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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."
Myth: CAPPS II will track where and when I travel and will store that information.
Fact: For U.S. persons, information will only be kept for a short period after completion of the travel itinerary, and then it will be permanently destroyed.
So all the passenger data that the EU is leeching to US is being permanently stored - i.e. US is building a database of all EU citizens who have ever travelled to US. scary.
I can't believe the EU sold us out.
SURELY NOT!!!!!
The way it works is called the carnival booth attack, and it is described in much detail in this paper.
The basic idea is very simple. A person gets a score from the system, which is based on how likely they are to be a terrorist. Then, CAPPS II has most of the searches directed at people with high scores. So, a terrorist group needs only do a number of test runs, and see who does and doesn't get searched. The people who don't get searched obviously have low scores, and so they use them for the attacks. And in case you were wondering, yes, the terrorists are already using this scheme -- it was used in the 9/11 attacks. The hijackers did test runs, on the same exact flights to make sure everything worked as planned.
So, if there was an actual tradeoff to be made, then a rational debate could be had about the appropriate tradeoffs to make. But when they try to take away my privacy and as a result decrease the security, that I have a serious problem with.
Myth: CAPPS II will track where and when I travel and will store that information.
Fact: For U.S. persons, information will only be kept for a short period after completion of the travel itinerary, and then it will be permanently destroyed. The prescreening process will be conducted anew each time you fly.
I don't think this will be possible at all. Consider the fact that the information that they collect about a person will have to be backed up to other media to provide recovery options in case of system failures in the CAPPPS II system. Then it will be virtually impossible to permanently remove data.
This is the same situation that Google recognized when it said that their GMail service cannot be guarantee that emails will be permanently deleted.
Fair enough - don't you think the parties concerned should be honest about it though? From what I've read so far AA and USTSA denied that there was any sharing of data - why?
If my GP (doctor) asks me if it's OK to share my medical history with a surgeon I'm unlikely to object. If she fails to ask my permission I will object strongly. If she lies, and claims that she didn't share my data - well, that's worthy of more than just an objection.
...Oh, and by the way, some schmuck will find a way to blow up planes with or without data sharing, internment, shoot-to-kill policies, bloody-great walls, compulsory ID cards, razing villages, etc.
NB. I'm not suggesting that all of the above are current tactics against terrorism: they have all been tried at some point in recent history.
This is where the serious fun begins.
Don't worry--I'm sure Ashcroft and company are hard at work on a national database to be checked against a swipe of your National ID (a.k.a. "standardized driver's license or state ID") when you board any public transporation. At that point, known terrorist (or deadbeat dads, or those with unpaid parking tickets, or people with questionable political affiliations) can be arrested and searched.
In about ten years, we'll have an internal passport system for air, land, and sea transport that would have made Soviet Russia proud.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
You think SPAM filtering is hard?
In 2003, there were 641 Million passengers on U.S. flights.
Zero of them actually attempted to destroy their flight. One of them would have been sufficient (the Shoe Bomber, for instance). The people tasked with finding this individual must thus be accurate to a level of one out of six hundred and forty one million.
By comparison, the odds of winning Powerball are approximately one out of one hundred and twenty million.
But people do win the lottery, quite regularly in fact. Lots of people have to lose, of course -- that's what funds the thing -- but it's not a particularly rare occurance.
That's sort of the idea here. Given enough "losing tickets", we'll beat the odds. And even if we don't -- at least we tried (which, ultimately, is what all the controversy is about right now -- not whether we succeeded in stopping the attacks, which we obviously didn't but whether "we tried".)
Hate to quote Scott McNealy, but like the man who sells the servers that store all our personal information says, "You have no privacy, get over it." Everyone gave up the flight info, because everyone was damn near thrown out of business. That's the bottom line.
From a personal perspective: I've travelled the US about 15 times and spent a significant amount of my tourist Euro there.
In the words of the famous AOL subscriber, "Me too."
