"U.S. Passenger-Screening Plan Questioned"

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

U.S. Passenger-Screening Plan Questioned
BY LESLIE MILLER
The Associated Press


WASHINGTON - The government's plan to assign a threat level to all airline
passengers is running into trouble with budget officials who aren't
convinced it will reduce the risk of terrorism.

Mark Forman, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, said
Tuesday the agency won't let the plan go forward until questions about its
effectiveness are answered. He said the Transportation Security
Administration hasn't been forthcoming with information about how the
program or the technology will work.

"I have a huge spotlight on that project," Forman told the House
subcommittee on technology and information policy. "If we can't prove it
lowers risk, it's not a good investment for government."

CAPPS II - Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System - was ordered by
Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks. The plan is to develop a nationwide
computer system that will check such things as credit reports and consumer
transactions and compare passenger names with those on government watch
lists.

A 1996 law allows the budget office to cut funds for information technology
projects that it doesn't consider efficient or effective.

TSA spokesman Robert Johnson said the agency is meeting with the OMB this
week to resolve those issues. "There's no more important single program on
our agenda today than CAPPS II when it comes to delivering increased
security and service to the traveling public," he said.

Critics see a potential for unconstitutional invasions of privacy and for
database mix-ups that could lead to innocent people being branded security
risks.

A coalition of conservative and liberal groups sent a letter Tuesday to Rep.
Christopher Cox, R-Calif., chairman of the Select Committee on Homeland
Security, urging greater scrutiny of the TSA's plan.

"Congress should carefully and deliberately assess the program's
effectiveness as a security measure, its cost in economic terms, and its
cost to civil liberties before allowing TSA to move forward with CAPPS II,"
wrote the coalition, which includes Americans for Tax Reform, Free Congress
Foundation, the Eagle Forum, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center
for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The TSA's Johnson said the agency is working to allay privacy concerns by
building in protections and giving airline customers ways to resolve
problems if they arise. The system will only focus on identifying foreign
terrorists, he said.

Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the
ACLU, said that focus raises questions about the system's effectiveness. For
example, what about a domestic terrorist like Timothy McVeigh, he asked.

"Chances are terrorists will adapt," said Steinhardt, who along with other
civil libertarians met last week with TSA officials to discuss the program.
"The extent to which they want to do something to a plane, you send in a
domestic terrorist."

Lori Waters, the Eagle Forum's executive director, applauded the TSA for
reaching out but said the group still has privacy concerns about CAPPS II.

"What's the complaint process going to be?" she said. "How are you going to
be dealing with children? There are a lot of issues up in the air."

Airlines already do rudimentary checks of passenger information, such as
method of payment, address and date the ticket was reserved.

CAPPS II, which TSA officials hope to have operating nationwide by the end
of the year, will collect additional data and rate each passenger's risk
potential according to a three-color system: green, yellow, red. When
travelers check in, their names will be punched into the system and the
boarding passes encrypted with the ranking. TSA screeners will check the
passes at checkpoints.

The vast majority of passengers will be rated green and won't be subjected
to anything more than normal checks, while yellow will get extra screening
and red won't fly.

Witnesses who testified at Tuesday's subcommittee hearing cautioned that
government data, such as Social Security information, often is flawed.

"The problem is the quality and trustworthiness of information," said Jen
Que Louie, president of Nautilus Systems, Inc., a data-mining company. He
said some government data is so bad "it's amazing they can conduct
business."

Defense contractor Lockheed-Martin was awarded a $12.8 million contract in
February to administer CAPPS II as the first phase of a 5-year program.

ON THE NET

TSA: http://www.tsa.gov

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