From the LA times:
The information provided to the airlines when passengers make a reservation will be electronically transmitted to the government. In addition to the passenger's name, the "Passenger Name Record" can include phone number, address, hotel and car reservations, frequent-flier program information and other details.
The government hasn't yet said if in this version they will store a database of travel dossiers like they planned to in CAPPS II. One of the first things that will be needed is a Privacy Act request to see if they still want to keep travel dossiers on all of us for 50 years (like CAPPS II wanted to).
It's a good sign though that they no longer seem to be talking about making the airlines put date-of-birth into PNRs.
Most passengers flagged by the system would be subjected to closer searches. A very small number probably would not be allowed to board and could face arrest. . . .
Passengers would not be coded green, yellow or red according to their security status, as was proposed with CAPPS II, said Stone.
That is no different from CAPPS II color codes, just minus the colors. Hopefully the media will be smart enough to see through this spin.
CAPPS II would have also screened passenger lists for wanted criminal suspects. The new version will focus only on terror suspects.
Better. Looking for terrorists instead of bank robbers, deadbeat dads, and parking tickets. But I believe they still will want to expand the program to do these things once established.
The agency backed off from a plan to use commercial databases to try to verify the identity of each passenger. Critics contended that doing so could have led to discrimination against people who moved frequently or had a bad credit history.
Stone said the agency would examine the possibility of using commercial databases by testing them with passenger information from completed flights.
"TSA will not use commercial [databases] unless testing confirms it enhances security and does not violate privacy," said Stone.
Somehow TSA still believes that commercial databases are a wealth of accurate information; maybe they are lucky enough to not receive badly mistargeted junk mail (based on those databases) at their homes, but most of us are not.
Under CAPPS II, the computer system would have tried to predict who might be a terrorist suspect. The new system will not try to do that.
That is a substantial improvement, as such predictive systems are bound to use information the government has no business using (travel patterns, address history, travel companions, credit history, books checked out at library, etc.) and bound to create orders of magnitude more false positives than actual positives.
From TSA press release:
Significant progress has already been made by the U.S. Government by providing greatly expanded No-Fly and Selectee lists to airlines to conduct checks on their own computer systems. New names are being added every day as intelligence and law enforcement agencies submit persons for consideration. Under Secure Flight, TSA will take over responsibility for comparing Passenger Name Record (PNR) information of domestic air passengers to a greatly expanded list of known or suspected terrorists in the Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) database. As the program is phased in, TSA will be able to check passenger records against watch list information not previously available to airlines.
Yes, the public has seen the results of your "greatly expanded no-fly and selectee lists" as you have added names like Edward Kennedy (senator) and John Lewis (congressman) to the lists that already included David Nelson (actor) and Jack Baldwin (MD and WWII veteran). We are not inspired with confidence.
The only substantitive differences I see from CAPPS II are:
1) claim they will not be a full-up "papers please" checkpoint looking for law-enforcement violations
2) claim they will no longer try to predict who might be a terrorist
3) no more talk (yet) of requiring pax DOB, address, and phone on PNRs.
All are important, but the key metric is elimination of harassment due to false alarms and a quick, effective process with independent judicial appeal to clear your name. Lip service is given, but details are short.
I wonder, does Bill Scannell plan to fire up his website again? It would be great to hear from him on this new proposal.