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CAPPS II Guidelines Released
W33dz writes "WIRED magazine has released an article detailing the Transportation Safety Administration's latest guidelines for the second-generation Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II. As outlined in a notice to be published Friday in the Federal Register, CAPPS II will rate every passenger by checking dates of birth, home addresses and phone numbers against commercial databases and the government's terrorist watch lists. This is a pullback from the original plan which called for wide dissemination of data including financial and medical history."
Stupid stewardesses who assume a wristwatch can doom an aircraft at takeoff and landing. Can't bring a dang fingernail clipper onboard. How about geek airlines? Robot attendents, Internet access on every seat, and no problem with bringing any weapon on board (bring a working laser blaster and get a free flight!).
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Are you looking forward to your inevitable cavity search? ;-)
Do you like German cars?
This is a pullback from the original plan which called for wide dissemination of data including financial and medical history.
Good thing, too! The last thing I need is the flight attendants laughing at me when I board the plane because they can see my bank account and medical "records."
How are they planning to deal with the large numbers of false positives a system like this will generate? In my experience when you try to predict such low probability events as being a terrorist (no matter what you 'should' believe, even 100,000 terrorists in the US is only 0.0004%) the number of false positives far exceeds the number of true ones (or even the potentially true ones if you picked them all up).
And I really don't think a 'fly' list is the solution - if it automatically lets you fly, and considering that suicide bombers rarely have a history, it would be too obvious a back door.
... this all seems quite sensible.
It's ridiculous that at the moment more stringent checks are made on someone applying for a credit card than on someone boarding a plane.
Like my boss said when they started piss testing us at work last week, "Bring it on! I've got nothing to hide."
Fuck freedom or privacy, right? If you even question it, you're obviously hiding something or doing drugs or what not.
Recently I went on a little Greyhound bus trip across half the US. During reboarding procedures at one of my stops, there was a complete inspection of all the carry on luggage. Being over 24 hours sleep deprived and these security procedures making me later than I already was, I was more than uncooperative. As a response to my inquiry, this goes on randomly across bus stations across the US, according to the inspector. After (what seemed like) a lengthy inspection of my, and all other passenger's carry on luggage, we boarded the bus and off we went.
What's the point? This disturbs me. I can see why people might be getting a bit paranoid with air planes and all, but buses?! What the hell can I do with a hijacked bus in the middle of Missouri? Ram the bus into the giant arch in St. Louis? The US is becoming way too paranoid about terrorists these days.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
I have flown one time since the attacks and it ended up being a living hell of rooting through my stuff (carry-on and my luggage), pulling me aside (twice!) to frisk me, shoes off and scanned, nothing but a big hassle and a major irritation.
Oh, and watch it if you're carrying an iBook. I guess since it looks different they will want to open it up and play with it while people with 'normal' laptops just walk on without a second glance.
The whole reaming out convinced me it was worthless to spend my hard earned money to walk up and get treated like a criminal. I quit flying that day and will never step foot on another plane for the rest of my life. I drive everywhere on vacation now, stop where I want to, eat when I want to, carry on what I want to and have the peace of mind knowing there's not some government asshat sniffing through my b0xx0rz or looking up my personal information just to appease Washington.
I feel for the men, women and children (!) who really have no choice and have to be subjected to this fisaco in the name of security. Take a stand if you can and drive instead of feeding this monster. Vote with your dollar.
/ rant off
Now I'm all for planes not blowing up, but these security measures have gone too far and, in my opinion, don't seem to offer any significant benefit other to increase the racial divides between humanity at a time when we should be attempting to come to a common ground.
Fly Much? Fly Delta? Read why WE WIN!
Now I can refuse to fly, on ideological grounds, and not have to deal with flying to visit the family for the holidays.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Honestly, I think that the government has bailed out the airline industry enough times to make me think that the two are becoming pretty much one entity. Think about it... federal funds are propping them up, federal enforment agents have been sent in to help out with the so-called security... now the government wants to use thier new asset to find persons of interest to them. Now, I say persons of interest, because we all know this "terrorist" excuse is just a load of bullshit that the government is using (yet again) to get thier fingers into things that they should not be in. Why enforce existing laws to take care of the issues when you can use the panic and fear of the public to take more power for yorself, neh? They'll use that system to find whomever they please, and then 'justify' (read: make an excuse) thier actions later. I'm sure that as soon as our backs are turned, they'll alowly and quietly loosen the limits on the system until they have the system working in accordance with thier original plan. But hey, if I trusted the government to act morally and use this tool properly, I'd think it would be a good idea.
