Airlines Ordered To Turn Over Passenger Data

interactive_civilian writes "Wired (among others) is reporting that the Transportation Safety Administration plans 'to order all 72 domestic airlines to turn over the passenger records -- which can include credit card numbers, phone numbers, addresses and health conditions -- in order to stress-test a centralized passenger screening system called "Secure Flight."' They are hoping to reduce the number of "false positives" in the no fly lists. If the information were to be made available, it would be interesting to see how many names that would not have been allowed to fly were allowed to."

Comments

Stress-testing??

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have thought that stress testing could take place without using real data. You could stress test just using huge numbers of randomly generated pieces of data.

It sounds more like a test data conversion, or test functional testing to me...?

Big Brother does the Airline Industry

[Moofius.the.Cow]

Gah, HTML formatting. Repost.

Big Brother is here, but is this any worse than what we already have? We all may abhor a centralized depository of data run by the government, but can private sector databases truly do better?

Take the credit agencies for instances. Three of them, each only communicating a minor amount of information. Got a problem with your credit? Some possible fraud on your record? Just try getting a, non phone-tree, human representative to speak to you - without having to pony up the $10-$25 they want in order to send you a normal report, even though you're entitled to one in the case of fraud. I found it almost impossible.

Compare this to agencies like the SSA or FTC, which can put you in contact with an actual human to discuss the situation almost immediately. Sure, they may have some bloat and haven't cut costs to the bone, but at least they're responsive.

If we could get the same kinda service out of this centralized database, rather than the shadowy 'No Fly' lists being passed around...

...then I for one welcome our Airline Industry Overlords.

Re:Terrorism is impossible to fight

[Zareste]

That's kinda the point, of course. Assuming the government didn't incite 9/11 itself (quite an assumption), the terrorists probably knew the government's reaction ahead of time: Lock down the nation and throw anyone in prison who stands in politicians' ways.

Sorta the old 'butterfly causing a hurricane' effect. Just knock down a building, set back and all the governments will do the rest of the terrorizing for you.

Well at least it's a good time to be a politician. That has to count for something, doesn't it?