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Privacy Matters
Wednesday, 29 September 2004
Congress Poised to Take Control of Secure Flight
Topic: CAPPS II / Secure Flight
In the wake of public criticism of the TSA?s so called ?new? flight screening program, Secure Flight, Congress appears to be poised to take on the responsibility of oversight control. Secure Flight is the successor program to CAPPS II, which was killed by the TSA earlier this year due to the public outcry over privacy concerns. The TSA has attempted to say that Secure Flight is actually a new program but the similarities between it and CAPPS II have made this position difficult to sell.

Organizations dedicated to helping maintain consumer privacy, including ACCESS, have continued to criticize the TSA and its screening programs. And Congress may be getting the message that consumers are not wild about sharing their personal data with the government or with government vendors without strong privacy protection.

Last week, both the House of Representatives and the Senate approved identical language to be included in Section 514 of the Depeartment of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2005. While the bill has not been enacted yet, the House and Senate versions are very similar and none of the differences in the two versions of the bill have anything to do with Secure Flight. A compromise bill is expected within the next few weeks.

The language to be included clearly states that Congress views Secure Flight as a part of the CAPPS II program. It reads, in part, ?None of the funds provided by this or previous appropriations Acts may be obligated for deployment or implementation, on other than a test basis, of the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS II) or Secure Flight or other follow on/successor programs, that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plans to utilize to screen aviation passengers, until the Government Accountability Office has reported to the Committees on Appropriations of the Senate and the House of Representatives that - - ?. It then goes on, listing a variety of conditions that must be met prior to implementation of Secure Flight.

The items covered by the language include (a) implementation of a system of due process to appeal the denial of boarding by any passenger, (b) the TSA must ?stress test? any version of the system that it plans to implement and show that the error rate is low and, (c) the TSA must implement strict procedures to protect the privacy of individuals whose data is included in the TSA?s database.

The bill clearly states that the TSA may not use Secure Flight to deny boarding of passengers during the testing period. It also requires the TSA to make exceptions to its boarding denial procedures in states that have unique travel requirements. This language was added specifically for Alaska, where a number of people who live in small frontier towns have found themselves on the existing no-fly list used by the TSA. They have filed suit against the government because they have not been able to have their names removed from the list and flying is the only way for these people to enter or leave the towns they live in. It is likely that this language will also impact Hawaii and a variety of island territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.

With the addition of this language to the DHS appropriations bill, there is a very good possibility that it will be some time before Secure Flight can actually be implemented. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress?s investigative body, CAPPS II performed very poorly in the areas addressed by the appropriations bill. It is highly doubtful that Secure Flight will perform much better.

by Jim Malmberg


Posted by zine2/jmalmberg at 1:22 PM PDT | Post Comment | Permalink | Share This Post

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