Airline Passenger or Terrorism Suspect?
Christopher Effgen
The Department of Transportation is proposing to establish a Privacy
Act System of Records, which will classify all commercial airline
passengers as suspects of terrorism and a threat to national security.
The reason for doing this is to enable the agency to collect
information and conduct background investigations of all airline
passengers in a manner, which would otherwise require a court order.
DoT is proposing that passenger's names be entered into a computer
program that will then match their name against names in law
enforcement systems of records; financial and transactional databases,
public source information, proprietary data; and be used to create risk
assessment reports. When a person is identified as being a possible
suspect, in violation of any Federal, State, territorial, tribal,
local, international, or foreign law; the information will be forwarded
to the appropriate law enforcement agency. These agencies may also
access the database. A name is not a positve means of identification.
Federal, State or local agencies could access the database when an
agency is considering hiring or retaining an individual, issuing a
security clearance, license, contract, grant, or other benefit.
Applicants will not be informed when the database is used to deny them
of any benefit or right. Applicants will not be able to access or
dispute the information, which is collected and used against them.
The Department of Transportation's proposed System of Records would
create dossiers on a class of people who have no history of committing
acts of terrorism on US commercial airplanes. The result will be that
perhaps millions of people will be falsely identified as being a
suspect on the basis of their name, with no real reduction in
risk/threat.
It is disingenuous to say that an individual can avoid such data
collection by simply avoiding the use of public transportation system.
One might as well say that one could avoid the results of pollution by
not breathing. Moreover, in the past, the collection of data as
condition of entitlements has been specific to the entitlement and not
to a secret background check. The combination of Fourth, Fifth and
Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution creates a right of
individual privacy and individual security. There has been no
demonstration that circumstances exist that would warrant destruction
or impairment of that right or that the proposed rule would likely
increase public security to an extent that would warrant any exception
to the Constitutional right to privacy.
Christopher Effgen
Copies of the proposal can be downloaded in two formats:
http://www.disastercenter.com/tsa.doc
http://www.disastercenter.com/tsa.pdf
My response to the proposal can be read here:
http://www.disastercenter.com/TSA.htm