CatsDieNow
Member
I haven't seen this one posted yet. I guess the just boil us slowly in phases. 
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A Safer Sky or Welcome to Flight 1984? [New York Times, March 11, 2003]
By JOE SHARKEY
JUST the facts, please, as Joe Friday used to ask.
On Feb. 28, the Transportation Security Administration put out what its staff thought was a fairly routine news release stating that Lockheed Martin had been selected to develop "a passenger risk-assessment and prescreening system, also known as the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II."
Capps II replaces Capps I, the computer-based airline passenger screening program that was introduced in the late 1990's and revamped after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Anyone who has been subjected to one of those much-disliked secondary security screenings and pat downs at the airline departure gate has Capps I to thank. Capps I was designed to select passengers for extra security screening based on a number of undisclosed indicator criteria, like buying a one-way ticket, traveling on short notice or an abruptly changed itinerary, traveling abroad a lot — many of the behavioral patterns that describe a frequent business traveler.
Capps II has been partly designed to address the faults inherent in the original program, which has been at the heart of the much-discussed airport "security hassle" complaint that airlines blame for at least a part of their drop in business travel revenue. The new computer-based system will evaluate precise personal information about a passenger booking a ticket, and then assign that passenger one of three color-based security ratings:
Green, which the great majority of passengers will receive, means you can head for your flight simply by passing through the normal checkpoint inspection.
Yellow means you will get an extra security look-over, much like the secondary gate-check some now get.
Red means well, let's just say that you are not getting on an airplane, and you had probably also better call a lawyer.
The new system, which Delta Air Lines has volunteered to help test in a pilot program that starts later this month, has stirred considerable controversy because it touches a couple of very hot buttons. Every time you book a flight, that is, personal information like your name, address, birth date and credit card number will be fed into Capps II computers, which will then check various databases, including those with credit ratings and criminal records, to assemble a personal profile that will determine a passenger's security code.
A privacy-invasion uproar promptly greeted this news. So did an Internet-generated boycott of Delta.
Clearly surprised by the furor, the Transportation Security Administration has been making a strong effort to stress that the new system was designed "with the utmost concern for the individual privacy rights of American citizens," as the agency puts it.
Any credit or other personal information collected by the system will come from "commercially available databases, the same kind that marketers use," said Robert Johnson, a spokesman for the administration.
"There already are pretty strict limits under law as to how those databases can be used and what from them can be checked or observed," he said.
The basic idea is to eliminate from extra scrutiny the large majority of fliers who are clearly solid citizens with known addresses and backgrounds. This frees federal security agents to focus more on those who, even for valid reasons, reflect patterns that warrant a closer look. As in Capps I, the new system will not use any ethnic, religious or place-of-origin factors to make its evaluations, Mr. Johnson said.
The idea of a credit check has generated the most heat from opponents of the system. Mr. Johnson said that the credit check aspect had been overblown and represented only one potential variable in using databases to build an instant passenger profile.
The system, he said, "will use a scoring mechanism similar to the way you're scored when you apply for a credit card or sit in front of a car dealer to get a car loan. It will be almost instantaneous, similar to the way an instant credit check is done. It takes five seconds and boom, it comes back, and you're finished."
All personal information — except, obviously, information about someone already on a terrorist watch list or someone wanted for a crime — will be purged from the system after each flight, Mr. Johnson said. There will be no "warehousing of information" by the government, he said, adding that "many of the people who work on this project are quite strong in their views that we shouldn't be doing anything like that."
When the news of this initiative spread last week, corporate travel managers were among the first to express serious misgivings, said Jack Riepe, a spokesman for the Association of Corporate Travel Managers. Last week, the group polled more than 250 travel managers and corporate travel agents, 82 percent of whom said they thought the new system was an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Nearly as many, 79 percent, said that the process would discourage travelers from flying on an airline that employed it.
"If you go to buy a handgun, the only thing they check is your criminal record," Mr. Riepe said. "But if you buy an airline ticket, they're going to be checking your financial records and criminal records. Why would you have a more stringent procedure for buying an airline ticket than buying a gun?"
Within days after the announcement of the program and Delta's agreement to help test it, a boycott of Delta was organized by Bill Scannell on a Web site that he designed, www.boycottdelta.com. Mr. Scannell works for a Silicon Valley technology company and is an Internet activist on privacy issues.
"Privacy groups have been screaming about Capps II" without much attention for many months, he said.
He said the Delta boycott Web site had been generating "200 e-mails an hour" and added that "Delta stuck themselves right in front" of the issue by agreeing to help test the program for 120 days.
"They're getting hammered now because they're collaborating in an incredible violation of people's privacy," he said.
Delta itself seems to have been blindsided by the furor. "What we're providing to the T.S.A. is stuff we've already been collecting for years during the normal ticketing process," like a passenger's name, address and credit card number, said Catherine Stengel, a Delta spokeswoman. Delta is `not doing any background or credit checks," she said. She added that the airline had not seen "any operational impact" from the boycott.
