U.S. Government Wants June Passenger Records

danwiz was one of several readers to point out the Associated Press story (carried here by the Boston Globe) which says that that the Transportation Security Administration plans to issue an emergency order requiring that U.S. airlines turn over passenger data for all June 2004 flights to the government within 40 days. "Such data may include credit card numbers, address, telephone number and meal request. Perhaps unrelated to terrorism, the data will be also tested to see if fraud or identity theft can be detected."

Comments

Comment period

[stoborrobots]

Hopefully, in the 30 day comment period, the airlines make some worthwhile objections...

Who am I kidding?

Re:Comment period

[stoborrobots]

Sad, but true....

Guess that's the end of liberty, for the illusion of temporary safety...

Re:Comment period

[andreMA]

Of course the passengers - the ones whose data is concerned - aren't invited to comment.

Re:Comment period

[andreMA]

...Although this claims a public comment period... "Although not required by law" (i.e., we're going to do it anyhow; the comment period is just window dressing)

Re:Comment period

[Old Uncle Bill]

No, it's obvious it is all working. We haven't had any terrorist attacks since 9/11, so the logical conclusion is that all of this invasion of privacy is working. Oh wait...

Re:Comment period

[sjalex]

Well, you wouldn't want to invade their privacy.

Conspiracy

[dsk052]

The good news is it shoots a hole in all the conspiracy theorists idea that the government has this information readily availalbe all the time. :)

Re:Conspiracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they already do and this is just a smoke screen to give the impression that they don't.

Re:Conspiracy

[sam.union]

why was this modded funny? IT IS TRUE! we sleep, they live...

Keeping you on your toes

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Bush is losing his post-convention bounce. Kerry gave a great speech to open the last phase of the election.

Gee, we need a distraction! Let's remind the voters that they need to be scared. A terrorist might kill you and you child at any minute! Only Bush can save you!

Re:Keeping you on your toes

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this flamebait? Bush has used fear quite successfully ever since September 11th. I'm sure all hard core Bush lovers (i.e. all Republicans) would disagree. They're I guess they're getting mod points, now. Of course, most of the Bush lovers are the ones saying, "They can have information about me. I've got nothing to hide."

Re:Keeping you on your toes

[davidsyes]

Who say's he's "my" president? I don't own him, nor would I ever claim his ass. He doesn't speak for me, only commit and condemn many people to global consequences for his inane, dangerous comments or embarrasses the country with his inept cliches. He may be anointed **THEE** president, but he is not **MY** president. (Notice the lack of capitalization here...)

When I was in the Navy, and topics about stupid or corrupt presidents came up, the Chiefs would scowl, "It's not the MAN you're defending and supporting! It's the POSITION!"

Well, that shit has GOT to change. Curious George could be in the seat of the Presidency, but a simian would not be any better nor any worse than what we have now. So, I argue, looking like a human and feigning vestiges of sentience do not a president make!

I'll only respect a president who is not given to arms deals, oil deals, executions-with-glee, or the like. We need a president who is hell-bent on DEFUSING, not destroying our opposers. Every system needs opponents, so long as they act only commensurate to what has been done to them. We tend to forget we did or brokered a SHITload of shady deals. Karma can be a BITCH. And we tend to forget that, too-- and often don't remember or recall that even when we get our asses kicked from time to time...

David Syes

You're right...

[bergeron76]

This gives them a "credible source" to be able to attribute your information to.

Seriously, they couldn't possibly arrest you as an "enemy of the state" just because you violated the Patriot Act/DMCA and were considered pseudo-potentially-suspicious by NSA, CIA, or FBI.

However, now that the "MCP^H^H^H Department of Homeland Security" is in place in conjunction with the "Transportation Saftey Administration", you can rest assured that travel information for June (and the months following) will ONLY be used for your protection.

Now move along Citizen...

