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Impeach George Bush
Didn't they kill Total Information Awareness
I thought the whole Total Information Awareness thing got killed. So instead, they just want to track everyone who travels?
Source: AP, 2003-02-28
Candidate: Homeland Office
Defense contractor Lockheed-Martin will develop a new
system to check background information and assign a threat level to all
commercial air passengers, the Transportation Department announced on Friday.
The company, which employed Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta in the
mid-1990s, was awarded a five-year contract to administer the program. The
first phase of the contract is worth $12.8 million, transportation officials
said.
Civil liberties watchdogs see the potential for unconstitutional invasions of
privacy and for database mix-ups that could lead to innocent people being
branded security risks.
''This system threatens to create a permanent blacklisted underclass of
Americans who cannot travel freely,'' said Katie Corrigan, a lawyer for the
American Civil Liberties Union.
Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said a
privacy officer will be assigned to safeguard civil liberties.
''Before any new homeland security technologies are deployed, we will ensure
that we will uphold the laws of the land,'' Roehrkasse said. ''Any new
data-mining technologies or programs to enhance information sharing and
collecting must and will respect the civil rights and civil liberties
guaranteed to the American people.''
The system, ordered by Congress after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, will
gather much more information on passengers than previously. Delta Air Lines
will try it out at three undisclosed airports beginning in about a month, and
a comprehensive system could be in place by the end of the year.
The nationwide computer system, which will check such things as credit
reports and bank account activity and compare passenger names with those on
government watch lists. Under the system, airlines will ask fliers more
information than they do now: full name, address, phone number and date of
birth.
Advocates say the system will weed out dangerous people while ensuring
law-abiding citizens aren't given unnecessary scrutiny.
Transportation officials say CAPPS II - Computer Assisted Passenger
Prescreening System - will use databases that already operate in line with
privacy laws and won't profile based on race, religion or ethnicity. No data
from the background checks will be stored.
Airlines already do rudimentary checks of passenger information, such as
method of payment, address and date the ticket was reserved.
CAPPS II will collect 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 their boarding passes encrypted
with the ranking. TSA screeners will check the passes at checkpoints.
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User Originated Comments:
From: r0ck3r
2004-03-02 12:11:36
d00d acc0rd1ngz 2 a r3liabl3 s0urc3 u r gh3y
From: LLindauer
1999-11-30 00:00:00
according to a reliable source, fully 28 of
shrub's advisors are former lockheed-martin execs.
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