Slashdot Mirror
CAPPS II Trials Begin in March
corporal_clegg writes "According to this story on FoxNews, in March Delta Airlines will begin using a federal database that incorporates credit history and bank records in an effort to identify potential security threats. The federal system - CAPPS II (Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System) - will assign a "threat level" to passengers based upon information in the database and other criteria, such as whether the individual is on government watch lists. 'CAPPS II will collect data and rate each passenger's risk potential according to a three-color system: green, yellow, red. When travelers check in, their names will be punched into the system and the boarding passes encrypted with the ranking.' The scary thing is that no one really knows which databases the government will use or how long the records will remain. Slashdot covered this story in September 2002, and it now seems that the first airline is ready to give it a try. In addition to the links in the previous Slashdot article, a good background on CAPPS II can be found here." Actually, the last story we did on passenger profiling was just a week or two ago.
A couple weeks ago, Congress decided that the Total Information Awareness program could not operate against US citizens.
Today? We are getting a "security" implementation that(purportedly) keeps the information it collects for 50 years. This has been disputed, by the Transportation Department, but it appeared in print, and the retraction was not.
Sad, sad.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
The scary thing about this is:
- We don't know what airports this is going to be run at.
- We don't know what databases are going to be used
- What if some of the information is erroneous? How can we correct our own "profile"?
- Lastly...what does my credit check have to do with whether or not I'm going to blow up a plane?
And then they wonder why almost every single airline in the United States is at or near bankruptcy.
"Killing America in the Name of Security"
Don't they realize that anything that is publicized is now what a terrorist will most definately avoid? If they are looking for good credit and a history of large amounts of money moving through a bank account or vice versa, then a potential threat, i.e terrorist, will most definately change their habits to remain undetectible. These are not stupid people. If I know what steps an airline is taking to detect whether or not I am a threat, so does EVERYONE else. I know many of you will say that this information is made public so that I know what freedoms are being taken from me and I say that either scenerio is a bad idea. Leave my credit history and bank account information alone and find another way to detect terrorists without telling me how you are going to do it, just don't invade my privacy.
if you haven't done anything, then what do you have to worry about? This kind of profiling will never fly w/the ACLU and the like, though.
Monitoring bank and credit reports will flag questionable purchases like, oh, let's say, 2 tons of fertilizer and a Ryder truck. But what about the ones who don't exhibit that kind of behavior? Credit reports and bank activity aren't going to prevent a hijacker alone, in my opinion.
So we shall soon expect to see the less affluent citizens of this nation prohibited from travelling by airplane? There is simply no way in which the algorithm they use to determine risk could be flawless, and in such a matter, even one false-positive is too much. I always heard jurists refer to the slippery slope, and I had to wonder whether it was true. In the last five years og litigation, there have been an inconceivable number of unconstitutional or unjust laws proposed, and an even more amazing number of them have been passed. We shall finally see whether the slippery slope exists. I sincerely hope that we can return even a small measure of the freedom that this republic is supposed to represent, but I fear that it shall continue only to get worse.
I fear that things will degenerate so greatly, that nothing short of armed insurrection will return it to the path of its founders' intent. I fear that day, because if force becomes necessary, then it is already too late.
Pax Digitalia
I mean, other than cars, that is. What about train stations? Do they have screening policies that are nearly as strict? Hell, I'd be happy to extend my travel time by a day or more, just so I don't need to worry about having my name run through any number of databases in the vain hopes of finding something and appeasing the herd/masses of their security concerns.
My wife and I both predict that within 10 years (most likely less) it will be required to carry "papers" while you travel, even in your car, not just on a plane or some such. Interstate travel will start to be as arduous as international travel. It's quite sickening, actually...
Our way of life, sir? Your way of life may involve sacrificing the ideals of this nation for temporary safety, but mine does not. I would sooner die than see this nation become a police state, and nothing short of that will succeed in preventing violence 100 per cent of the time. If the artificers of this nation had intended for security to come before freedom, then they would not have imposed any restrictions on the courts.
Pax Digitalia
Wrongo. I questioned one entry on my credit report, and it was wiped clean. I had nothing at all for a rating, in spite of being born in the US 30+ years ago, having gone through all the years of public school, work, 1040s, W4s etc.
If I was denied, at boarding time, the ability to travel, instead of when I bought the ticket, I would be one very loud and pissed off guy. Credit has nothing to do with travel rights.
Right now, I'm taking my Delta frequent flyer miles and giving them to the make a wish foundation. They have lost my business forever. If all airlines do this, I guess I'll be driving a lot.
This is so stupid. Everyone bitches when the 80 year old grandma gets searched, but random is the best.
If there is any "methodology" at all to doing this profiling there is a danger that you would just probe the system till you discover the "right" person to send through.
Keep sending through different kinds off people until you know who you can send that would never get checked.
Random is the way to go.