... or our Gubment will open a can of "whatever-we-want-in-a-military-tribunal-exempt-of -your-constitutional-rights" on your Patriotic ass - you criminal, non-Christian punk.

(I have karma to burn, so if you think I'm trolling - bring it on... If there's ever been anything worth burning karma for in my lifetime, it's the future of the USA and the world in general. Even if you don't agree with my points, you owe it to yourself as a fellow intellectual to make the right decision in November [if you are or know a US Citizen] - VOTE!

Interesting

[0x0d0a]

Because once you have lost data privacy, you're never, ever going to get it back.

One more database falls to the federal government.

I can't wait until the first person prosecuted or watch-listed because of something he said over an instant-messaging program ("God, Bush is an idiot -- I wish someone would shoot him".) Still no GPG encryption on IM clients (well, other than gabber).

Used to be that you could have an anonymous website, but that's about to go away.

You can't drive without a license (where you get thumbprinted).

You can't fly without all sorts of data about you being logged.

The US government is pushing hard for biometrics in all areas. Biometrics are *terrible* as a traditional authentication system mechanism, since once someone's stolen the secret data (say, hacked one iris reader), you can never invalidate it. However, they're wonderful for monitoring purposes, since people have their "papers" with them wherever they go. They can also be used to tie together databases nicely.

Authoritarianism allowed by the application of computers will be one of the greatest new world problems that we'll have to face. Never before have societies had the ability to crack down, monitor, and ensure precisely compliant behavior on such a large chunk of their population. Can humans function well in such an environment? Is such an environment a good idea?

Re:Interesting

[jaybird144]

You can't drive without a license (where you get thumbprinted).

I'm up to two states now where I've never been thumbprinted to get a license. (Minnesota and Illinois, and Illinois was only a month ago.) The most identifying data I had to give was my SSN.

Re:Interesting

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

Question: does anything stop these airline companies from exchanging this information (other than the CC number, perhaps) with each other? Does it really make sense for us to fear giving to our elected officials information that we already allow unelected corporations to play with to their hearts content?

I think it's time we realize--what the U.S. government knows is a superset of what any American corporation knows. If you give any information to any corporation at all, you should just expect the government can get their grubby hands on it at will. There is no law requiring a corporation to withold information requested by the government--or even to tell customers such information has been requested--even if the government has no right to compel such a revelation.

What's a little profiling among friends?

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

What is so bad about the idea of establishing criteria for high risk passengers? Statistically speaking, I believe that the prominent threat to the airlines (notice I don't say "only") comes from Arab Muslim single males between the ages of 18 and 45. This criteria certainly fit all of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers. What is interesting is that although the article mentions that the post data would be turned over, it doesn't specifically state exactly how the government will use the data in terms of homeland security.

At any rate, though, I don't think that maintaining flexible profiles for high risk passengers is such a bad idea. Some passengers may be inconvenienced; however, if it will save lives, then I am quite willing for some people to end up having their feelings hurt.

Re:What's a little profiling among friends?

[renehollan]

It's posts like this that make it obvious just how it was that Hitler was able to round up Jews so easily.

Those that don't learn the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat them.

Re:What's a little profiling among friends?

[JohnnyNoSPAM]

Thank you for your insight, UP. The fact that some violent people have been named John is a coincidence. On the other hand, the fact that the 9/11 terrorists were a part of a polluted variant of Islam is not coincident. Islamic extremists *are* a genuine threat to the American people. This is not an imagined theory but rather a threat that has both been announced by terrorists and acted upon. They seek to strike again.

The hard part is that we have not the technology to distinguish people who hold a sincere devotion to Islam vice those whose minds have been polluted with animosity and extremism. Although on a much more broad scale, these terrorists are along the lines of the Christian terrorists who bomb abortion clinics. These so-called Christians do not reflect the whole of Christianity as do the Islamic extremists (terrorists) not reflect the whole of Islam. It is imperative that we closely monitor who is boarding our airlines. In my post, I did not recommend locking away everyone who is a Muslim. As a note, my sister and brother-in-law are Muslims. Finding the right balance of anticipating who is a threat and maintaining civil liberties can be a challenge. America is not about sending people to concentration camps, nor would I ever want to see our great nation go down that path.

