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Registered Traveler Program Open For Business
storem writes "Enrollment into TSA's Registered Traveler program started yesterday at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Frequent flyers are given the opportunity to sign up for a fast-track system using biometrics to identify themselves. It seems this is pretty much the same system tested in Europe in the s-Travel program. There frequent flyers carried their biometric identifiers (fingerprint & iris) with them between airports on a smart card (privacy reasons)."
I don't see how this solves a problem. A businessman of ethnic background working in the Middle East and flying regularly will not be possible to distinguish from a terrorist posing as a businessman.
Or perhaps the hidden subtext is "The biometrics signatures will enable white non-suspicious regular travelers to whizz through customs while suspiscious non-whites are filtered for more efective controls by customs".
Other than that possibility, I have nothin per-se against biometric controls - it's how they are used and who by that's the problem.
A little planning goes a long way...
Or one might simply peruse a copy of Huxley's prophetic Brave New World...
And wonder how are the themes of Brave New World any different than the themes of the US government (or any government) of today?
The Themes of Brave New World
1. COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY- VERSUS INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM
Community, Identity, Stability is the motto of the World State. It lists the Utopia's prime goals. Community is in part a result of identity and stability. It is also achieved through a religion that satirizes Christianity- a religion that encourages people to reach solidarity through sexual orgy. And it is achieved by organizing life so that a person is almost never alone.
Identity is in large part the result of genetic engineering. Society is divided into five classes or castes, hereditary social groups. In the lower three classes, people are cloned in order to produce up to 96 identical "twins." Identity is also achieved by teaching everyone to conform, so that someone who has or feels more than a minimum of individuality is made to feel different, odd, almost an outcast.
Stability is the third of the three goals, but it is the one the characters mention most often- the reason for designing society this way. The desire for stability, for instance, requires the production of large numbers of genetically identical "individuals," because people who are exactly the same are less likely to come into conflict. Stability means minimizing conflict, risk, and change.
2. SCIENCE AS A MEANS OF CONTROL
Brave New World is not only a Utopian book, it is also a science-fiction novel. But it does not predict much about science in general. Its theme "is the advancement of science as it affects human individuals," Huxley said in the Foreword he wrote in 1946, 15 years after he wrote the book. He did not focus on physical sciences like nuclear physics, though even in 1931 he knew that the production of nuclear energy (and weapons) was probable. He was more worried about dangers that appeared more obvious at that time- the possible misuse of biology, physiology, and psychology to achieve community, identity, and stability. Ironically, it becomes clear at the end of the book that the World State's complete control over human activity destroys even the scientific progress that gained it such control.
3. THE THREAT OF GENETIC ENGINEERING Genetic engineering is a term that has come into use in recent years as scientists have learned to manipulate RNA and DNA, the proteins in every cell that determine the basic inherited characteristics of life. Huxley didn't use the phrase but he describes genetic engineering when he explains how his new world breeds prescribed numbers of humans artificially for specified qualities.
4. THE MISUSE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONDITIONING Every human being in the new world is conditioned to fit society's needs- to like the work he will have to do. Human embryos do not grow inside their mothers' wombs but in bottles. Biological or physiological conditioning consists of adding chemicals or spinning the bottles to prepare the embryos for the levels of strength, intelligence, and aptitude required for given jobs. After they are "decanted" from the bottles, people are psychologically conditioned, mainly by hypnopaedia or sleep-teaching. You might say that at every stage the society brainwashes its citizens.
5. THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS CARRIED TO AN EXTREME A society can achieve stability only when everyone is happy, and the brave new world tries hard to ensure that every person is happy. It does its best to eliminate any painful emotion, which means every deep feeling, every passion. It uses genetic engineering and conditioning to ensure that everyone is happy with his or her work.
6. THE CHEAPENING OF
If they *are* the owner of the card and the flight history data is encrypted by the airlines, what's the problem?
This seems like it was designed by Microsoft -- let's make the system more secure by adding ways to bypass it in the name of convenience! I feel much better about flying now.
Now, what is the reasoning behind this? Why can people registered only use the designated checkpoints at their "home" airport? For folks who frequently travel across the country, will saving half an hour at one measly airport be worth giving a governmental organization their fingerprints and iris scans?