I do believe the terrorists from 9-11 arrived in the U.S. because of a severely flawed student visa system.
Instead of anally reaming U.S. citizens flying to see Grandma on Labor Day, why not fix the problem before it arrives. I cannot see how "terrorists" just magically appear on flights from D.C. to New York, without doing something first to get there. Like flight training in the U.S.. Every attempted terrorist attack in the past two years hasn't been by somebody that just decided to go on a plane and blow it up. There were flags before hand.
That's what they should do. Ream those who are coming in, it is a privilege to come to this country, make sure they'll appreciate it.
On another note, last summer while travelling back from California to southern texas, I connected on two flights, somehow I was (along with my sisters, who are under 18) "randomly" checked 3 times I was checked after simply switching planes. I never even left the terminal. Maybe it's just my imagination, but I can see how caucasian suburban minors are on the top of the U.S.'s hitlist.
I wish they'd stop doing everything ass backwards
Error 407 - No creative sig found
I've had it with all of this paranoia, I am just not going to fly ever again!
With this much harassment, is it any wonder why fewer people want to travel and why the already failing airlines are asking for bailouts?
If I didn't need to arrive 2 hours early to be scanned, searched, remove my shoes, wait in line, wait in line, and wait in line, then be searched, searched, and searched again, it might be faster and easier to go home to visit the family by airplane, but as it is now it is easier and cheaper to spend the extra 4 hours and DRIVE!
The passengers will never again allow terrorists to crash an airplane into something, so terrorists have nothing to gain in trying the same scenario again. Let's get over the paranoia, take some personal responsibility and use common sense for our own security, and understand that if we want freedom we need to accept a certain amount of risk!
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Oh yes... if you want a puppy, start out by asking for a pony.
Of course, this 'puppy' will no doubt grow into quite a large bull-mastif. *sigh*
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
Evidently somebody watched Speed once too many times.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
"you are using more gas, funding terrorism" -- of course I am, seeing that we are still ass buddies with the country the majority of the terrorists come from. Jesus H. Christ man. You know this.
"it's only the disgrunted people who hold up the line" -- Disgruntled? or people becoming slowly aware that their tax dollars are paying for the idiots reaming through their stuff, asking personal question, or taking a peek at their criminal history "just in case"?
To me, I see it as damage. Like any good TCP/IP packet I try to route around the damage as best as possible. Is it a perfect world? Nope. Not close. You're always going to step on someone.
Will I support terrorism by purchasing gasoline, ruin the environment by driving and encouraging others to drive, be a linchpin in the downfall of Western Civilization as we know it? Who knows.
All I know is that I would rather take things on my own terms rather than bow to the old "if you have nothing to hide, then what you are upset for"? shit.
If it's all the same to the naysayers I'll value all the freedom I can get, they can value all the security they can stand and mabbie at the end of days we can compare notes. Good luck.
Yup and after a couple of years they'll slip in the 'financial and medical history' and you'll never no the difference.
I call it privacy rights 'creep'.
All of these added precautions are not intended to make travel more secure. They are intended to make travel feel more secure.
I have a friend who is a project manager for a major X-ray scanner vendor. He handles installations many major airports worldwide, including SFO and Oakland in the SF bay area. In a moment of ire at all of the red tape he's had to deal with, he informed me that 30% of all bags checked in at the counter are never checked. They are not scanned, X-rayed or visually inspected. You check them, and they are tagged, accepted, and loaded. That's it.
I wanted to verify this for myself. I fly quite a bit these days, so I've engaged a number of airport screeners and TSA reps in conversation. I just ask them how their day is going, and mention offhand how unfortunate that they have to be under so much stress, when such a large number of baggage goes unchecked, and when it's really just a feel-good measure for the American public. If the screener I'm speaking with is in a good mood (or is just happy to not be dealing with another disgruntled passenger), the answer is almost always "Yeah, I know. It's stupid, but that's the job." Most of the white-shirted TSA folks seem to know better than to affirm that, but I've even tripped up a couple of them recently.
All of this extra screening does not stop serious, hard-core terrorists from taking control of our planes. It does not stop assassins from planting explosives. With the verification techniques displayed by all of the security personnel during my last four or five flights, it is clear to me that a quickly forged identity card left in one's wallet and a mocked-up e-mail itinerary will suffice to get you past the gate. So-called "random" searches and screenings are usually generated by certain flags: infrequent flyers, one-way tickets, and the like. I was recently flagged for a "random" screening, based on the fact that I had booked a one-way ticket. But since I had flown three other flights with this company, I was excepted.
