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TSA Lied About Protecting Passenger Data
wk633 writes "A report by Homeland Security Department Acting Inspector General Richard Skinner, said the agency misinformed individuals, the press and Congress in 2003 and 2004. It stopped short of saying TSA lied.
Bruce Schneier does say 'the TSA lied' on his blog." Scary stuff, and yet it's even scarier how little the general public has caught on.
The general public never catches on, it's normal.
That's what's really scary.
Nevertheless, most of the transfers that we reviewed were executed between parties bound by agreements forbidding additional sharing or disclosure of the passenger information. Of the more than 12 million records transferred, a passenger's data was inappropriately disclosed to the public in only one instance. In this instance, a government contractor's inappropriate disclosure of information was inadvertent.
So, because it was a government contractor and not the government itself I should be fine with the one slip up because the contractor just didn't have the proper amount of care necessary to carry out the task with the proper amount of security necessary?
Let me guess, the person who's information was divulged has little or no option of recourse against the contractor. Of course this report doesn't say anything about that. Will the contractor be used again? Why wasn't the contractor listed in the report so that everyone knows who they are. After all, they leaked someone's private info, I think the public should at least know that they shouldn't be dealt with at any time.
TSA's policy environment with respect to privacy has changed substantially since its inception. From its inception, TSA recognized personal privacy and confidentiality as important concerns. Especially in the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, finding a balance between these concerns and transportation and aviation security was a difficult challenge.
There is no need for a balance. Regardless of the emergency state of the nation people's privacy should not take a back seat. We all know Ben Franklin's comment and it rings true here.
Regardless of passenger data sharing, lists of known problem individuals, etc, people are going to get on that plane and cause problems (whether directly or indirectly). We are always a step behind and trying to close holes that were used in the past. The terrorists will always find some hole we haven't closed because they haven't used it before.
Our weak attempts at ending terrorism do nothing but erode our freedoms and that's exactly what they want to have happen. Way to go!
Scary stuff, and yet it's evem scarier how little the general public has caught on.
They have caught on to what they were told to. They seriously believe that they are now safer that their privacy has been eroded. They are dazzled with big numbers and small reported incident numbers (i.e. how many people were affected by the Patriot Act).
People want to be told what to think. They want to be told they are safe and they will seriously believe they are. People who think otherwise are labeled "paranoid" and not worthy of belief. Only those that continually fill the heads of their citizens with spin are worthy of listening to. Who are we kidding? How is the public supposed to "catch on" when they are bombarded by government sponsored propaganda centered around the positive influence the TSA has had on airline safety? If we watched network-sponsored TV news we might have had a different view on the whole situation right? The government propaganda pieces looked and sounded quite legit as they were meant to. So the people that don't rely on personal research and news from multiple outlets really did believe the TSA was doing things in their best interests.
What I believe is scary is that people just shrug it off and say, "all administrations do these things." Perhaps, but this one was caught and you still don't care.
Is it really that hard to write out the name of the Acronyms at least once?
Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Lied about Protecting Passenger Data. Then you can talk about the TSA until you blue in the face. Is the BSA the Business Software Alliance or the Boy Scouts of America?
Sure we work with computer all the time and take Acronyms all the time and many are very complex.. CPU, RAM, ROM, GNU, etc... It is fine when you are talking about computer stuff. But when you start moving to government Acronyms or Business Acronyms, we should get a better description. Is PSC Play Station Console, Public Service Commission, or Pubic Safety Control? Please think before you start using acronyms especially in less geeky topics such as business, law, politics, governments, and non astronomy sciences. Even if it is geeky related if there is a change that a lot of people wont know what you mean please spell it out.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Honestly? The TSA is a bureacratic mess, they can levee fines against anyone they deam fit for any reason they see fit and don't even have to tell you why. You can't complain, you can't do anything about it. Yet, it is all done for your "safety."
No fucking way... I can't believe it.. the government would never lie...
Conclusions:
"Although we found no evidence of harm to individual privacy, TSA could have taken more steps to protect privacy. TSA did not consistently apply privacy protections in the course of its involvement in airline passenger data transfers. This inconsistency pertained to TSA's efforts in acquisitions, contract enforcement, and internal practice."
So no evidence was leaked but they could've done a better job.
Even scarier is how the original poster thinks the general public can catch on to anything. This is the country where we need to put car seat instructions in 5th grade english so parents can understand them.
The general public doesn't want a democracy. It wants a group of people to solve all their problems. Protects us from these bad men. Give us free food because I don't want to work. Keep my comunity safe from drugs. But the truth is the governemt can only go so far. We need to educate people on how to be active in there comunity. Be able to get things done withough having to spend a lot of tax payer money on things we could do ourselfs for less. We want clean streets? So when you see garbage on the street pick it up. If your road isn't plowed yet take out the shovel and shovel out your area. If people spent more time helping the government getting there work done and less aking the governemt to do things for them then. Then we can fix a lot of our problems ("Ask now what your country can do for you. But what can you do for your country.")
