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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)."
If they carried their information with them on a smartcard, couldn't someone edit the smartcard and fake their info?
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
Now planebombers need to practice their routes more than before, establishing their frequent flyer status. Their biometric IDs will ensure that only the suicidal dupe is making the runs. At least the final flight will be recoupable in earned mileage. Saudi oil billions will buy only so much air travel.
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make install -not war
If your aim is to use the plane as a suicide bomb, will it matter to you if are fingerprinted? The people who were behiond 9/11 weren't known terrorists/criminals. They were quiet people, under the radar....
My Favourite Meme
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...
No, the hidden subtext is "We really want to make this compulsory but cannot. So we'll give people the chance to opt in and over time make it really inconvenient for those who choose not to until eventually everyone opts in just to avoid the hassle."
Been through a fast-lane enabled toll booth recently? The cash lanes are getting fewer and slower all the time.
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
From the sound of the phrasing (I haven't RTFA), it would seem to me that the card is a relational link between your biometrics and the record in the database.
Without the card, they can't peg that ID number 481453 is John Smith. That's the privacy aspect.
The card has your biometrics on it to let them verify that you are the proper bearer - they compare it's digital copies of your biometrics to the real deal, then they know that you actually are the person that 481453 refers to, and so the green light actually applies to you.
As I say, that's just how I interpret the submission. It's probably totally wrong.
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.
With my luck, I will show up at the airport and then realize that I left my fingers and iris at home.
I can see how insecure this will all wind up being.
Leeloo Dallas, Multipass.
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?
Raise the bar high enough that everyone's equally suspect and no one stands out as a suspect either. We're right back where we started, except more repressive. In a sense this makes things easier on potential terrorists as the rules are more overt, rigid, and thus defined and gamable.
Raise the bar higher and everyone is treated like a criminal, but the criminals are the only ones that don't mind.
KFG
However if the card says "I am John Smith, iris 0x1234ABCD5678FEDC" then it is trivial to pull the said iris' pattern out of the central database and check your real eyes against that trusted copy. By changing the direction of search they simplified the task immensely.
Besides, right now there is no central d/b yet, and all passengers carry their pieces of the database with them. This won't last, though - it is far more practical to have the database centralized. Then even a nudist can fly, as long as he remembers his SSN. Maybe that's the whole point, after all :-)
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.
You'd think that with the hundreds of thousands of people in government, one could have an idea that actually does what it is supposed to, without ulterior motives?
Why are we confiscating fingernail clippers? To protect against hijacking, or to touch everyone in some small way and remind them of exploding planes?
I fail to see how whitelisting white people is going to help anything, other than padding the info of CAPPS, and introducing biometrics to the public -wrapping it in a sense of convenience to help the spread of this insecure ID.
If I held my breath until our government did something *for* me, rather than to or against me, I'd be goddamn Suffocated Smurf.
I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned that Israel has been offering a "trusted traveler" program since 1996.
:
Regardless of your politics or religion or whatever, you have to admit that there are few countries that have to deal with terrorism on a more daily basis than Israel.
And it appears that Israel's voluntary program has also been effective on a logistics level. I found this quote via Google, from the page of Sen. Hutchison (R-TX) referencing a report by the General Accounting Office
At Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, security waiting time has been reduced from approximately one hour to 20 seconds through the use of biometric identifiers.
The biometric identifiers mentioned are part of the "trusted traveler" program.
As long as any program such as this is not compulsory, I view it as a useful option.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Yes, exactly. Everyone who is currently getting instructions from their dog to kill people, gets a coupon for one free popscicle...
Problem solved!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
No. More like "Stop being assholes".
I never heard of any prior and specific demands when those planes hit the WTC. I figure that they simply couldn't be bothered asking and having to go through the ordeal of taking hostages - knowing full well the US wouldn't give anyway.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Nobody is liked by everyone... the diversity of ideas and viewpoints on a planet with multi-billions of people will absolutely ENSURE that someone, somewhere, hates you. Besides, does being unpopular justify violent action?
Just a couple of comments.
1. Fair point... I'll grant you this one.
2. In the right circumstances, I fully support preemptive war, just as I endorse police officers not waiting until they're shot at to shoot back (as a former SWAT officer, I've personal experience with this one). Giving your enemies the first punch is stupid; I can't see sacrificing lives on the basis of either indecision or moral cowardice.
3. Intelligence is often nothing more than a best guess. Occam's razor may be appropriate here... don't attribute to malice that which is explained by simple incompetence.