Surgical steel will not set off the metal detectors, even the super-sensitive ones used in the wands. $20,000 could easily pay for a quick surgery and enough plastic explosive to take out a plane. Triple that amount if the surgeons do a good job. That's chump change to a dictator with a grudge. The electronics need only be made of surgical steel, and the chemicals need only need be buried in flesh to avoid a secondary alert. The trigger could be something as innocuous as a two-way pager or a cell phone. Weapons can easily be hidden inside the cases of laptops, if properly shaped and disguised. I know all of this because, with the exception of explosives and weapons, I have carried all of the rest on board myself.
If someone was determined enough, planned ahead, and had a decent bankroll, they would not be stopped by all of this "security". Only a complete moron of a terrorist would get tripped up by it. These new measures are not intended to stop terrorists. By forcing the American public to submit to all of these checks, they convince us that "if we're being inconvenienced this much, no terrorist could possibly get through now". And do you know what? The government is right. The American public does not want to know. I've started conversations with several friends and relatives about this very subject. The moment any question of real security enters the conversation, I'm told "I don't want to know; I just want to feel safe". That's a direct quote.
People truly are sheep. Sheep that want to be led. Sheep who not only don't realize what's really happening to their rights, but that wouldn't really care if they did.
Any idea when this crap is supposed to start?
Does this system divert resources away from random checks and toward computer chosen checks? If so, this would make things *less* safe.
A random check is by definition unpredictable. But with an algorithmic method, a terrorist could test in advance whether he will be stopped. He just has to take some flights before the act and see. If he never gets stopped, he can conclude he's not going to get flagged by the algorithm, and all he has to get through are the random checks. If we're spending our resources on computer checks instead of random checks, we are increasing his chances.
Causing inconvenience and invading privacy for the sake of feeling secure are bad enough. Do we also have to make ourselves less secure to do it?
Laxness and plain incompetence on the part of the INS, the FBI and the CIA enabled those bastards to attack the US.
So what does congress do? They find a way to launch a federally funded assault on civil avation, in the form of unneccesary and expensive regulations from airports to civil aviation; they virtually destroy the domestic airline industry, meanwhile the multitude of stoopid policies which allowed murdering Muslims into the USA in the first place continues with hardly a change.
Dawn of the Dead
The New Plan slogan:
"CAPPS II - It's Double Plus Good !!"
just not going to do us any good.
If somebody wants to die to cause some damage to the US, then they have a high likelyhood of doing it.
The ratio of terrorists compared to good people is too low to allow any reasonable accuracy no matter what the predictive system.
What's worse is the engineering of possible weapons will make the already low rates worse. They can't check for what was just invented can they?
The land of the free was formed with some pretty strong responses to threats.
Personally, I would rather see more of that, than attacks on our own people.
I realize the world is changing and that information systems can be helpful, but we must balance our hard won freedoms and rights at the same time. If we lock things down to the point where potential terrorists cannot move freely, given their low numbers doesn't that mean none of us can have our freedom either? If this cannot be the case, then they will have won no matter how many are killed or caught.
Most of what I value about America is being eroded away under the mask of security. Security for whom? I feel a heck of a lot more insecure now than I did 10 years ago. It's not the terror doing it either.
How many of you feel the same?
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CAPPS II will [reduce] the number of people who [are] are misidentified as potential terrorists.
How can you correctly identify "potential" terrorists? This is meaningless "brown alert" blurb. You either are or you aren't. What exactly is the penalty for being one? How can you prove that you're not a "potential" terrorist? Is a "potential" terrorist different from a "suspected" terrorist?
Look, it's a perfectly simple proposition. How many actual terrorists has CAPP I caught, and how many actual terrorists will CAPP II catch? "Potential" my huge hairy arse.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I'm (outside the US) in the process of sorting out holidays for my family. When requesting quotes from travel agents one of my parameters is "no touching US territory, no flights on US-owned airlines". I'm voting with my wallet, and several travel agents already said that this type of request is becoming common.
The official notice in the Federal Register is here.
Add to that the total deaths in NYC in Sept a few years back. 9/11 isn't even a blip on the stats graph for the year and not even the worse for a month by far. Get the hell over it.
Exactly. I only fly for business, and I avoid even that when I can.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
not to mention respecting the most important factor in seat allocation for geeks
Free as in mason.
They've busted two CAPPS?
FYI, 100,000 people is 0.04% of the population. 1000 people is 0.0004%. You've made the common soapbox mistake of thinking that 1% is the entire population in order to make you're argument sound more convincing.
The sad part isn't that so many on Slashdot have such little understanding of math; rather, the sad part is that so many of them are completely unaware of their shortcoming.
