to think of the government as an entity in and of itself then we are thinking of a government that rules us not serves us.

Start looking at the foreign press, both our "allies" and our "enemies". It is a real eye opener. For instance Kol Yisrael radio reported on Oct. 3, 2001 that Ariel Sharon told Shimon Peres (and you should know what their government positions are) "Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear: don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it."

Re:I've said it before, and i'll say it again....

[FFFish]

That's right, Spork, you commie-sucking sicko! SIEG HEIL! Salute the Bush, or go fuck right off! IF YOUR NOT WITH THE USA, YOU MUST BE AGAINST USA!

(gahd. bloody tedious little patriots, so fulla stars in their eyes that they're unable to see the big black hole o' rights and privacy compromises that's about to smoke 'em in the head...)