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Congress to Test Air Screening Program
unassimilatible writes "The Transportation Security Administration said Wednesday it will order airlines to turn over passengers' personal records in the next couple of months to test a computerized passenger screening program that could keep dangerous people off airlines, reports Yahoo/AP. The Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, would rank all air passengers according to the likelihood of their being terrorists. Suspected terrorists and violent criminals would be designated as red and forbidden to fly. Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening. The vast majority would be designated green and allowed through routine screening. But some say the project would violate privacy rights, while others are concerned it would cost the private sector too much money. The Air Transport Association, the trade group for major airlines, has come up with seven 'privacy principles' that it says the government should follow in implementing CAPPS II."
Does this not open the door for racial discrimination? I would suppose that one wouldn't NEED documents to do this, but with a colour rating being put in place, it would be rather easy to put anyone with, say, iranian parents on a code orange warning.
The dontspyon.us site is chock full of info about CAPPS II, TIA, etc.
Passengers who raise questions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening
"Am I incorrectly inferring that if I voluntarily submit to a full body cavity search I get to go straight through to my seat?"
-Goatse guy
Am I the only one who read that as, "rubber glove and a handful of vaseline"?
I would think that the "violent criminal" bit could be unconstitutional. This is assuming that they're refering to ex-cons; I don't think that a wanted violent criminal would be given a red flag, rather they'd have the police called on them.
The denial of access to public accomidations was refuted in terms of both gender and race. I know that it's constitutional to disallow felons sufferage, but I don't think that you can do much more to them (save monitoring them).
I think even Rhenquist and Scalia would be against this legislation.
But some say the project would violate privacy rights, while others are concerned it would cost the private sector too much money.
Reasonable people could argue those points if the damn thing could work, but it can't. (For discussion see this interesting paper.) And since it cannot be effective, it is complete foolishness to even consider this massive invasion of citizen privacy, not to mention waste so much money!
So what about those terrorists who are 'unknown' flying for the first time?
They get a green light, pass through and drive themselves and the plane into the ground.
I think you misunderstood the intent:
"Passengers who[se profile] raise[s] questions [in the minds of airport security] would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening."
A bit different from "Passengers who ask questions...".
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This paper describes how such a system actually makes it more likely that a terrorist cell can carry out a successful attack, when compared with random screening. The basic idea is that it is not hard to determine whether or not you are on the watch list, and then the terrorists can use hijackers who aren't on the watch list. Anyway, I know slashdotters aren't known for reading links, but the paper is actually quite accessible and worth reading at least some of.
"As the Supreme Court notes in Saenz v Roe, the Constitution does not contain the word "travel" in any context, let alone an explicit right to travel. The presumed right to travel, however, is firmly established in U.S. law and precedent. In U.S. v Guest, the Court noted, "It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized." In fact, in Shapiro v Thomson, Justice Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that "it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, ... it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all."
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
OTOH, while they are pretty specific about what the system will NOT do (read the "myths about CAPPS II" from the link), it is pretty vague on specifics about things they will be looking for. They metion "suspected terrorists" and that those with "outstanding state or federal warrants for violent crimes", but there is obviously more to the rating that those 2 factors. They just never say what they are.
Why is it that so many of these government security programs seem afronted by the concept of "transparency". They say things like "race and national origin will absolutely not be considered", but they don't give you any idea of what WILL be.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Those who are dangerous to the highway system lose their ability to drive on the highway system. It's called taking away ones driver's license, and it can be invoked for nearly any repeated moving violation, and for some it even comes on the first offense. But the thing is, in order for that to happen, one has to be convicted in a court of having committed the offense, or at least plead guilty by not contesting a ticket.
I have no problem with those who intentionally cause a security scare being barred from ever flying again, but they should at least have been convicted of an air-security related crime first. The reason why the spooks want to use a system that profiles and acts preemptively is because they say that the first crime they committ will kill everybody on the plane if not more. However, the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were already comitting a crime just by being in the United States of America. If we bothered to have security at the borders, we wouldn't need to be over-securing our airport to the point that some law-abiding Americans get locked out.
Just what does make a terrorist profile? They'll never get it to a 100% science, so what will happen is that there will always be some people who have done nothing wrong but spook the database who will get the red flag, and nearly any journalist who ever challenges the Department of Homeland Security will constantly invoke the yellow flag.
Security-by-annoying-everybody is not a working model. It might spend the allocated money and fool some people into feeling safer, but it really doesn't do anything.
