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

[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...

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.

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."

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

[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.

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?

[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.

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.