Re: Gov't Orders Air Passenger Data for Test
News story quoted by RAH:
WASHINGTON - The government on Friday ordered airlines to turn over personal information about passengers who flew within the United States in June in order to test a new system for identifying potential terrorists.
The interesting thing here is that they can't really test how effective the system is until they have another terrorist event on an airline. Otherwise, they can assess the false positive rate of their list (people who were on the no-fly-list, shouldn't have flown according to the rules, but did without trying to hijack the plane), and the false positive and false negative rate of their search for names in the list (e.g., when it becomes obvious that Benjamin Ladon from Peoria, IL would have matched, but wasn't the guy they were hoping to nab, or when it becomes obvious that a suspected terrorist was in the data, did fly, but wasn't caught by the software).
The system, dubbed "Secure Flight," will compare passenger data with names on two government watch lists, a "no fly" list comprised of people who are known or suspected to be terrorists, and a list of people who require more scrutiny before boarding planes.
Presumably a lot of the goal here is to stop hassling everyone with a last name that starts with al or bin, stop hassling Teddy Kennedy getting on a plane, etc., while still catching most of the people on their watchlists who fly under their real name. ...
Currently, the federal government shares parts of the list with airlines, which are responsible for making sure suspected terrorists don't get on planes. People within the commercial aviation industry say the lists have the names of more than 100,000 people on them.
This is a goofy number. If there were 100,000 likely terrorists walking the streets, we'd have buildings and planes and bus stops and restaurants blowing up every day of the week. I'll bet you're risking your career if you ever take someone off the watchlist who isn't a congressman or a member of the Saudi royal family, but that it costs you nothing to add someone to the list. In fact, I'll bet there are people whose performance evaluations note how many people they added to the watchlist. This is what often seems to make watchlists useless--eventually, your list of threats has expanded to include Elvis Presley and John Lennon, and at that point, you're spending almost all your time keeping an eye on (or harassing) random harmless bozos.
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
--John
... they can't really test how effective the system is ...
Effective at what? Preventing people from traveling? The whole exercise ignores the question of whether the Executive Branch has the power to make a list of citizens (or lawfully admitted non-citizens) and refuse those people their constitutional right to travel in the United States. Doesn't matter whether there's 1, 19, 20,000, or 100,000 people on the list. The problem is the same: No court has judged these people. They have not been convicted of any crime. They have not been arrested. There is no warrant out for them. They all have civil rights. When they walk into an airport, there is nothing in how they look that gives reason to suspect them. They have every right to travel throughout this country. They have every right to refuse a government demand that they identify themselves. So why are armed goons keeping them off airplanes, trains, buses, and ships? Because the US constitution is like the USSR constitution -- nicely written, but unenforced? Because the public is too afraid of the government, or the terrorists, or Emmanuel Goldstein, or the boogie-man, to assert the rights their ancestors died to protect? John (under regional arrest) Gilmore PS: Oral argument in Gilmore v. Ashcroft will be coming up in the Ninth Circuit this winter. http://papersplease.org/gilmore
The whole exercise ignores the question of whether the Executive Branch has the power to make a list of citizens (or lawfully admitted non-citizens) and refuse those people their constitutional right to travel in the United States.
So why are armed goons keeping them off airplanes, trains, buses, and ships? Because the US constitution is like the USSR constitution -- nicely written, but unenforced? Because the public is too afraid of the government, or the terrorists, or Emmanuel Goldstein, or the boogie-man, to assert the rights their ancestors died to protect?
Tsk. Don't you know that you're with us or you're with the terrorists? If you're not careful the Justice Department will decide that you are a "person of interest" and whisk you off to an undisclosed location until the war on terror is over with a stopover in Saudi or Egypt for torture. A lifetime ago Franklin Roosevelt said "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Today the government is peddling fear itself.
participants (3)
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John Gilmore
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John Kelsey
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Todd Ellner