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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.
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.
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.
Oh, whoopee. Yes, let's fuck freedom. Let's start a witch hunt war on terror and start an inquisition protecting citizens from said terrorists.
And as for the urine samples: I have never done drugs. Ever. And I would never submit to a urine sample, even if it cost me my job. Why? Because I'm a goddamn fucking Americain and I will never forget the sacrifices made by the people that came before me to earn this freedom. If you want to fuck freedom, you're no better than the asses that flew the planes into the towers and put us in this mess in the first place.
They hated freedom just as much as you seem to.
I hear you. I'm the original poster. That was "sarcasm".
I cant even complain about the drug testing because it makes me "guilty" to the asswipes who say "bring it on, i've got nothing to hide."
Hey, why should we complain if they want to sort through our body fluids to verify our habits in our off time. (more sarcasm)
Personally, I can't friggin believe it. If they think a TELECOMMUTING PROGRAMMER ON WEED is bad, lets see what an incensed TELECOMMUTING DRUNK AND ANGRY PROGRAMMER is like. Oh, but alchohol is OK, so obviously a drunk guy whose pissed off is not a danger.
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!?
I agree, it is "it is a privilege to come to this country" and you do need to "make sure they'll appreciate it". A potential solution would be to make all foreigners wear a distinctive id - how about a yellow star? So everyone else knows that they are the ones responsible for all of USA's problems. And if any of them protest - just send them to the camp in Guantanamo. This will also allow not to falsely identify "caucasian suburban minors" for "the U.S.'s hitlist".
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?
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?
Blogging because I can...
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.
They've busted two CAPPS?
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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