Will they run the list through the program and see if it correctly picks out acts of terrorism ahead of time based on personal information fed in in a chronological sequence? I kind of doubt the program will be able to do it correctly. At first. But then they will tweak it to work, and they will claim success. But it will be biased at this point, they may tweak it not to spit out many false positives when run on the data given to them. If it does get put into practice, expect a lot of false positives. Expect civil liberties groups to be outraged. But there is currently a Federal do not fly list, and I don't think it is coordinated now any better than it was when it was first set up. People get put on the list, and no one can say why, or how to get taken off the list. At least if this list is centralized, there will hopefully be some way of clearing one's name if one does get on it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"The TSA says it agrees that privacy must be protected. A privacy officer, Nuala O'Connor Kelly, has been hired to make sure federal privacy law is upheld. The agency won't hold on to passengers' records, except for people who might be terrorists."
Wouldn't logic dictate that anyone *might* be a terrorist, hence the agency will hold on to anyone's records indefinitely?
Azurite is fine covellite is mine.
Is this going to be similar to the screening policies that have old grannies being detained for possible terror threats? What gets me is what's going to happen when someone innocent is labeled as the uber-terrorist by this new system...there better be a nice little compensation package for those folks. Oh wait, we as the rest of the consumers will have to pay for both the system AND the compensation. Well, fancy that.
You forget one thing, there will be no mistakes.
Innocent people will never be flagged as threats because the fact that they are flagged as threats proves their guilt.
There will be no explanation, no due process and no possibility of appeal because that would compromise national security.
Oh, did I mention that once you're on the list, you'll stay there forever? That's right, once a terrorist - allways a terrorist.
Don't think for a moment that this is just another way for Bushcroft & co. to harass people they don't like by denying them transportation rights. No sir! This is the finest example of your taxes at work. You should trust your government, it only tries to protect the country against terrorists.
Now be a good citizen and vote for Kodos, or Kang, does not really matter.
Pragmatism is no guide to live by. Sure, the system in Israel might work, but so would shooting anybody that looks like a terrorist once in the chest and once in the head.
Just because it works does not necessarily make it right.
DATA comments; PROC SORT DATA = comments BY score; PROC DELETE comments >> 1; RUN; DATA entertainment SET commen
"The Political Safety Administration said Wednesday it will order parties to turn over politicians' personal records in the next couple of months to test a computerized political screening program that could keep dangerous people out of the government, reports Yahoo/AP. The Computer-Assisted Politician Prescreening System, or CAPPS II, would rank all candidates according to the likelihood of their being corrupt. Suspected corporate cheats and self-centered assholes would be designated as pig-fuckers and forbidden to vote or run for election. Candidates who have questionable stock or campaign contributions would be classified as yellow and would receive extra security screening. The vast majority would be designated 'friends of Diebold' and allowed through routine screening. But some say the project would violate the corrupt and idiotic way of politics, while others are concerned it would just be another corrupt entity. The Supreme Court, has come up with seven billion dollars that it says will go to the best bid, and as always, companies who would like to bid to build and run the system may have any political or corporate affiliations they want.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Were this system certain to accomplish this goal and not cause collateral damage to innocent people then I would agree. The problem is there is a great deal of doubt whether this system will do any of that. First off I really doubt wanted felons and known terrorists are going to get on an airline in the U.S. now unless they are stupid or have really good fake/stolen ID's.
Another problem is any sleeper cell terrorist who keeps their database entries clean will go through green and like greased lightening. As soon as Al Queada knows how the system works they are just going to work with and around it.
This is unlikely to stop any concerted terrorist but it will cause massive inconvience, loss of privacy and freedom for everyone else. Like most of the measures the U.S. has taken post 9/11 its designed to be a political campaign bullet to show how the current administration is protecting us from terrorism when they really aren't. It is designed to massively extend the tentacles of a growing police state in to everyone's lives. We can't really stop at airlines now can we. Since madrid we have to do subways and trains, and if we do trains we have to buses, and maybe at that point we should start putting check points on highways to nab the terrorists who might be driving car bombs. At this point the U.S. looks like Israel or Nazi Germany. For all of Isreal's security measures they STILL don't stop terrorist attacks. A major goal of terrorism and guerilla campaigns for centuries is precisely to provoke the responses we are seeing from the target government who become increasingly oppresive and unpopular, who trash their own economy trying to stop the unstoppable all of which enhances recruiting for the guerilla movement and encourages the population in general to get rid of the increasingly repressive government.
Another case that is going to burn many is if you are an innocent person who has an mismatch between the personal information you give at the counter and some unknown assortment of databases including commercial credit databases you will recieve yellow or red status, and if you get red you don't fly. If you move very often you know how hard it can be to keep all the personal information in these databases in sync. Instead of stopping terrorists this system is designed to punish people for not keeping all the credit agencies, who already weild unwarranted power over us, in sync. At this point its undefined how an innocent person will go about clearing the discrepency because the TSA will probably not tell you why you have been red flagged. If you need to fly for your job, welcome to unemployment.
