Privacy Issue Delays Change in Airport Screening System

Privacy Issue Delays Change in Airport Screening
System
New York Times

Published: February 13, 2004


WASHINGTON — A privacy dispute with airlines has
derailed the government's effort to modernize the
system used to pick out suspicious passengers at
airports, and officials of the Department of Homeland
Security said Thursday that they would not say when it
would be running.

Congressional auditors reported Thursday that the plan
faces unanswered questions about preventing abuse of
the data, guarding privacy and coping with
inaccuracies.

The report, by the General Accounting Office, was
issued as British Airways acknowledged that it had
canceled a London-to-Washington flight for the fifth
time this year, because of intelligence information
about possible terrorist threats. It also canceled a
flight from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

Responding to the report on the delay, officials of
the Department of Homeland Security said that the
auditors were largely correct, and that they had been
stymied in testing the system because the airlines
were afraid to volunteer sample data on passengers for
fear of offending their customers. But the officials
said parts of the program could be in place by the end
of the year. 

"They are right to point out there are a number of
unanswered questions," said Nuala O'Connor Kelly, the
department's chief privacy officer. "But that is not
to say that they are unanswerable questions."

The government has already issued two sets of draft
rules, and will issue a third set, officials said. The
changes included cutting the length of time that the
government would retain the records, to a few days
after the last flight of an itinerary is completed;
the first proposal was up to 50 years.

But privacy advocates, including the American Civil
Liberties Union, said the report was a sign that the
concept was fatally flawed.

The system determines who will be pulled aside for
"secondary screening" at airport checkpoints. The
program now in use, the Computer-Assisted Passenger
Prescreening System, was developed in the late 1990's
by Northwest Airlines at the behest of the Federal
Aviation Administration, which was then in charge of
aviation security. The system is operated by the
airlines based on their computer records about
passengers, and some computers are so old that they
cannot store all the letters in a passenger's name.

The replacement system, known as CAPPS II, was
mandated by Congress, and would be operated by the
Department of Homeland Security. Airlines would submit
the name, address, telephone number and birth date of
each passenger. The department would turn that
information over to a commercial database company,
which would try to learn whether the name represented
a real identity. The company would report back with a
numerical score akin to a credit rating but not with
any other data on the passenger.

The government's aim is to cut the number of people
who are now diverted for "secondary screening" to
about 4 percent from 14 percent now. Secondary
screening generally refers to close use of a
metal-detecting wand and a hand search of carry-on
bags.

Asa Hutchinson, the under secretary for border and
transportation security, said Thursday in a news
briefing, "Our system right now is not effective."

Mr. Hutchinson would not say what intelligence led to
the cancellation of the British Airways flights on
Thursday, but he said it had been a decision of the
British government, based on intelligence that was
shared and jointly analyzed.

Federal law enforcement and intelligence officials
said the intelligence had been similar to information
that led to cancellations in early January and early
February. 

The intelligence, they said, included information
obtained in interrogations of captured terrorists from
Al Qaeda, as well as information from electronic
intercepts of communications among Qaeda suspects, and
other information that they would not describe.

At least some of the information, the officials said,
referred to specific threats on specific days against
British Airways flights, including direct references
to threats against British Airways Flight 223, a
midday flight from Heathrow Airport near London to
Dulles International Airport near Washington. 

In a meeting with reporters last week, Homeland
Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the threats of
terrorist attacks in December and January had been the
most compelling and credible he had seen since the
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Ridge said he believed
that government actions during the last three months,
including the request for the cancellation of several
international flights, had probably prevented a
catastrophic terrorist attack.


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