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."

Comments

Screw public aviation!

[Thinkit3]

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!).

Good thing, too...

[mrpuffypants]

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."

False positives

[in7ane]

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.

Re:False positives

[Anonymous Coward]

Generating false positives is most likely the entire point of the system. It shows that something is being done, and is very visable. In short they are treating this as a PR problem and attacking it with propaganda and advertising. What they should be doing is treating this as the security problem that it is. There are about 300 million people in the United States, together with internation visitors who must be somehow classified by a system like this to ascertain what level of threat they pose. The correct answer to the question of how to do this is that you do not do this. The problem is intractable. What should probably be done is to limit the potential security risk that any individual can actually present when flying on a commercial airline. Just to take one example, you could isolate the passenger cabin physically from the cockpit. This reduces the chances of a succesful hijacking monumentally.

US security regarding travel is getting absurd

[Kethinov]

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.

Re:US security regarding travel is getting absurd

[ameoba]

Inspecting luggage on a Greyhound sounds more like a War on Drugs thing than a War on Terrorism thing. The end result's the same (you're pissed and nobody's really any safer), but...

Re:US security regarding travel is getting absurd

[nsample]

The point is *not* to hijack the bus and crash it into anything. Who wants to commandeer a bus, of all things? It's hardly an effective weapon.

On the other hand, ask any Israeli why you search the bus. Take off your 9/11 blinders: terrorism isn't about killing people with vehicles. It's about instilling TERROR. Imagine what happens when they blow up a "bus in the middle of Missouri". It never was about hijacking; that was just a means to an end.

Re:US security regarding travel is getting absurd

[Vellmont]

Imagine what happens when they blow up a "bus in the middle of Missouri

A few dozen people die. People freak out for a week or so wondering if there will be more bus bombings. Then they realize that there aren't, and are quite relieved if this is the best Al-Queda can come up with then this terrorism thing is licked (And no, I'm not implying it is, or would be). Sorry, but a bus bombing would be a pretty weak follow up to taking down two buildings and part of the Pentagon. I think Al-Queda would try to kill more people than say Great White killed with a sparkler.

The bus bombings work in Israel because you have a large amount of guys willing to blow themselves up in Israel. People get scared if busses are blowing up every week. Suicide bombers are a lot more rare and and "valuable" in the US, so they certainly wouldn't be wasted on blowing up busses.

Fine, Go ahead.

[imag0]

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

And they wonder why nobody wants to fly anymore???

[deranged unix nut]

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!

Pullback

[Halo1]

This is a pullback from the original plan which called for wide dissemination of data including financial and medical history.

Of course it is. That's how they are attempting to make the new plan sound reasonable, because it's so much less worse than the previous one. And it seems they're succeeding...

Ask for a pony

[Ambush]

Now how does that old saying go?

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*

Airport "security" is just reasurance.

[ezraekman]

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.

It's late and this system is

[PotatoHead]

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?