4. Avoid torturing? Good advice, and probably followed by the vast, overwhelming majority. But defining torture... and whether it's ever permissible is a great debate. Rhetorically, a case can be made for torture in some circumstances (if a terrorist knew where a nuke was, and refused to divulge that info, is torture justifiable? Does the tiny private moral victory of "I'm a good person... I don't torture others" drown out the screams of the millions you might be sacrificing by staying within your own moral comfort zone?) I honestly don't know the answer to that one. As technology progresses, and the technological bar to enter the nuclear-club gets lower and lower (and as nukes proliferate, ala AQ. Khan), that scenario becomes plausible... Seriously... what would you do?
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
So far it seems no one has pointed out the flipside of this "solution" and the social problems that follow. I'm talking about the effect it will have on the people who sign up and use it, instead of worrying about the system's effectiveness at discouraging terrorism (which is an altogether very important risk) I'm talking about its effective on our nation's social structure.
Without a doubt, some of the earliest users of this system will be the political class. Right now we are suppossed to be subject to random searches (as well as an apparently random no-fly list, but that's another topic). This condition means that potentially anyone, all the way up to the speaker of the house and the senate majority/minority leaders must entertain the possibility of being subjected to random search and all the inconvenience and embarrasment that goes with it.
There have been countless stories in the news of big famous celebrities and big important rich white politicians being subject to "pointless searches" since everybody knows they aren't terrorists. Well, besides the fact that some of these people are clearly off their rocker to begin with, at least being subjected to a search is equalitarian or in other words, it's "keeping it real," for those who make the rules too.
Once all the big fat important people effectively opt out of the hassle of searches, only the occasional flyer, the average joe and his poorer cousin, who still make up the majority of passengers, will be subject to the hassle of searches. The people in power will no longer have to live with the consequences of their (assinine and useless) "security" while the rest of us will still bear the brunt of it.
The next logical step is for "security" measures to be stepped up one little bit at a time because, after all, what politician wants to be seen as "soft on terrorism?" More thorough and invasive searches adding, say, 20 minutes to your wait time -- not a problem on paper since we are all expected to get to the airport 4 hours before departure, so there is plenty of time for extended and more frequent searches (yeah right). Since the very people who will inevitably be tightening the screws on the thumbs of general public will never feel the pressure themselves, it makes it that much easier for them to fuck with us with impunity.
On the plus side, the database of people in this program is certain to be a high-value target for identity theft. If security on the data is handled by the same people responsible for airport (in)security, then we can look forward to a successful break-in and theft of the database and all the personal information contained therein. Maybe the fallout from such a theft will be enough to get some effective data privacy laws passed in this country. But I'm not holding my breath.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Let me tell you something about torture.
It's only good for one thing: getting some innocent bugger to "confes" anything you want to hear, so you can then hold a fake trial and execute them. That's why it's been used so much for the last 10 millenia or so, and is still loved by dictators.
Think just of the _millions_ (literally, and we even have the records) who confessed to flying on broomsticks, having sex with the devil, summoning vile demons and plagues, signing pacts in blood with Satan, etc, at the hands of the Inquisition. Stuff that isn't even physically _possible_, but enough torture got that crap "confessed" anyway. That's the kind of bullshit that torture produces.
You get a fellow snug on a rack and torture them enough, they'll tell you any _lie_ you want to hear, just to make it stop. You just have to bring them to the point where even death looks like a nicer alternative.
But for actually obtaining _intelligence_ it's fucking useless. What you get is whatever _you_ had already decided you want to hear, not trze information you didn't know. I.e., you could just as well just act on your mis-conceptions and prejudice, and spare the torture part, since you'll get exactly there anyway.
So you know what will actually happen in your "terrorist with a nuke" scenario? You'll torture some innocent arab who probably didn't even like the fundamentalists at all in the first place. And you'll keep torturing him until he tells you whatever false "confession" you wanted to hear, just to make the pain stop.
Will you find your nuke? No fucking way. But now you have a "confession" so you can execute or deport an innocent.
Well gee... if that's what the "land of the free" is supposed to mean...
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't know what these frequent fliers have packed in their carry on bags that causes them to waste so much time at security. I've been to the nations busiest airports at the worst times (holidays) and have never spent more than 10-15 minutes or so getting through security. I never set off the metal detector therefore I never have to get searched. Its extremely simple:
1. Empty out your pockets into your carry on bag. Everything! Keys, changes, everything! I usually keep my wallet on me just because only thing in there is paper and plastic.
2. Stick your boarding pass in your back pocket so nothing is in your hands.
3. Wear sneakers. If you can't wear sneakers then take your shoes off ahead of time and send them through the machine.
4. No big metal belt buckles. I see this so often, people are idiots.
5. Walk through normally, not folding your arms or hands in pockets.
6. Be polite! This is a biggie! I've seen so many rude frequent fliers and businessmen at security.
Using these simple steps avoids any metal on you and gets you through security without getting stopped. It takes no time at all to put things in your carry on bag before you leave your home or car. But people are so freaking lazy then they act like the security is singling them out when the real truth is they set off the detector because they are a freaking moron.