The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) this week
announced the next steps for implementing "Secure Flight,"
the passenger-profiling system that will replace the
highly controversial "CAPPS II" system. The upshot is that
everyone who traveled domestically in June 2004 will now
serve as a guinea pig for the new system, with
the government ordering the airlines to turn over your
personal records to match the information against terrorist
watch lists. At the same time, TSA will examine whether
using additional data about you aggregated in commercial
databanks will aid in the passenger-screening process.
If Secure Flight passes this "stress test" and gets the
go-ahead from the government, TSA will proceed with the
program.
If this sounds familiar, that's because it should. Plans
for CAPPS II were scuttled over concerns about cost,
effectiveness, and impact on privacy and civil liberties.
Unfortunately, Secure Flight poses many of the same
problems. For example, the watch lists currently in use
have already been shown to be inaccurate; in a recent
high-profile example, Senator Ted Kennedy was repeatedly
misidentified as a suspected terrorist. Yet it remains
unclear how individuals who are improperly flagged will
be protected.
As predicted, TSA just waited a while to let the press attention die down and changed the name of the program. They're still doing the same damn thing.
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