Since we cannot read the hearts and intentions of people, we must use statistical data *in addition to* additional security measures to prevent terrorists from executing another event like 9/11. I truly regret that some people who are completely innocent and have nothing to do with the wrong doings of extremists will be scrutinized, but we must understand that these measures are being put in place as a reaction to a growing threat rather than as a measure simply for the government to find ways to encroach upon our daily lives. We are at war. There are people who would like to do us serious harm, and we must keep ourselves alert and not kid ourselves into thinking that religious faith or other statistical data is but a mere coincidence.

Re:What's a little profiling among friends?

[CaptainZapp]

What is so bad about the idea of establishing criteria for high risk passengers?

Simple, that the true baddies will avoid to fall into this profile. Since more attention is directed towards those folks of which the computer believes fall into the category of baddies, less attention is dialed out to those that don't fall into this category and this will be exploited.

Read about the Carnival Booth Algorithm for more information.

Re:What's a little profiling among friends?

[DLR]

I'll spare you the obvious Benjamin Franklin quote. If our government hadn't been so busy grabbing all our guns the passengers on the hijacked flights on September 11th would have been able to defend themselves (see note below). Terrorists (and other criminals) are always trying to avoid security (DuH!), but if the majority of citizens provide their own security then, and only then, are security precautions unavoidable for the want-to-be perpetrator. No government, be it Federal, State, or Local, has the manpower or other resources to provide for each citizen's personal or family security 24x7. You, and you alone, are responsible for that. Note: Yes, I subscribed to an armed citizenry, but I'm not stupid either. I am aware that for "safe" gun usage on an aircraft that citizens would have to have alternative loads such as plastic bullets. The fact remains that unprepared passengers stopped the terrorists on one flight, and had the passengers on the other flights known there soon to be fate they too could have saved thousands of other lives, possibly even including their own.

Re:What's a little profiling among friends?

[ballpoint]

When I was a child I saw a television series about the holocaust.

Terrified, I asked my father: "Dad, how come these people didn't leave Germany when they still could ?" He answered: "A lot did, but most wanted to stay near their family and didn't think it would become that bad."

Re:so how long untill I become a criminal?

[SimianOverlord]

OK, it's quite simple.

1. You're using Firefox
2. You had two tabs open
3. With two YRO stories
4. You replied to the wrong one.
5. You want this one.
6. Someone will shortly claim your soon-to-be reposted comment is a dupe and point to the one in this story as proof.
7. You will lose more karma.
Therefore:

*Don't post while drunk.*

IM client encryption interoperation

[0x0d0a]

And it's halfway there, but by not using GPG, it means that it can't piggyback off of all the other work that I do to maintain a trust database (I'm not going to maintain a different list of identities of people that I know of for every single program I use -- that's just unreasonable.) Also, it isn't a standard -- nothing interoperates with it. Sure, licq has a method of encrypting messages (actually, might just be SSL instead of full end-to-end encryption -- I'd have to look), gaim has two, jabber clients have at least one). None of them interoperate, so nobody uses them.

If a client did something as simple as taking a random number at the start of each session and sending it to the remote client, and then every message from the remote client had, as a header, a nonce consisting of tuple of a local random number (an increasing sequence number) and the sent-at-session-initiation random number, and then each message was GPG encrypted and signed, you have a standard mechanism that can be used by any client just by feeding the data into GPG -- a *standard* mechanism that every client can support. (The random numbers are necessary to avoid replay attacks -- else I could log someone saying "Sure, I give you authorization to do that" and then use that statement in another conversation. That's not a big deal from an encryption standpoint, but from a signing standpoint, especially as IM is being used in business now, it's serious.)

