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CAPPS II Guidelines Released

Posted by michael on from the hakuna-matata dept.

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."

13 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Screw public aviation! by Thinkit3 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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
    1. Re:Screw public aviation! by PakProtector · · Score: 3, Funny

      Heck yeah! I remember one time I was flying back to South Carolina from Florida one summer when I'd been visiting my grandparents. I had a gameboy with me with one of those old carrying cases. This is back when Gameboys were about twice the size of walkmans. And this was when walkmans existed. They demanded to scan my gameboy and everything in the case, which was okay for the most part -- except they wanted to X-Ray four floppy disks I had - One of QBASIC programs I'd written and 3 that were SSI's Unlimited Adventures program. It took a while of telling them what would happen if they did to get them to decide that the disks weren't going to compromise the flight. Then when I got on the plane, the Stewardess wouldn't let me play my Gameboy! I swear. I want a frickin' Galaxy Class Starship with a thousand stewards who are all clones of Bender from Futurama. I want the replicator spittin' out martinis no stop, so fast that Hawkeye Pierce wouldn't know what to do. By the way, these events occured... Oh... 8, 9 years ago.

      --

      Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
      man: no entry for woman in the manual.
      "Qua!?"

    2. Re:Screw public aviation! by GammaTau · · Score: 3, Funny

      Stupid stewardesses who assume a wristwatch can doom an aircraft at takeoff and landing. Can't bring a dang fingernail clipper onboard.

      It also appears that wearing a button that says "Suspected Terrorist" may lead to being treated as a terrorist.

  2. Excellent! by Scoria · · Score: 2, Funny

    Are you looking forward to your inevitable cavity search? ;-)

    --
    Do you like German cars?
  3. Good thing, too... by mrpuffypants · · Score: 4, Funny

    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."

  4. Bring it on!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    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.

  5. Finally... a way out. by ameoba · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Finally... a way out. by ai2097 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Be careful... that plan could backfire. You might end up with relatives flying to you... sleeping in your house, eating your food, and still irritating the hell out of you - but at your expense ;)

  6. Bombs on Buses by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 2, Funny

    Evidently somebody watched Speed once too many times.

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
  7. Re:False positives by CGP314 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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).

    Your terrorist estimate is way too low. Remember Bush's (paraphrased) statement: "If you don't agree with me you are a terrorist." That really widens the who-is-a-terrorist net, so the real concern is with false negatives. : (

  8. CAPPS II by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    The New Plan slogan:

    "CAPPS II - It's Double Plus Good !!"

  9. Re:False positives by Dausha · · Score: 3, Funny

    . . . even 100,000 terrorists in the US is only 0.0004% . . .

    Which brings me to a rather insightful premise. Why don't we just have each passenger provide his occupation and purpose of his trip? If he puts "terrorist," then we know he may be a threat. If he puts "to do Allah|God|Limbaugh's Will," then we know he needs to be pulled off the plane. Because, not every terrorist is going to hijack any plane they travel on. Some need to make it to terrorist training camps, or Redmond, WA.

    --
    What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
  10. So if a passenger brings a gun on a plane... by AntiOrganic · · Score: 2, Funny

    They've busted two CAPPS?