I've been to the USA at least twice a year for the last ten years. I was actually in NYC the Oct. after the WTC crash, because I wanted to support the NY hotel and tourist economy at that time. It was really peculiar and very moving to be in Greenwich Village at 10.00pm on a Thursday evening and see the streets deserted aside from a few homeless people and a handful of kids.
Last time I flew was November last year. Air tickets were cheap (around 200 return) so I paid cash. I also made the mistake of flying Air France because I couldn't get a BA flight.
On arrival, the immigration guy gave me the third degree. What was the purpose of my visit? What did I do for a living? Had I ever been arrested? (Answer: no.) What had I been arrested for?
It seems that my answers didn't satisfy him, because he escalated my case, sending me to the 'big room' in which mine was the only white face to be seen.
They kept me hanging around for about three hours, whereupon a senior official came along and asked me a more polite series of questions. (What was the purpose of my visit? Where was I staying? When would I be leaving, etc.) This lasted about two minutes and then they let me in.
Needless to say, I won't be going again. I love the USA and I have some very close friends who are Americans, but in future they can spend their dollars here in Europe, because I'll be fucked if I'm going back there without a significant regime change.
People study where the best departments and research centers are. The US attracted many of the world's top students during the 70's, 80's and 90's, because in some fields, research was most advanced. Part of the reason was because not only was Europe devastated in WWII but many of its researchers emmigrated to the U.S. before and during the war as well as during the early phases of the Cold War. It became self-perpetuating. When the leading centers were in pre-war Europe, Europe was sought ought. When the leading centers were in post-war U.S., the U.S. was sought ought.
Now the have been two generations of post-war reconstruction and there is increasing incentive for them to stay home or return back home. The pull of good centers is augmented by the push provided by the Dept. Homespun Security, Patriot Act I-III, etc.
So the U.S. is losing the safe haven benefit and the dynamic equilibrium is changing. This will eventually stabilize even with things like CAPPS II and a general increasingly anti-research climate (many businesses have already cut their R&D, even Xerox PARC is gone).
However, a real tipping effect can be achieved by adding quality of life and economic issues to the equation. Many businesses have been cutting health coverage. And while there are still some good areas many cities are lacking in basic services like public transportation (could you commute if you wished?) and decent schools (where hard math and science is mastered). Furthermore, businesses have been downsizing and look to be doing so making it a hard climate. The climate is getting harder as the interest rates are at the bottom and both the national decificit and trade deficits are growing. Add the weak dollar to the mix, which might be hiding deflation behind the trade deficit, and it might be better to earn instead of $.
Then you have patents and litigation to deal with, if some corporation objects to your results -- e.g. Felton.
Behaviors like that are just going to ensure that a few more researchers choose to go home and build their centers in Europe, Aus/NZ, India or China.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
there is only one way to effectively win a war the following is how it was done in Oman
22 SAS were sent to assist and an elaborate 5 front hearts and minds campaign, conceived by Watts, was rapidly instigated. The essence of the strategy was to eliminate Omani dissatisfaction; Quabus began a large works programme that would propel Oman into the twentieth Century. The problem now was how to get this message across to the rebels and to get them to understand the truth that there was no longer any need to fight. The commander felt that the original rebels did have right on their side because they simply wanted a better way of life. Part of Watt's plan was psychological; he made certain that the Sultan's far-reaching policies became common knowledge, along with the offer of amnesty to any surrendering rebels. From these defectors it was hoped that levies would be raised to fight the defectors, Watt's strategy was spot on and within month's defectors started to cross the lines. These men (furcats) trained and later became the backbone of fighting in Oman; by mid 1971 support from the local tribes was gradually being won.
This is the UK equivalent of Vietnam in that the fight was against communist insurgents, the difference in the tactics employed by US and UK and the results could not be more glaring. Time and time again it has been shown that firepower is not what wins wars (fights yes) but brain power which earns you the support of the population.
Terrorist Etc can only be defeated if you remove there support, not by killing the son/daughter mother/father of a potential terrorist recruit
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.