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Aero News Net (ANN), a great daily news site for aviation, has been covering this as well.
Part 1
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~Lake
The general public may not care, but that does not make it ok to do. The general public puts its trust in institutions like the TSA to protect it. And if it's failing at that, while lying to the public, there should be an investigation of this. This is where Congress should be meddling instead of baseball or the Schiavo case.
Rather than the general public's apathy, the government's apathy is more shocking.
Also, the TSA may be trying to do a good thing, but it is failing. The "responses were not accurate", according to the spokesman.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: as far as the US Government is concerned, especially since 9/11 and The Patriot Act, citizens have no expectation of privacy. If you think otherwise, you are deluding yourself. People keep saying, "Oh, the government will never lie to me. They are required to protect privacy." As if. The government will tell you what you want to hear to passify you, and when found out will either flush things down the Memory Hole or give you a nice 'mea culpa' and continue doing the same thing.
As far back as 1995 Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy wrote in The Right To Privacy that our rights, especially those under the Fourth Ammendment, were slowly being eroded.
But as another poster said, the bulk of the American population don't know, and more importantly, don't care.
How is it shocking. We are in a Governemt of the People by the People for the People. So if the people dont care neither does the governemt.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I personally spoke with a large software firm about this very issue -- how can such a system keep the false positives low to nill while catching the ocassional needle or two in a very large haystack, and they waffled on the question. Considering the number of terrorists are extremely small with regards the rest of the population, how can you possible have enough data to be statistically significant? Again, they waffled on the question, giving a half-baked "executive response" rather than anything concrete.
The real truth is we are far more likely to die in a car crash than to die at the hands of a would-be terrorist. Yet, billions are being poured into Homeland Insecurity and the TSA efforts, and what do we have? High false positive rates, millions of needlessly harrased travelers, and it's hard to get a fix on the false negative rates since terrorists are so rare to begin with.
In short, the entire approach makes no sense.
But try explaining this to the general public, who tend to be dumb as boards when it comes to basic statistics and probabality.
90% of the public is simply unable to think, but merely jumps from one belief pattern to another. That my friends is the problem.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
My big question: how can it do any good to train an expert system to recognize terrorists, when all the sample data is by definition from non-terrorists? I mean, there were no terrorist actions on any Jet Blue flights in that time frame. This data is useful as "known negatives" in the test for terrorists, but where do they get the data for "known positives" to train the system?
I agree, it infuriates me that the vast majority regards the government as a deity - something to grant wishes, instead of something that requires each and every person to take part in and to keep under control.
The government is not a deity. Do not worship it.
I worked for the TSA for over a year and a half. I was a god-damned screener -- I was checking passengers and baggage both. I have little respect for most of the other screeners and for the management. (Did you know the hiring process was little more than "first-come-first-served" and that people were hired before background checks were complete? They didn't even check resumes much of the time! People were placed in management roles at the age of 18! Their last job at a burger joint! This is a no-shitter!) But enough of that. The TSA is also filled with a lot of well-meaning people who really want to do a good job. But I have yet to detect deceit in any of the people I have encountered regardless of how high in rank. I am honestly shocked.
But on the other hand, it's the conservative mentality that the government needs to tell everyone what to do. What's the difference?
Do not be pulled into the polarizing arguments. Things are of many shades of gray, there is no black or white. There are more than two answers to every question. Republicans suck, Democrats suck. A true American is what you want to be at the end of the day, not what the TV (The voice of propaganda) tells you to be and how to think.
I think things like the TSA are Osama's greatest victory over the US. What better way to destroy a free republic with much greater strength in arms but to dismantle its own liberty from within? Make the people afraid, knowing that their leaders will erode rights and freedoms all in the name of security.
One of the major instruments of the ruling political class is to divide and distract public opinion with intense moral-laden debate about subjects that in most other countries are treated as private matters.
Morality-driven debate is such a powerful tool because you can, by fine-tuning the argument, get a balanced 50-50 split on just about any subject.
And so, we get the endless debates about gay weddings, about living wills, about abortion, about the "theory" of evolution, about the role of religion in public structures, and so on.
Meanwhile debate about subjects that in any open democracy would make the front pages, would bring millions onto the streets, and would topple presidents... almost totally absent.
The general public does not debate the role of the state, the yawning chasms in the democratic process, the boom in military spending, gerrymandering, government-sponsored TV "news", political prisoners, torture, the corruption of every agency meant to protect the public, the environment, the economy into an agency designed to exploit and abuse...
Give the plebians bread, and circuses, and you can pretty much do what you like.
