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

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.

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)