"Wandings at Airport Security"

Friday, August 8, 2003

Wandings at Airport Security
The Christian Science Monitor


Chalk one up for government's ability to balance civil liberties and
protection from terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security has announced
it will stop collecting some personal information on airline passengers.

That should please privacy advocates and especially those bewildered
passengers ("Who, me a terrorist?") who are routinely taken out of airport
screening lines for more-comprehensive checks because a computer told a
screener they were suspect.

The Department's first version of CAPPS, or Computer-Assisted Passenger
Pre-Screening, had too broad a mandate, including the ability to use
passengers' financial and medical data. Such data could also have been
stored up to 50 years.

CAPPS II will now collect only a passenger's name, address, birth date, and
phone number just a few hours before departure, and keep it for only a few
days. That information will be checked against specific public and
commercial databases to give screeners a "confidence" score in a passenger's
identity. It also will comb terrorist "watch" lists and flag anyone wanted
for violent crimes.

This tweaking of CAPPS shows the government must be more careful in
curtailing certain freedoms when trying to bring about more security.


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