For the most part now I'd rather drive to wherever I'm going then take an intra-continental flight. Security is so insane there, it's not even funny. just the other day a Canadian citizen was sent to India because INS officials thought (for some reason) her passport was invalid.
Not that any of this stuff is even necessary to prevent hijacking (just lock the cabin door, and have passengers fight back), or bombing (use bomb detectors!). Simple, obvious things like that are the way to prevent 9/11 type disasters, not creepy big-brother bullshit.
Its nothing more then a power-grab by totalitarians.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Do you really think Al-Quada wouldn't stick bombs on a little kid if they thought it would have a better chance of getting through?
Whenever you focus your attention on one catagory of people, you make it easier then it could be for another group. All the terrorists have to do is fly their members around a lot, and see who gets checked most often. The ones that don't, carry the bombs and stuff.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Do you really think Al-Quada wouldn't strap bombs on a 5 year old if they thought they would have a better chance of getting through?
Any time you focus more resources on one group, you have less on another. There's no getting around that. All the terrorists need to do is send their agents on lots of flights to see which ones get checked least often, and use them to carry the weapons/bombs.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
the strength of the us goverment was found in comprimise... making a strong central goverment, while makeing limitations on that power. While I tend to lean towards your way of thinking, we do need to have order in our goverment.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Stupid people don't think about things unless they are within arms reach. The *possibility* of things happening to them don't occur to them because they have a hard time extrapolating potential futures from current events. The only thing that exists in their world are the things that are happening right *now*. "Do I feel good right now?" Well, some law was passed today, and I still feel okay, so the law must be fine.
I hate to say it, have for a long time avoided thinking about it. But people really are that stupid. Just can't think about anything that's not within arms reach. Anything they're not exactly in the middle of is beyond comprehension. So lacking reason, they resort to whatever primitive analogs are available, such as emotion. "It feels good to know efforts are underway to ensure my safety."
America is no longer the country it once was. We are living under a totalitarian regime. Do you really think this bullshit, "threat assessment" is going to really improve air travel safety? The obvious answere is no. They are just going to keep searching dark skinned people, just like the have been since the Reichstag, I mean World Trade Center went down.
CAPPS is not meant to prevent terrorism. It is meant to keep dissidents under control, and if possible out of our country. It is also meant to justify the massive amounts of information that the government is now compiling on every one of us.
This is part of an obvious trend of policies that eliminate privacy and freedom. Fun activity: Next time the terrorist threat level goes from yellow to orange watch C-Span to learn about what new laws the Big Brother has planned to make us safer. There is a direct correlation between the "terror alert color" and how Orwellian government proposals get. Last time it was orange, Bush told us that we had to attack Iraq because they support terror, subtlely implying that by attacking Iraq we would reduce our terrorist threat.
Our president claims that invading a middleastern country will reduce our threat of terrorism. CAPPS is not about terrorism, just like Iraq is not about terrorism, just like (fill in the blank) is not about terrorism. Wake up and smell the government.
By the way, did anyone else see the news story about how hacked Direct TV cards support terrorism? Nothing supports terrorism more than paying your taxes.
Do me a favor and double it!
That the little kid is unlikely to be trained to fly the plane into anything. Isn't that who they are really trying to catch? Oh yeah, them and the shoe bombers - also hard to teach a little kid to set fire to his shoes. Thank you shoe bomber for making sure I have to have good socks on every time I travel by air.
Some random searches are good, sure - but not at the level they are at which is impeding travel for everyone with no benefit that I can discern (do you really think someone couldn't get just about anything through if they really wanted to?). Frankly I would be fine with putting an impervious shield between the pilots and the passengers, and letting us cattle (even the first class cattle) take their chances with nothing more than the metal detectors at the security screening areas they have now and no more near-strip searches. Anyone that tries to take over a plane now is going to meet with stiff resistance from every passenger on the plane now that we all "know" what happens to planes that get hijacked, so I think pretty much all of the searches for things like boxcutters are the very definition of pointlessness.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't do that for privacy - you do it so that the system of "OK", "suspicious", and "terminate" works.
And does it work, if used in place of more substantial security? El Al, as you mentioned, really does have good security. Yes, it's expensive; yes, it would be very difficult to scale to the volume we need. But we need to decide how much we care about security -- and, if we care enough to do it right, replace "feel good" measures that violate privacy with little effect in favor of measures that actually work. I object quite strongly to gratuitous gathering of information -- but less so to actual security measures (like placing all luggage in decompression chambers prior to loading).
Additionally, I simply can't conceive of an algorithm for detecting terrorists so selective that it will flag only 1 in every 10^6 as red and still be able to catch the actual terrorists out of the crowd. I've dealt with neural network systems (probably one of the best ways of going about something like this) and have quite a bit of respect for them -- but simply not that much.
Certainly, relying on the security guard's judgement may not be much better -- but the grandparent post's claim that building a database with my banking information will "protect [my] way of life" is just a bit much to swallow.
...since the folks at the airlines will be using "black", "brown", and "white" to determine the threat levels.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.