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TSA Violated Privacy Act
pin_gween writes "Remember when the TSA said they wanted info on travelers last year? They said they were only using names to test new software. Apparently, they lied. The Guardian has an AP wire about a Congressional report on the TSA. From the article: 'The agency actually took 43,000 names of passengers and used about 200,000 variations of those names - who turned out to be real people who may not have flown that month, the GAO said. A TSA contractor collected 100 million records on those names.' They also 'published a second notice indicating that it would do the things it had earlier said it wouldn't do.' A TSA spokesman said the info will be destroyed when the test is over. My question -- will the test actually end?"
Microsoft: "You can trust our trusted computing platform"
SCO: "There is UNIX code in Linux"
Bush: "We will get the WMD out of Iraq"
etc etc.
Nobody really cares in the end, it's all so easy to forget being blatantly lied to as long as things are mostly OK in the end.
Right?
is because there are people behind all of this. People are ultimately flawed, and can't be completely trusted without auditing processes
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
This is how companies handle privacy. They do something the majority of people will accept (taking names) and then they secretly change the scope of their project to get much more data. Then their defence is "If they gave us their name, we assumed they would be OK giving us this. We are a reputable company". I think they should be prosecuted for this, what if their system got hacked? That is a great deal of possible identity theft.
Voice your opinion!
We must always remember that a commitment from a company is not worth the electrons over which it is communicated.
2B || !2B
It doesn't surprise me that the TSA has demonstrated contempt for the law here. As a regular traveler, I can tell you that they already (with some notable exceptions whose names I wish I had so I could cite them as positive examples) have contempt for the actual public they are charged with protecting. They have gone the way of all elites who profess to act in the name of the people, but actually do things that are in interally focused institutional interest.
I can certainly understand that law enforcement wants to "get the bad guys". Unfortunately, so much of today's law enforcement activity has little or nothing to do with actual criminals and spends most of its time operating against ordinary citizens. If you think this is limited to terrorism, think again. The Illinois State Police where I am routinely set up "seat belt enforcement zones" where people are pulled over and forced to prove that they aren't law breakers. It's similar to more and more "checkpoints" that are set up for all sorts of things and a presumption on the part of the police that they have the right to search you just to find out if you are doing anything wrong. That puts the 4th amendment on its head, and unfortunately our courts have gone along with it. Unless you are actually in your home, you can probably assume you can be investigated, searched, questeioned, etc. by the cops for any reason or for no reason at all.
So I don't see the TSA as some unique manifestation of anti-terror laws or a rogue agency. I see them as very symptomatic of what has been going on in law enforcement for a long time. This is just the next chapter.
No one else will protect your "freedom". Your liberty is your responsibility. Shorn of its Soviet enemy, America becomes its enemy. Tragedy of the Grotesque.
Don't you love it when people predict that shit like this will happen, and they're instantly met with tinfoil hat jokes?
OK, a few notes... First off, I fly a lot and I have been "singled out" for my random search a few times. None of these times involved strip searches. They basically made me hand over my carry on and they went through it while another agent (or at a really small airport, the same agent) waved a metal detector over me very slowly and patted me down. Mildly invasive yes, strip search not quite...
Second, profiling IS bad. Not because we are a happy feely culture that thinks race should never be identified, but because if there are a handful of "triggers" that automatically get one searched instead of random searches then "the terrorists" will just figure out those triggers and send up people that don't meet those triggers. It would end up being easy for true terrorist organizations to avoid while ONLY catching regular people (and really stupid terrorists).
Don't assume for a second that all terrorists are men between 20-35 years old with long beards and "ethnic" clothing.
As a somewhat regular air-traveller, allow me to be the first to say noooooooooooo!
I do not wish to be locked in an aircraft at 30,000 feet with a bunch of sweaty, naked, ugly people rolling on E.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The TSA will, of course, lie whenever possible. Because they have no accountability. And lying gives them power. Not just "to take over the world", but to do a lousy job. To be lazy, incompetent, and still get paid.
Really, it's completely obvious that, except for the Qaeda and the Taliban, that slogan about "the post-9/11 world" everyone on TV chants, "everything changed", is total BS. Nothing changed, except the ability to scare people into submission went off the charts. People who wanted war in Iraq, no matter what, got their war. People who wanted giant defense budgets got them. People who wanted to discard habeas corpus protections got rid of them. People who wanted Republicans to control all the branches of government got them. People who wanted an excuse for a broken economy, to cover up offshoring, inadequate education, failed confidence from Enron, WorldCom, ArthurAndersen, and a generation of Wall Street snake oil salesmen, got their excuse. People who wanted tax shirking got it. People who wanted racial profiling and massive privacy invasion got it. People who wanted government handouts to their welfare states, at the cost of $trillions in debt, got all that. And all the oil profiteers got $60:barrel oil, which costs little more to extract and sell than when it was $25. And of course they got federal tax credits for buying SUVs that get <15MPG, rather than 50MPG alternative energy vehicles.