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A Safer Sky or Welcome to Flight 1984? [New York Times, March 11, 2003]
By JOE SHARKEY
JUST the facts, please, as Joe Friday used to ask.
On Feb. 28, the Transportation Security Administration put out what its staff thought was a fairly routine news release stating that Lockheed Martin had been selected to develop "a passenger risk-assessment and prescreening system, also known as the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System II."
Capps II replaces Capps I, the computer-based airline passenger screening program that was introduced in the late 1990's and revamped after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Anyone who has been subjected to one of those much-disliked secondary security screenings and pat downs at the airline departure gate has Capps I to thank. Capps I was designed to select passengers for extra security screening based on a number of undisclosed indicator criteria, like buying a one-way ticket, traveling on short notice or an abruptly changed itinerary, traveling abroad a lot — many of the behavioral patterns that describe a frequent business traveler.
Capps II has been partly designed to address the faults inherent in the original program, which has been at the heart of the much-discussed airport "security hassle" complaint that airlines blame for at least a part of their drop in business travel revenue. The new computer-based system will evaluate precise personal information about a passenger booking a ticket, and then assign that passenger one of three color-based security ratings:
Green, which the great majority of passengers will receive, means you can head for your flight simply by passing through the normal checkpoint inspection.
Yellow means you will get an extra security look-over, much like the secondary gate-check some now get.
Red means well, let's just say that you are not getting on an airplane, and you had probably also better call a lawyer.
The new system, which Delta Air Lines has volunteered to help test in a pilot program that starts later this month, has stirred considerable controversy because it touches a couple of very hot buttons. Every time you book a flight, that is, personal information like your name, address, birth date and credit card number will be fed into Capps II computers, which will then check various databases, including those with credit ratings and criminal records, to assemble a personal profile that will determine a passenger's security code.
A privacy-invasion uproar promptly greeted this news. So did an Internet-generated boycott of Delta.
Clearly surprised by the furor, the Transportation Security Administration has been making a strong effort to stress that the new system was designed "with the utmost concern for the individual privacy rights of American citizens," as the agency puts it.
Any credit or other personal information collected by the system will come from "commercially available databases, the same kind that marketers use," said Robert Johnson, a spokesman for the administration.
"There already are pretty strict limits under law as to how those databases can be used and what from them can be checked or observed," he said.
The basic idea is to eliminate from extra scrutiny the large majority of fliers who are clearly solid citizens with known addresses and backgrounds. This frees federal security agents to focus more on those who, even for valid reasons, reflect patterns that warrant a closer look. As in Capps I, the new system will not use any ethnic, religious or place-of-origin factors to make its evaluations, Mr. Johnson said.
The idea of a credit check has generated the most heat from opponents of the system. Mr. Johnson said that the credit check aspect had been overblown and represented only one potential variable in using databases to build an instant passenger profile.
The system, he said, "will use a scoring mechanism similar to the way you're scored when you apply for a credit card or sit in front of a car dealer to get a car loan. It will be almost instantaneous, similar to the way an instant credit check is done. It takes five seconds and boom, it comes back, and you're finished."
All personal information — except, obviously, information about someone already on a terrorist watch list or someone wanted for a crime — will be purged from the system after each flight, Mr. Johnson said. There will be no "warehousing of information" by the government, he said, adding that "many of the people who work on this project are quite strong in their views that we shouldn't be doing anything like that."
When the news of this initiative spread last week, corporate travel managers were among the first to express serious misgivings, said Jack Riepe, a spokesman for the Association of Corporate Travel Managers. Last week, the group polled more than 250 travel managers and corporate travel agents, 82 percent of whom said they thought the new system was an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Nearly as many, 79 percent, said that the process would discourage travelers from flying on an airline that employed it.
"If you go to buy a handgun, the only thing they check is your criminal record," Mr. Riepe said. "But if you buy an airline ticket, they're going to be checking your financial records and criminal records. Why would you have a more stringent procedure for buying an airline ticket than buying a gun?"
Within days after the announcement of the program and Delta's agreement to help test it, a boycott of Delta was organized by Bill Scannell on a Web site that he designed, www.boycottdelta.com. Mr. Scannell works for a Silicon Valley technology company and is an Internet activist on privacy issues.
"Privacy groups have been screaming about Capps II" without much attention for many months, he said.
He said the Delta boycott Web site had been generating "200 e-mails an hour" and added that "Delta stuck themselves right in front" of the issue by agreeing to help test the program for 120 days.
"They're getting hammered now because they're collaborating in an incredible violation of people's privacy," he said.
Delta itself seems to have been blindsided by the furor. "What we're providing to the T.S.A. is stuff we've already been collecting for years during the normal ticketing process," like a passenger's name, address and credit card number, said Catherine Stengel, a Delta spokeswoman. Delta is `not doing any background or credit checks," she said. She added that the airline had not seen "any operational impact" from the boycott.