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Is Slashdot vouching for the fact that the TSA lied? One investigation says it didn't, and one individual says it did.
The investigation said that the TSA claimed to have privacy precautions in place when, in fact, it didn't.
Even if the investigation didn't use the word -- how is that not lying?
The general public doesn't want a democracy. It wants a group of people to solve all their problems. Protects us from these bad men. Give us free food because I don't want to work. Keep my comunity safe from drugs.
The government doesn't want a democracy. It wants a group of people to let them decide everything. To take their protection from percieved threats. To give them tax money because they don't want to work. To keep comunities safe from drugs so people will work and pay taxes.
The truth is usually quite simple. Real governments exists to serve themselves as much as the people.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
THIS IS A RANT. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
What the fuck is all this rhetoric about "the general public" not realizing their rights are being trampled and billions of their dollars are being wasted on the TSA?
Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing about it? YOU are the general public, assholes. All you are doing is whining on Slashdot about how goddamned smart you are compared to everyone else because _you_ really know how inept the TSA is, and no one else is clever enough to figure this out.
WTF?? Put up or shut up. Do something about the problem, or simply shut the fuck up.
This is just bullshit from people who aren't doing a damn thing except following the herd to slaughter while marching meekly to their deaths, self-righteously proclaiming their outrage louder than the next.
I agree, it infuriates me that the vast majority regards the government as a deity - something to grant wishes...The government is not a deity. Do not worship it.
It's also scary that people seem to have "faith" in the current administration like they have faith for their religion. They think GW can do no wrong because they think he's a "good christian man". But saying he's christian doesn't make him good, especially when his actions show him to be a selfish, greedy man with no concern for the people of his country or the world.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Well, folks, when the guys with funny helmets turn up at the gates on their little horses and the government turns out to have done a runner, don't say you weren't warned.
Oh, actually it just turns out that a government agency was doing what government agencies do all the time. I apologise for the wild exaggeration. So now please put down the Taser and let me get on the goddam airplane.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
I'm not saying Osama hates us for our freedom. I am saying that he is using the most effective technique for weakening our country being that he cannot defeat us with military might. His motivations are immaterial to the point I'm trying to get across, please don't pollute it with your politics.
President Bush has been running a huge fraud. The ultimate opportunist, he exploited the 2001 planebombings to invade the totally unrelated country of Iraq, though now selling F15s to our "allies" in Pakistan, whose intelligence agency backed Qaeda's takeover of Afghanistan, while distributing stolen nuke tech to Libya, N. Korea, and Iran. He has been running a vast police state that tortures and kills people rounded up on circumstantial suspicion, holding them for years without even charging them or any due process, without producing any results. He's produced gigantic laws based on known lies and elaborate fictions, from the false Saddam/Osama connection through the need for violating Americans' Constitutional rights to capture Osama - where is he? Lying about WMDs to terrorize Americans and Congress into invading, his dereliction of security has bred an actual armed threat in a postapocalyptic state in Iraq, as former conventional military bases are looted by a predictabel international convention of the usual bad guys.
I'm old enough to remember when Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob. Bush has lied about a war that has killed thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, hundreds of our allies, and gets worse every day - counter to all their lies about brevity and local support. If ever there were a "high crime and misdemeanor", it's sending us to a disastrous war on a series of lies. Where are the Republican cries for presidential "dignity" and "integrity"? Let's impeach this monster immediately, for treason. Before he does any more irreparable damage.
--
make install -not war
In order for a government to make the common man depend on it, it needs to give the common man an arch enemy. It used to be the Kaiser, communists, drug dealers, and now it's terrorists.
When the common man doesn't have an absolute enemy to fear, he'll tend not to depend on the government as much. Of course this isn't in the lawmakers best interest.
Keep your dependents living in fear and they'll always remain your dependents.
it was just released yesterday that FOIA requests have released official documents showing the Saudis were shipped out of the USA when noone else could fly right after 9/11 by the FBI.
...
Sigh, don't you hate it when the conspiracy theorists are right
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This is the government that Americans trust with a significant portion of their retirement (Social Security), their railroad system (Amtrak), their postal system (USPS), education, law enforcement, and so on?
Bill Clinton lied (about sex w/ Monica), Bush Jr. lied (about WMDs in Iraq), the FBI lied in a secret court (to get wiretaps), the TSA lied (about protecting passenger privacy)... where does it end? (especially given the record of older agencies like the FBI and CIA lying to the public)
At least when Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers lie, their companies go bankrupt and they (at least in Ebbers case, most likely, though probably Ken Lay too eventually) go to prison.
But when government fails, what happens? Generally, nothing.
Mod me as troll/flamebait/overrated now for not promoting heavy doses of socialism (a necessary precondition for a large government to exist, so it can accomplish such abuses as this one)...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?