But only if you embraced terror: became a terrorist. People who didn't, like the Democrats, didn't get what they wanted. They didn't get their candidate in the White House, because they didn't get a big noise in the media about how the Qaeda specifically planned to avoid attacking the US. Freedom lovers haven't gotten the rest of the 1990s "peace dividend", like forcing China to stop its tyranny with the "market power of the US" - because the businesses which own the new Chinese industries, and their American markets, are profiting from the fear that distracts from the perpetual terrorism that keeps their Chinese slaves in line. And we didn't get Osama bin Laden. WHERE'S OSAMA? Where's that "democratic Iraq", the "quelled Iraqi threat to American security"? It's with those who failed to embrace terror: on the ash heap of history.
The lists of who got what, and who didn't, line up perfectly on who "embraces and extends" terrorism, and who doesn't. And it's not just "who's for and who's against". Because Democrats, the losers in the political duopoly, have been just as "against" terrorism in their laws and policies, as Republicans. Republicans, however, have cast Democrats as preferring "therapy" to "killing" for terrorists, though that's a vicious lie. But that way to scare Americans about Democrats is successful terrorism, using planebombs as fuel for political power. Really, there's little difference between the Qaeda and the Bush uses of terrorism. The planebombs and tube-bombs are attacks, they're sabotage of our essential infrastructure. But they're really just the necessary spark for the actual terrorism, the terror perpetuated in the media and among people. Just like the Taliban who conquered Afghanistan on the spark of repeling the Soviets with "Islam", the neocons are conquering America on the spark of repeling the "liberals" with Christian evangelism: the Christaliban who back Bush with faith. Regardless of what you believe about conspiracies among people in Washington to allow or encourage a "Pearl Harbor event" to justify their neocon agenda, it's undeniable that some have rode the wave of fear with skill and aplomb. So we're going to get nothing but more terrorism, with the minimum of actual bombs that destroy corporate property. We're going to get more fear, more lies, more abuse. Until we wake up and reject the terror, dispelled by knowledge, and eradicate the terrorists. Starting with those in Washington and the corporate media who are closest, and doing most of the damage. Cleansing the TSA of thse lying tyrants would be a good start.
--
make install -not war
Private security as more poorly performing or as more personally invasive? Sure, pre-9/11 private security at airports was a joke; but so was our government intelligence, for example.
Look at the world today. There are at least as many examples of public sector failures as private (our public schools being a great example). Many of the most polluted sites on our country were made that way by government agencies such as the US military. And of course let's not forget such shameful items as the Tuskegee Experiment.
The fact is, government is almost exactly like a large corporation in every respect - only on a larger scale. As I've often argued, government is the ultimate multi-national corporation. Both corporations and goverment are nominally controlled by their owners (the shareholders or voters) but the reality is that entrenched management really runs the show most of the time. Both are characterized by a bureaucratic mindset.
One big difference is that if a corporation does something wrong, it is much easier to hold accountable. You can sue a corporation who hurts you - governments can only be sued if they decided they want to let you (sovereign immunity). Governments have regulatory oversight of corporations, but there is little oversight of the government itself. Corporate officials who screw up can be sued personally for damaged (e.g., the Enron board). Public officials are immune from lawsuits related to their jobs by law. Also, corporations can rarely force you to do business with them (with some notable exceptions), but the government is generally your supplier of its services whether you want it or not.
Overall, I think we'd be better served with most serviced provided by a competitive private sector market, with vigorous public oversight to hold the providers accountable.
From the article A TSA contractor collected 100 million records on those names.
That is what worries me- How thoroughly are the contractors being vetted? If you visit the Federal Biz Opportunities site http://fbo.gov/ you will see that the gov't contacts out incredible amounts of work. I trust the US Military with my security (We could argue about the military and privacy all day so lets not bring that up), but why is our security being contacted out? That is what worries me. Where is the accountability???
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
This kind of thing is not surprising... Not the part about the TSA violating the law, but the part about them screwing up data, and not knowing when the test will end.
Have any of you who are flinging around "evil conspiracy" crap ever worked on large government software projects?
Those things go on forever, rescoping, changes, rewrok, bugs, idiot specifications that have to be met even though they dont make sense... the list goes on and on. Its usually because of some law or another that mandate the software have a given function in it (even if it makes no sense), and the management is far from sterling - and the bureacracy that sits astride it moves at a glacial pace, making it nearly impossible to get design changes approved in any kind of timely fashion - I'm talking months not weeks, for even minor changes.
Thats been my experience nearly every time when working as a government employee. And this was at a federal defence agency that actually is known for getting things done fairly well and relatively quickly. (and this also explains why I am no longer a government employee - you can only take so much before your head asplodes).
