http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0108/p1s2-woeu.html

Would you submit your information to the airline or to a government agency (possibly to be shared worldwide) to get onto a "clean" list. At first thought, I would do so if it meant that I could breeze through security without having to worry about being questioned and poked and prodded. But then, now some government agency will definitely be tracking all your comings and goings. Shades of Big Brother come to mind.

But what is to stop a terrorist to plan years ahead, make sure they get onto the "clean" list, travel back and forth enough so as to not raise suspicion. Then, when the time comes for them to commit their crime, they can breeze through security? Yeah, a clean list would be nice, but the airlines still need to have competent security personel to review x-ray and bomb sniffing machines. A "clean" person could still sneak on board contraband.

Would you submit to being on a "clean" list?

If it saved me any time I'd do it. I don't think it would give anybody any additional information they don't already have.

It would be interesting to see how many of the 19 would have qualified for the clean list.

It won't help at all. If you provide a way for someone to get less security, that is exactly what terrorists will use.

Even if you required all air passengers to be white, it still wouldn't work. Taliban John Walker from Marin County, CA would be working for them here in the USA, on a plane, instead of over in Afghanistan!

JS is correct. In fact, this will make it easier for bad people to do bad things!

I would probably try to get on the list. I'm not too worried about having the governments tracking my comings and goings, they do that already very well.

I always thought that leaving the US was something the gov never bothered to track, until I applied for INSPass. There were all my comings and goings for the last year right in front of me on the INS screen.

The airlines keep track of our travel so it would be very simple for the gov to hook up to those databases and get a list of our domestic travel as well.

Put me on the list, and let me go through the airport security a bit faster, or rather, let me arrive 45 minutes before departure instead of 2 hours.

They already have all my international, so they can have the domestic, too, if it spares me some time in yet another line.

Who was it that said that we already have no privacy and that we need to get over it?

Well, I'm with him. I'd be happy to give out that information. It's already in some database somewhere, so I'd have no problem with this.

Consider this:

1) Spending the same amount of time screening every passenger is less efficient than spending more time on "suspicious" people and less time on grannies and infants, right? (most cops can tell who's "suspicious" and who's not without resorting to a federal checklist and a database)

2) With an ID card that supposedly ensures less screening is necessary, that means grannies, infants, and infrequent flyers will be subjected to more security screening than those with ID cards, right?


Suppose a terrorist gets one of these ID cards. Now you're spending more time screening grannies, infants and infrequent flyers than you are terrorists! Whether you believe profiling is effective, surely you can't argue that spending more time (not the same amount of time, *more* time) screening Grandma makes any sense!


And another thing -- if this special ID card requires an FBI background check, it will take years and years for even half of the airlines' FF members to get checked out. How long have we been waiting for all the airport employees to get background checks now? Imagine doing that for a quarter or half the passengers! This is a stupid idea that WILL NOT WORK!

FWIW, I'm also in the skeptical camp!

LHR was supposed to be implementing one of these programs. How did/is that going?

d

Add me to the list of skeptics.

It seems like the government already knows my comings and goings better than I do. But I still hesitate to give up more info.