This system also give various individuals and agencies of the federal government nearly arbitrary discretion to add you to a watch list and prevent you from flying indefinitely. This is done without a trial, without proof and without appeal. Some government drone or political hack gets ticked at you and they punish you by putting you on a watch list. This is an exceptional tool to punish and marginalize vocal political opponents of the current administation. Watch lists have already being used to prevent anti war activists from flying in the U.S. If there is a political activist who is traveling to speak engagements or protests this is a tool to radicly slow down their exercise of their 1st admentment rights.
Making airlines reasonably safe is already a well defined task:
- Armored locked cockpit doors
- Screen passengers and luggage for explosives and weapons
- Stop the out of control bureaucracy run amuck syndrome and focus the resources on the first two which are really easy to do.
Better yet, to win the war on terrorism compell a real peace in Isreal and the West Bank and get U.S. occupation troops out Islamic countries. If the U.S. and Isreal stop humiliating the Palastinians in particular and arabs in general that will dramaticly reduce the ability of islamic extremists to recruit for and fund their movement.
@de_machina
"Passengers' personal records"
"all air passengers"
"travelers' identities"
"a traveler's risk"
CAPPS II at a Glance does not use the word "you" even once
their followup page CAPPS II: Myths and Facts talks about you only twice.
(funny that its in the 'editorial' section of the site) Anyways, before waiving it off as semantics, consider how it would sound if every 3rd person reference to you was replaced with... you.
Under CAPPS II, airlines will ask you for a slightly expanded amount of reservation information, including your full name, date of birth, home address, and home telephone number. With your expanded information, the system will quickly verify your identity and conduct a risk assessment utilizing commercially available data and current intelligence information on you. The risk assessment will result in a recommended screening level, categorizing you as no risk, unknown or elevated risk, or high risk. Your commercially available data will not be viewed by government employees, and intelligence information on you will remain behind the government firewall. Your entire prescreening process is expected to take as little as five seconds to complete.
Not so benevolent anymore is it? The idea behind CAPPS isn't inherently flawed, its just that i doubt it'll be very secure. My guess is the CAPPS II database will end up getting passed around the internet faster than Paris Hilton.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The Constitution guarantees all persons born or naturalized in the US all the "privileges and immunities" thereof. Way back in the 1800's there was a case in which the Supreme Court tried to almost write this out of the Constitution. They said that "privileges and immunities" didn't include anything like voting or having a fair shot at government jobs or contracts, or getting to go to the same schools or bathrooms as other people, it meant only a few simple rights like the right to sail the navigable waters of the US and the right to travel from place to place. Seems like that ought to include the right to ride on an airliner, and they shouldn't be able to take that away from someone now without a trial.
when the phone # for the "Do Not Call" list is accidentally switched with the "Do Not Fly" list.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Of course, it could just be random screening, but I that seems unlikely to me. I got selected the last few times I flew from Detroit.
Frankly, I still find the procedure somewhat humiliating. It's incredible how inefficient they are. There are always 6-8 TSA guards standing around waiting until the next guard can take over their passenger for the next step. Apparently collecting the documents from the passengers, waiving the next person through the metal detector, staring at the xray monitors, handing over the documents to the person doing the baggage searching, and doing the metal detector screening are all highly specialized tasks that require special skills so that it is strictly impossible for one guard to take over the responsibility of the next one.
Their metal detectors are so sensitive that they regularly "detect" the trouser buttons. Then you have to roll over over the trousers a bit, so that they can check more closely. Their baggage searching doesn't exactly make the impression of being undefeatable, to say the least, but at least that means that it doesn't take ages and they put everything back together as well.
Now imagine you started queueing 30 mins before your boarding deadline, and all this goes on and on, inefficiently etc. First some 15 mins in the queue, then you have to wait again until your baggage got x-rayed, then again for the metal detector checking. I think the worst thing is -- even if they seem nice, maybe I actually feel like chatting with them, then I start think, "Oh better don't, might get misunderstood", "Oh come on, they are humans, too, after all", "Better not, even if it just causes a delay, remember your flight is going in 15 mins". It's like being in an exam without knowing what you are being tested in.
Well sorry about my ramblings, many of you probably know the procedure yourself, but had to get this off my chest. But I would be curious if there is reliable information on whether this "selected security screening" is purely random based, or based on some sort of profiling.
Whether you agree or disagree with the program, you can thank Gen. Wesley Clark for selling it to the government. He was the salesperson for the company that developed the program (I forget the name right now) last year.
When asked during the debates about CAPPS II, Gen. Clark said he'd never heard of it, even after the moderator reminded him of his role in implementing it.
Seems a little strange.