Remember when they formed that TSA, it was carved from people who were tossed out of other agencies (remember, government agencies fight like mad to keep the best from leaving) - usually that means those are people the other agencies wanted to get rid of -- making the TSA a potential dumping ground for incompetents, malcontents, and desk-sitter-do-nothings-deadwood.
So don't attribute to malice what is far, far more likely to be incompetence. Especially at a new agency.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo! http://goo.gl/J9bkO
Huge personal info databases? We created the technology and wrote the code to make it possible. We gave the information when asked, because we didn't want the hassle that would occur when we said "no, that's none of your business."
We accepted the notion of Social Security and believed the government when they told us that SS#s would *never* be used for identification except by the SSA.
We elected officials based on the performance of the economy ... which encouraged them to stay out of the way of businesses as they tracked, junk-mailed, and spammed us.
We accepted the transition from cash to credit cards because we liked the convenience ... never blanching at the fact that we were leaving a paper trail for ourselves every month.
We accepted the notion that the First Amendment was all about the right to any kind of free speech whatsoever, even commercial junk mail by corporations, who are persons only as a legal convenience.
We were so scared of sexual predators in our schools that we willingly asked the government to take fingerprints of every school employee to match against their databases.
And above all, we clamored for greater security in our own country -- we accepted the 9/11 commission report -- because losing all of our rights seemed more palatable and *less likely* than our becoming the next Twin Towers victims.
Has government and business taken away our privacy? Yes -- but only because we wanted them to.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
The cowardly majority of citizens who were no where near the blasts yet clammored the loudest for liberty-stealing 'safety measures'?
No, the fear-mongering media and the pussified general public caused this to happen.
I was bitching since the first plane hit that this would happen...you probabler were too.
Blar.
Some profiling is bad. Racial profiling, for example, is generally bad unless you have a description of a specific suspect.
However, if someone is walking around wearing a hat and heavy jacket in the middle of summer when it's 85 degrees and 80% humidity, and seeming to deliberately avoid the security apparatus, there may be some interest in talking to him. It's still profiling, because his behavioral profile is suspicious.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
>but why is our security being contacted out? That is what worries me. Where is the accountability???
r iors/faqs/
this is exactly how some soldiers feel in iraq
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/war
Apparently it's illegal to stand up and incite my fellow countrymen to standup against the government and throw off the repressive shackles of tyrrany.
The idea that "National Security" can realistically prevent an individual intent on trading their life to kill a lot of citizens of the USA is very naieve.
...we only catch the stupid ones and the ones that want to get caught.
Let's see, many migrant laborers routinely crossing the Mexican border illegally and making their way all the way north to Idaho farms every year.
People illegally cross down from the Canadian border too. I remember hearing one story of a stupid drug runner that was crossing the border in a canoe filled with drugs...when a forest service ranger was in sight, the drug runner called to the ranger and admitted to what he was doing.
Finally, remember the damage that diesel fuel and fertilizer can do in the hands of a misguided citizen.
I wish that my tax dollars would not be wasted to give people a false impression of security because such power is inevitably going to be mis-used.
However, if someone is walking around wearing a hat and heavy jacket in the middle of summer when it's 85 degrees and 80% humidity, and seeming to deliberately avoid the security apparatus, there may be some interest in talking to him. It's still profiling, because his behavioral profile is suspicious.
That seems so right, until they shoot him 5 times and then issue an apology.
"We're supposed to be the party of God..."
Give me a break! This is an example of Republican brainwashing of the ignorant masses. Your party has no claim to God, there are good dedicated Christians in every political party. Perhaps you mean you are the party of radical Christian fundalmentalists which feel free to ram their religious beliefs down everyone else's throat. There are many Middle Eastern countries which have fundalmentalist leaders who also consider themselves the 'Party of God.' You have more in common with those close-minded mullahs than you would like to believe.
There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
No Shit. I appluad your big balls to put this so clearly.
This nation was started with a religious belief in tolerance. Tolerance of religion was a big one. Does this mean that the Founding Fathers meant tolerance of religion just so long as you weren't a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist...? Probably not.
I consider any political party that tends to align itself with any church doctrines or promotion of religious ideals onto the country at large to be as threatening as the Iranian Mullahs in power there. It's the belief in a religiously based morality that is not so threatening provided that it is compatable with, or overridden by the ideal of Freedom of Religion or Seperation of Church and State.
Just to be annoying, I do not believe that this applies to religious beliefs consistent with Satanic cults or human sacrifices. How do I draw that distinction between one religion and another? Because of my own moral fiber based on my own religious beliefs. So my tolerance of Relious practices is itself flawed because I demand some compliance to my beliefs at the same time.
