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Gov't. Plan to Track Airplane Passengers Unwise

By Jeralyn, Section Civil Liberties
Posted on Mon Jan 12, 2004 at 11:12:00 PM EST
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In an online chat Monday with the Washington Post, Jay Stanley of the ACLU explains why CAPPS II, the Government plan to track airline passengers, is unwise and unfair:

We oppose the so-called CAPPS II program for several reasons. It will be a tremendous invasion of our privacy. It will put the government in the unprecedented position of rating every American who flies on whether they are "trusted" or not. And it will not make us safer.

....Experience has shown that trying to catch wrongdoers by investigating everyone is a poor way to stop them. The US should focus on improving its intelligence on the ground, and improving physical security. Most of the additional security that we've gained since 9/11 is probably due to improved security at the gate, to locking cockpit doors, to air marshals, and to the fact that in the next hijacking, no one on the plane is going to sit back and wait to land in Cuba. The marginal improvement in security brought by this vast, unwieldy, intrusive system will not be worth it.

Here's a name to remember: Acxiom

Acxiom is a data aggregator -- one of a growing number of companies who make money by compiling and selling dossiers of information about Americans. They say they cover 98% of us. They would have 2 roles in CAPPS. First, the TSA would check your name, address, DOB, and phone # against one of these private databases to see if they match. If they don't they would be suspicious that you are not who you say you are (even though these databases are very unreliable, might not reflect the fact that you've recently moved, etc.) Second, the TSA would then take your identity and run it through unknown set of databases to decide if you are "red" "yellow" or "green" risk. These databases could include law enforcement and intelligence, but could also include private databases like Acxiom. Individuals who are branded as "risky" would never know what information (or possible errors) that rating was based on, and would have no chance to correct it.

The ACLU has more to say on CAPPS II here. The five prinicpal things that are wrong with the program are set out here.

[Ed. Mr. Stanley's name corrected. It's Jay Stanley.]

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