Slashdot Mirror
American Airlines Is Third Company To Share Data
crem_d_genes writes "American Airlines has become the third U.S. airline to admit sharing passenger records with the government. They were proceeded in admissions by Northwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways. At the heart of the matter is the implementation of the of U.S. Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) use of the provisions known as CAPPS II. Some privacy advocates have expressed strong dissent with this plan. Some concerns have even been brought up in Congress, though for different reasons. The Department of Homeland Security has a site entitled CAPPS II: Myths and Facts."
Amen.
I enjoy my privacy, too, but too much anonymity can be a bad thing. We all enjoy an abundance of anonymity on the net, and look how people behave: rampant copyrighht infringement, unregulated drug sales, rampant cheating (which has destroyed the value of online gaming for many), spam, truly offensive porn (not just harmless pinups, which I wholeheartedly endorse, but really deviant crap that caters to whole communities of bottom feeders), hate sites, etc...
I doubt you'd see all of that if the people involved were stripped of their cloak of anonymity.
It's sort of ironic, really. Most of the US government is perpetually hounded by the media every moment of the day, yet we all seem to be perpetually lamenting their secretive behaviour. The rest of us all enjoy almost complete obscurity, and complain when we are forced to surrender our address to the people WE elected to protect us.
I think the fear is that this information will somehow be abused, and it is a potential danger. But until they start making note of your race, religious preference or political affiliation, I wouldn't worry too much. About the worst thing they are likely to do with your address is send you coupons. All they want to do is run the names against a list of known troublemakers and keep an eye on them.
Ever watch the show "Airline"? 10 minutes of that, and you'll begin to wonder why they let as many people fly as they do. Airports attract a wide cross-secton of humanity, and rival bus stations for the circus-like quality of their crowds. Drunks, drifters, morally outraged consumers, people who are so fat they can barely fit in the plane, enough denizens of trailer parks to keep the Jerry Springer show on the air for an entire season, really...it is amazing to me how cavalier some people are when it comes to flying. Anyone with even the slightest idea of what a delicate balance of tremendous forces are involved in getting them to Disneyland in two hours would, I think, behave a little more respectfully than many people seem to do on airplanes. I definitely think they need to ban the sale of alcohol on them altogether. If they want to throw a few "high-risk" passengers off, fine by me. I recommend the obese woman complaining about having to buy two tickets. More runway for me...
That being said, I'm still glad their are some naysayers out there watching the proceedings with a skeptical eye. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
But if we fear our own government more than some guy on a 777 with an Uzi, then maybe we need to be starting our own database, eh?