I don't get it. If the TSA obtains this data, it seems they should allow a person to use special checkpoints in Boston, Los Angeles, Houston and Washington (other cities testing the program) as well as in Minneapolis. For a lot of folks, not having to wait in line when they start their flights in Minnesota (but getting no special priviliges anywhere else) won't pay the cost of the government "knowing who they are".
That's a pretty good point.
What do you suggest the government do instead or in addition to this? For me, right now, nothing comes to mind that anyone would be happy with (but hey, it's late)
Does anyone else have any ideas to:
- Improve
- Reorganize, or
- Change
this process?I read in today's San Fransisco Examiner , page 3, PJ Corkery column 6-28-04:
Then I wish [visiting] Bill Clinton could roam the streets of SoMa, where he might spy the posters showing the hooded, bewired Iraqi prisoner, with the angry caption, "Got Democracy?" The posters are the work of Robert Mailer Anderson, the gifted and funny novelist of Northern California ("Boonville", Mr. President, is Anderson's terrific novel about growing up as the child of especially narcissistic and narcotized Baby Boomers). Those posters were prompted by Anderson's on going concern about civil liberties, a concern sharpened into dismay when, while trying to board a plane last month, he was told that his traveling companion was on the government's "No Fly List" and could not alight the plane. Who was this suspect traveling companion, this possible terrorist?... Anderson's two-year old daughter, that's who. This toddler was identified by name as one too dangerous to let on a plane."
These are the people you're paying billions in taxes to for Homeland Security?
It actually makes a lot of sense to use biometrics to automate immigration checks, because it's entirely a question of verifying the passengers' identity. Once the gonvernment has made the determination that a citizen/resident is eligible to enter the country, that person will be likewise eligible to enter every time henceforth (until the passport or residence permit expires).
On the other hand, in pre-boarding security checks, identity verification is not the question at hand. The objective there is screen passengers for weapons. A seemingly well behaved citizen could be weapon-free 99 times, then sneak a weapon through on his 100th flight. It might even be unintentional -- a terrorist would try to plant knives in the luggage of these trusted fast-track individuals.
The TSA's Registered Traveler program is analogous to automating the customs check instead of the immigration check. The fast-track passengers may be statistically more trustworthy, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. The TSA could get more or less the same results by adding express lanes requiring a minimum of 50000 miles on your frequent-flyer card.
I am not trying to start a flame war here (hows that for a pre-emptive strike! :)
On 2: As a police officer you should also have heard of 'innocent until proven guilty'; someone is innocent until the situation is fully ascertained (not when you are first storming the building) or when a crime is blatantly committed (you are fired upon). Until then, any assumption of guilt is purely circumstantial, and thus not worthy of punishment. There is an acceptable level of uncertainty on the police officer level, but not in the international policy level.
On 3. I agree with you on the nature of intelligence, just wanted to be a pain, and point out you meant Hanlon's Razor', not Occam's Razor.
On 4. The classic argument for torture (terrorist, nuclear bomb, 3 hours before detonation.. heated argument in philosophy 101) is hardly applicable to the current problems encountered in Iraq. I am sure you read the articles, so I am sure you remember that a large number of young men, who may have been invovled in attacks on soldiers were tortured and humiliated, although many of the soliders admitted to not doing it to extract any information. The problem here is that torture was the rule, not the exception.
Because if terrorists ever do set a nuke or chemical weapon off, the rules of international relations will suffer their most drastic change ever. If you think Bush's policies of preemptive war are incorrect, just wait until you see the policies of a post-nuked-NY United States.
But since the most likely target right now of an Islamic-whacko WMD is Europe (for a lot of reasons - split them from the US, probably easier access, and more...) such policy changes won't be limited to the US - nuke Berlin and what comes to power would probably really resemble the Nazis - and not just in the minds of MoveOn.org.
Do you think if Paris gets nuked there won't be a bunch of mosques burned and some form of "ethnic cleansing" happening in France?
A post-terrorist-nuke world would be an ugly world. I've got no qualms about doing anything necessary to avoid such a world.