CAPPS II Passenger Screening and Airline Security
This is from The Washington Post, September 8, 2003. I've been holding off on blogging about it until I had some good numbers to work with, and today I was able to coax the Bureau of Transportation Statistics webpage to give me some good data.
The new Transportation Security Administration system seeks to probe deeper into each passenger's identity than is currently possible, comparing personal information against criminal records and intelligence information. Passengers will be assigned a color code -- green, yellow or red -- based in part on their city of departure, destination, traveling companions and date of ticket purchase.
Most people will be coded green and sail through. But up to 8 percent of passengers who board the nation's 26,000 daily flights will be coded "yellow" and will undergo additional screening at the checkpoint, according to people familiar with the program. An estimated 1 to 2 percent will be labeled "red" and will be prohibited from boarding. These passengers also will face police questioning and may be arrested.
The system "will provide protections for the flying public," said TSA spokesman Brian Turmail. "Not only should we keep passengers from sitting next to a terrorist, we should keep them from sitting next to wanted ax murderers."
(snip)
Under the new program, the airline will send information about everyone who books a flight to the TSA, including full name, home address, home telephone number, date of birth and travel itinerary. If the computer system identifies a threat, the TSA will notify federal or local law enforcement authorities. The agency has not indicated the number or type of personnel needed to oversee the program.
The TSA will check each passenger in two steps. The first will match the passenger's name and information against databases of private companies that collect information on people for commercial reasons, such as their shopping habits. This process will generate a numerical score that will indicate the likelihood that the passenger is who he says he is. Passengers will not be informed of their color code or their numerical score. The second step matches passenger information against government intelligence combined with local and state outstanding warrants for violent felonies.
Let's look at the numbers. In the United States, 595,655,501 revenue passengers (excluding airline employees or infants who get a big discount) got on planes in 2001. This is from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That means, on an average day, 1.6 million passengers board planes and travel. Eight percent of these will be coded yellow. That's 128,000 people who will be subject to additional screening. Since code red people will be between one and two percent, between 16,000 and 32,000 people will be prohibited from boarding aircraft, will be questioned by police, and may be arrested.
How many of these will be false positives will be anyone's guess. It could be one percent, it could be ten percent, it could be even more. But considering that the credit bureau cannot seem to keep my record separate from my father's, even though we live 500 miles apart and have different social security numbers I don't have a whole lot of faith in their reliance on private databases. You cannot tell me that there are 16,000 to 32,000 people who are ax-murderers who fly every day, or beat up a person and have a warrant outstanding. Or shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
Another source said that 100 million people fly each year. That means eight million will be subject to additional screening. And one to two million will be barred from flying, questioned by police, and possibly arrested. Even if one percent are false positives, that’s still 10,000 people, probably fairly well off, who will be between pissed and livid. And will write their congressmen and their newspaper.
Besides, weren't we sold all this additional security with the promise it was only for terrorists, not for domestic criminals?
I think someone’s lying about the orders of magnitude, but I cannot figure out why. Either that, or they are about to put the nail in the coffin to bury the Patriot Act.
Meanwhile, the biggest risk is air cargo. None of it is screened.
... many holes in security persist. Airports and aircraft still appear easy to penetrate, illustrated last month by an accidental landing of several boaters on the airfield at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Air cargo remains vulnerable, as virtually none of the items stowed alongside luggage in the aircraft hold are screened for explosives. Government officials continue to assess how best to respond to the possibility of a shoulder-fired missile attack at a commercial airliner, which they maintain is a serious threat. [emphasis added]
That's what scares me. Nobody is working on screening it thought, because of the cost.
I'll be flying this fall to Europe. I hope that everything will be OK, and statistically I know that my risk is very small. But I quote other bloggers: "Hope is not a plan." If we're serious about security, air cargo MUST be screened, and the sooner the better. Osama Bin Laden reads the Washington Post too.