Coleman's letter reported the bill has been reduced in the information utilized (as outline in the story) and information on any passenger is supposed to be purged from the system shortly after his travel is over. This should ideally minimize the amount of data at risk should the system be compromized.
I was glad to see Sabo actually concerned. Coleman's letter was worthless, basically saying "I agree, privacy=good, data collection=bad, but I'm not doing anything about it."
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There supposedly safeguards put in place to both reduce misidentification (i.e. red-flagging someone with the same name as any person on the watch-list) and provide some form of appeal/correction into the system to avoid future misidentification. Whether this really changes anything is anyone's call.
Linux: The world's best text-adventure game.
Given the ease of constructing false identities, I would be surprised if someone doesn't make a good business out of creating an entry on this list which will trip up a victim regularly. Would be a great harassment technique for businesses to use on competitors' CEOs or anyone else who is not a celebrity but needs to fly frequently.
I've been doing a fair amount of flying this summer for various reasons, and if anything, these enhanced "security measures" do nothing but put me on edge. On a trip to France, a friend of mine, who is about as innocuous-looking as they come, got searched almost every place we went with security checks, both in the US and in France. On a family trip to visit my grandparents in South Dakota, I was pulled aside to be 'wanded,' and despite the jewelry I wore, you know the only two things that made that wand beep? The button on my pants and the hook on my bra. Yeah, like I'm gonna go bustin' out of my clothes on the plane and assault someone with my underwear. (Though now that I think about it, it does have possibilities...) Seriously, though, I understand the purpose for that, especially since I beeped. However, the TSA lady who had to do the wand and pat-down thing was visibly rolling her eyes as if she couldn't believe she had to search yet another 90-pound teenager travelling with her family today. What was even more interesting was our flight out of Hector International Airport in Fargo, ND. First of all, the airport is tiny...it's only considered an international airport because it has flights that go to Canada. Second of all, they have no x-ray machines, with the exception of the one that is at the one security checkpoint. (Getting an idea as to the size of this airport yet?) So, these TSA people search the luggage by hand. We stood there for about 15 minutes while they looked through my brother's bag, then my dad's, then my sister's, then mine. My mum, who was at the end of the line of our little party, did not get her bag searched at all. While she was not carrying anything of an illicit nature, she was carrying an empty ammunition can that my grandad had given to my brother. Wrap your brains around that one for a second. I found it amusing in a rather twisted sort of way. I guess the entire point to this great ramble of mine is that the only times I have seen someone get searched was when I was perfectly aware that there was no good reason for it, and the times when someone didn't get searched, they were actually carrying something that might have attracted notice. Other examples include my packing fireworks into checked baggage (pre-9/11) and then not stating that I'd done so, and my sister unwittingly carrying a pair of nail clippers on board that had gone without notice, when the pervious day my 60-something-year-old great aunt had a pair of nail scissors confiscated at the same airport. This airport security is, in essence, a farce, and an unneccessary drain on resources, not to mention, a good way to turn me into a paranoid, nervous wreck everytime I fly. Harkening back to the comment that has been criticised already, "I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide," I must also criticise. Even though I may not be hiding something, what if I'm doing something wrong that I didn't know I was doing? It happens...it's the same reason why perfectly innocent people get all nervous when a cop walks by.
I agree with you for the most part, except for this bit about how people will never allow it to happen again. What if terrorists smuggle guns on. What if they shoot everybody before they crash the plane into a building because they know the passengers would try to do something?
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A couple thoughts:
1) Just because you put a bullet in a person doesn't mean that they drop dead instantly, despite what the movies show.
2) Bullets tend to pierce the skin of the airplane, depressurizing the airplane, making it very hard to fly, and increasing the risk of damage to the structure of the plane.
3) Concern for life - once people know that you are going to turn the airplane into a bomb and that they are going to die anyway, but if they don't try something then more people will die, the concern for self disappears.
(Personally, I have never even been in a schoolyard fistfight, I seek non-violent resolution to conflict, however if I am on an airplane that is hi-jacked and I believe that the hi-jackers intent to use the airplane as a weapon, even if I believe that I alone have zero chance of success and nobody else is stepping up to help, I *WILL* do everything in my power that I can think of to help regain control including gouging eyes out of their sockets and getting myself killed and because I am not in great physical shape, I'm sure that this action will get me killed.)
4) Many vs few - How fast can you reload? Can you take out 40 people? 100? If they all rush you at once from multiple directions?
Remember the people on the fourth plane, the one that didn't hit a building. It didn't hit anything because the passengers didn't let them.