The point which everyone's missing

[nusratt]

"We are at war. There are people who would like to do us serious harm, and we must keep ourselves alert and not kid ourselves into thinking that religious faith or other statistical data is but a mere coincidence."

I've stopped using all public transport which requires ID, if it also means the potential for data retention or a database search (versus mere inspection of your ID).

All these comments about security versus privacy miss an important point:
strictly speaking, security does NOT require that ANY privacy be sacrificed.
There are alternatives.

Even tin-foil-hat (Ultimate Paranoid) I would be willing to submit to personal searches before boarding -- as exhaustive as needed to ensure that I present no risk -- IF it meant that I didn't have to PERMANENTLY risk any privacy/anonymity by making any info about myself available for recording, etc.

I'd gladly trade momentary personal "dignity", and additional costs and delays, to retain my long-term privacy.

All these "terrorism"-related measures aren't just about security. They're also about the inexorable tendency of large regulatory institutions to become impersonal and concomitantly unconcerned about individual rights, an observation which is part of the bedrock rationale for "anarchists".

Particularly in the case of law-enforcement, people in those institutions drool at the prospect of having an excuse to collect exhaustive data about the entire populace, for reasons and purposes far beyond the prevention of terrorism.

Already started to creep.

[base3]

Perhaps unrelated to terrorism, the data will be also tested to see if fraud or identity theft can be detected.

And in a few years, you'll be denied boarding and arrested after a swipe of your national ID reveals that you have some unpaid parking tickets in Peoria or you're a little behind on your child support payments.

Who else remembers being told about the horrors of Soviet Russia in elementary school, one of which being the internal passport and lack of freedom to travel? Guess what, kids--it's here.

What's a little profiling among friend and enemy?

[davidsyes]

"America learns from history."

Well, excuse the living hell out of ME.

If we learned, then why did we NOT follow the Israeli model, where agents capable of putting a bullet between your eyes in 3.4 seconds, and place agents on planes. Fly them ON DUTY. Fly cops coast to coast. The government can afford it by using funny money to get the tickets, let the airlines post the cash in the bank, and then the DOTreas at the end of the day retreives destroys or recirculates the genuine but tightly-controlled bills.

We COULD get the HELL OUT of foreign markets where living ruling elders despise or are are nonplussed by us. We COULD let the living KIDS decide 10 or 15 years from now where they want to be, rather that VOA telling them, trying to sidestep legit or illegit rulers, thereby PISSING them off and inducing them to conspire. While not a leader or elected official, Bin Laden, as twisted as he is, DOES show that some people will do anything to punish their own corrupt governments (adopted or not) for collaborating with America, from their perspective.

If "America learns", then why have we got bushes and rovers running the show? If America learns, why do we have city offices like San Jose costing HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS for taxpayers because cronism and back-scratching determines which vendors' equipment go into an office?

If Americans learn, then when will be the THIRD reported rape/molestation of Okinawa girls by uniformed US personnel? If America learns, why is it that we are so hated to the point that the sitting SElected president steadfastly refused to permit American uniformed personell stand trial in nations where captured and jailed for breaking local laws, and where we can execute criminals here when back home they may not have execution as an option, nor any reciprocal extradition treaties with the US?

We learn MY ASS! Except for tax bodies that figure out every goddamn taxable-transaction scenario, except for arms-deals-continuation, and the like, we learn SLOWLY.

There is a lot to love about America, but we STILL have lot of curdly, funky, inedible matter in the folds of our national skin. Like many molds, it WON'T go away until collectively we come clean, leave "markets" off-limits, stop barging our way into tribes' and villages' mores, and we stop financing corrupt or ineptly run airlines while enriching the CEOs who stay in power and get paid on CIVILIAN TAXES.

We learn? We DO. We do things with strings attached, almost always. We learn how to throw laws and contracts like Alien throws eggs in a hot, steamy cauldron of hell.

We have a LOT to learn.

David Syes