Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

The TSA wants 77 airlines to turn over information about everyone who traveled domestically during June so it can be compared with a "newly concentrated security watch list." Some of the names would be compared with bank, mortgage and credit agency databases. This compels all airlines to turn over personal information that JetBlue and Northwest were embarrassed to be caught turning over voluntarily, according to the NY Times. It's a replacement for the CAPPS 2 system that caused a ruckus among civil liberties folks. Unlike CAPPS 2, it would not also be used to find people wanted on outstanding warrants, etc.

David Stephenson, a security consultant, thinks this is real bad. For one thing, he has no faith in the "imbeciles at Acxiom" that will participate in the mess. The ACLU says:

For example, it appeared that security decisions will be made based on frequently inaccurate information contained in secret "black boxes " maintained at the Terrorism Screening Center that are completely inaccessible to the public and effectively shielded from scrutiny or correction. According to news reports, the Terrorism Screening Center will maintain watch lists that will be used under Secure Flight for identifying passengers to be screened as "selectees" or placed on a "no-fly" list, leaving innocent travelers who are caught up in the system with no fair way to have their names removed.

I guess I don't have a lot of faith in the ability of database mining to uncover terrorists accurately enough to be worth the false positives (AKA violation of our constitutional rights), but I might be ok with that if this didn't put our civil liberties into a black box guarded by F. Kafka.