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Air security groundeded: Government struggles to launch screening system
Critics call it an abuse of civil liberties that should never be allowed to fly
By Sean Holstege - STAFF WRITER

The harshest critics of CAPPS II describe it as Big Brother's best tool to secretly track the movements of Americans through a network of internal border controls. It's a back door into unbridled cyber-snooping of everyday people on a global scale, they say. ...

...For months Hasbrouck, Scannell and civil liberties groups have questioned if CAPPS was a surreptitious way of sneaking TIA into reality. To him, this was the first tangible link.

``I don't think we're going to get to the bottom of the JetBlue scandal until Congress holds a full investigation,'' Hasbrouck said.

He publicized a Feb. 25 Torch Concepts presentation titled ``Homeland Security: Airline Passenger Risk Assessment.'' Torch explained that its database of JetBlue passengers contains 53 types of information from air traveler records.

Torch's document notes that the company first approached Delta Airlines for data in December 2001, met with the TSA in June 2002 and had assurances that CAPPS II contractors could use the data within weeks. The TSA has always insisted that its teams never used real data in its testing.

Torch managed to extract specific information on about 40 percent of JetBlue's passengers and create a profile. It was based on such things as income, job, number of kids, how long individuals lived at a particular address and whether they owned or rented.

Torch identified what it called ``passenger stability indicators'' to set the terrorists apart from typical JetBlue customers. Torch said income, home ownership, Social Security numbers and length of residence were the best available measures. Also knowing how many miles a person had flown could also help tip off who's a terrorist.

Shades of `pre-crime'

``Sounds like Pre-crime,'' Scannell said, referring to the science fiction film ``Minority Report'' starring Tom Cruise, in which murderers are arrested before they kill, based solely on the visions of mutants who can see the future. In the movie, the precognitive mutants are part of a futuristic law enforcement unit called Pre-Crime, which is presumed flawless.

``This is so much like `Minority Report,' it's frightening,'' said technology vendor Mary Grace, who is trying to sell biometrics to the Chinese.

``The TSA is proposing things I don't think the Chinese government does,'' she said. ``These databases are like a national ID card, just without the card.'' ...