High tech screening of air passengers in the works

[realtraveller]

The Washington Post is reporting that a vast computerized system is in process to screen air passengers for possible terrorist links.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2002Jan31.html


Is this a sensible system to find "red flags" and minimize racial and religious profiling? Or is it Big Brother knowing too much about your travel habits?

Some airlines are proposing a "trusted-traveler" card, allowing those frequent fliers who have passed the screening procedure and who supply biometric data to bypass the long lines.

Is all this necessary? Would it have prevented Richard Reid from boarding that plane in Paris and almost succeeding in bringing down a jetliner?

As long as the screening and security measures are well-publicized and documented, those that would thwart them will easily analyse them and find the loopholes. All it takes is one disgruntled ex-employee, screwed over by a downsizing or repeated attempts to demonstrate a flaw in the system only to be kicked out as a whistleblower to take the bait and get reeled into the...

(What did Junior call it again?)

Oh yeah... that Axis of Evil thing.

[realtraveller]

Another article in the Washington Times said that the new system was going to be used and tested on airport employees first. (Sorry, got to run, no time to find the link).

[poseidon]

Kathy,

You beat me to this posting. I was going to ask almost the same questions.

I can't help but to think of Ben Franklin's words that are posted in my signature line on each post.

I understand the fear that the flying public is going through. I've flown a few times since 9/11 and I know what a complete and utter joke airline security is.

I don't like the idea that the government is involved in it.

I don't mind at all the idea that the airlines are involved in it.

You might be asking why. Here's why.

1. The government already has more information about all of us than I'm comfortable with. I don't want them using all of the information and profiling me or anyone else as to what we may or may not do. This is an invasion of privacy by the government, and I simply don't trust Big Brother to use this information only for airline screening. I don't care if it's G.W. in the 'House or Slick Willie in the 'House. It's the bureaucrats with nothing better to do with their lives than to justify their jobs that scare me.

2. The airlines have the right to take any measures they want using any information they can gather to protect themselves and the flying public. I have the option to not fly if I think these measures are too intrusive into my private life.

I think that the "trusted-traveller" card will be a mistake. It would be too easy to circumvent. Be a trusted traveller and then, after you are one, become a terrorist.

Bad, bad idea.

Jeff

[phoenixx]

Anything like this sends up my red flag. I agree with Poseidon that the government is far too intrusive in our lives already. I am the woman in front of you at the bank, doctor, DMV, health club, etc who insists on adhering to my right not have my social security number used as identification.

I stand there requesting that right until the employee does what I've asked and gives me a created nine digit number that has nothing to do with my social security number, since by law the only people entitled to see or use that number are the IRS for taxes and the Social Security administration itself.

My point is that on a daily basis, even before 9-11, people have become lax in protecting their privacy, their identity. It is too simple for anyone, government agency or private party, to come along and use your personal information for nefarious means.

The good traveller card spoken of here is yet another example of the erosion of personal privacy. Many people I speak with argue that "it's just one right, and a small one, and it's being given up for safety and security". That is the first step on the road to disaster in my book.

I'll grant that I'm a smidge paranoid by nature when it comes to government and personal rights. It is so simple for the general public to be swayed by meaningless rhetoric and television spin. I think there is no real way to make the airlines safer, but I'm not afraid to fly. It is no more dangerous now than it was before, the only difference is a heightened possibility that a crash would be caused by a fanatic. We already had the problems of mechanical failure, pilot error, mechanic/technician error, old planes, etc. Flying still remains safer than driving in my book.

However, jerking myself forcibly back from a tangent, I am basically trying to say that I think accepting the crap the current administration is trying to shove down out throats as "safety measures" without being vigilant and quadruple checking all facts would be tantamount to throwing away our freedoms, one right at a time.

Leslie

[realtraveller]

My challenge to the ACLU is this: We know you oppose this high tech form of passenger screening.

We know you oppose screening people based on being from the Middle East.

We know you don't want people to have to fully disclose their faces on their driver's licenses.

What would you do to prevent suicidal people bent on bringing down an airliner from being able to board? It was only luck and happenstance that prevented Richard Reid from bringing down that American Airlines jet over the Atlantic.

It seems to me that in a way, the ACLU and others are making the same sorts of calculated risks that corporations sometimes do. For example, calculating that an added safety feature on a product will cost $100 x 1 million products or 100,000,000 dollars. Paying the judgments that will result from lawsuits arising out of not having that safety feature will cost on 50,000,000 dollars. Therefore not putting in the safety feature is cost effective. Lives and injuries are incidental in this equation.

It seems to me that the ACLU is saying much the same thing: that 3,000 lives, 2,000,000 jobs and a 600 billion dollar total cost (the total damage from 9/11) is cheaper than instituting this sort of high tech system or taking other safety measures that are different and more intrusive than that which is in effect today.

[frazzledspice]

Listening to talk radio while driving this morning, I discovered that the FAA wants to put new regulations in place requiring body searches (patting and feeling) of large breasted women.

They have discovered that a 42D bra can hold enough explosives to bring down a plane, and that the wiring of a wonderbra can be hooked up to detonate.

I personally would choose driving over flying whenever possible if I thought that airline screeners would be feeling me up.

Even more upsetting is the idea that they might be feeling up my 13 year-old daughter (although she is quite slender and small-breasted.)

But who knows how they would decide what's big enough to warrant a search and what's not? And not every impressionable, vulnerable thirteen year-old is small-breasted. My daughter has some friends who are much more developed than she is (and their fathers would probably deck any airline screener that laid hands on them.)

[poseidon]

Originally posted by frazzledspice
But who knows how they would decide what's big enough to warrant a search and what's not? And not every impressionable, vulnerable thirteen year-old is small-breasted. My daughter has some friends who are much more developed than she is (and their fathers would probably deck any airline screener that laid hands on them.)

Or my decking the airline screener for trying to feel up Michelle.

[realtraveller]

I wonder if they will be asking the men:

"Are those explosives in your pants or are you just excited to be flying?"

Seriously though, what sort of additional passenger screening would the ACLU and others endorse that would increase safety and prevent another 9-11?

[poseidon]

Originally posted by realtraveller
I wonder if they will be asking the men:

"Are those explosives in your pants or are you just excited to be flying?"

Smart ones would say, "Just kiss it, it'll explode on it's own."