But at least I can be consistent and recognize that I do not have a perfect system. But there is a common thread through all major religions with a long lifespan and that is, "Don't be an Ass."
Most Christians tend to be conservative though, because we believe in the right to life.
This is why religion and politics should NEVER meet. What have the Christians traded for the "right to life" by sleeping with the dogs of corporate greed? If you are known by the company you keep, is it any surprise that being led around by a group of lying scumbags has so severely hurt the image of Christianity in the eyes of many?
Religions are compromised by compromise. Trading away your moral values for a vote means you don't value your morals very highly.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Most Christians tend to be conservative though, because we believe in the right to life. So when given a choice between a liberal and a conservative, it isn't very surprising that the conservative, who also happens to be Republican, is chosen by more Christians.
I'd bet if you took a poll or survey most of those who support the death penality call themselves Christian forgetting Christ supposedly said to turn the cheek and for those without sin to cast the first stone or some such. Didn't he also say to give Caesar his due?
FalconShould there be a Law?
How about this:
The Wave or The Wave
To explain to his students the atmosphere in the 1930's Nazi-Germany, history teacher Burt Ross initiates a daring experiment. He declares himself leader of a new movement, called 'The Wave'. Inspired, he proclaims ideas about Power, Discipline and Superiority. His students are strikingly willing to follow him. Soon the entire school is under the spell of 'The Wave'. Anyone who refuses to be a part of the Movement, faces threats or worse. Ross himself gets carried away by his own experiment. Or has it turned into something more than an experiment? A climax is unavoidable, resulting in a hard lesson for both Ross and his students...
FalconShould there be a Law?
" American Christians do not issue fatwas on their opponents." :)
.
Well duh. A Fatwah is a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar[WordNet]. Aren't a lot if Islamic scholars among American Christians
Perhaps you were overgeneralizing and are really refering to a few specific Fatwahs which were issued to justify a death sentence against Rushdi or the one's Al Qaeda have issued to justify there actions. They were issued by extemists and its debatable if they really confrom to Islamic law. Whatever they are pretty exceptional.
American Christian's don't quite do Fatwas because their isn't nearly as much Christian law as their is Islamic law, especially once you get past the ten commandments.
But Christians do most assuredly exact revenge on opponents, launch Jihads and kill the enemies of their faith. Thats petty much what the Crusades were multiple times, over hundreds of years. Crusaders did round up, slaught and brutalize people for their faith. Christians over the centuries have done it just as much as any religion.
I'd be inclined to say the Bush administration basicly issued a Fatwah against Saddam Hussein, and Manuel Noriega and when the U.S. issues a Fatwah it has the weapons to make it stick.
I'd say all the multimillion dollar rewards for the capture of terrorist like Bin Laden are pretty much modern Fatwah's backed by cash, just like the one issued against Rushdi. For some reason the Fatwah against Bin Laden and his right hand man hasn't worked. I wonder why that is?
I'd say the semi secret Rendition program is an exceptionally good Fatwah program. The Christians in Washington identify a potential Muslim enemy anywhere in the world, and they are all Muslim. a jet with a team of masked men sweep in, snatch him and send him to be tortured for his sins. Same...Same.
"They don't force women to wear veils"
Well it sure is a common practice at Christian weddings. Granted its over the top when women are forced to wear veils, especially burka class, but dude that is part of culture. Most cultures and religions have quirky traits that have been there for centuries to millenia. It obviously ticks you off because you want everyone else to adopt your cultural standards, but some people find American cultural standards offensive too. You can't really get all holier than thou about women's rights. Women have had rights in the U.S. for a VERY brief period by historical standards. I'm sure you want to force this very new standard on the world very fast because American's tend to be in a hurry, just beware cultures that have been around for a thousand years or more may not appreciate you trying to inflict your very new culture on them overnight. The U.S. tried it in Iraq. What did you do. You took Iraq from a secular dictator where women had more rights than in most Muslim countries, didn't wear burkha, had careers, and turned it over to a Shia majority which is as we speak is writing a consitution based on Islamic law and are MAKING women wear veils when the didn't have to under Saddam. I gather Basra, the Shia heartland is starting to resemble Afghanistan under the Taliban.
"don't carry out suicide bombings for the sake of their cause."
They don't have to, they have F-16's and Apache helicopers to drop the bombs without the suicide part. Suicide bombings are the last resort of desperate people, sometimes brainwashed but not always, who are severely outgunned, mostly by the U.S. and Israel. Affluent American Christians are fat, happy and in power. You don't get suicide bombers from that demographic. If American Christians were run out of their homes at the end of gun, pushed in to refugee camps in grinding poverty, had what homes they have bulldozed, spat on and killed by occupying soldiers, they would be suicide bomber too. Please stop the holier than thou crap. Its easy to be sanctimonious when you are rich, well fed and powerful.
@de_machina