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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
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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.
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.
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
...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)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"