What if they just generate the algorithm, like I suggested above? And the folks with the data (the credit bureaus) generated the score?

FICO, for example, doesn't hold my credit data. They just come with the way to generate the score from a given set of data. I bet they could do something similar for this and keep the TSAs hands off of my data. I'm sure they would want that too, since the risk of holding on to that data is huge.

So if her parents had a credit card, they wouldn't have groped her?
Of course. My point is that at the moment, "being an Alaska elected representative" doesn't exempt someone, so the (much lower bar of) "having a credit card" is not likely to exempt someone.
See below. You've already nailed it (nearly).
Yes, absolutely I object to the scanners and the gropes, especially as a primary measure. And the problem is that TSA doesn't screen everyone. They don't screen airport employees. They don't screen TSA staff. They don't screen (as rigorously) the pilots and FAs. (I'm not endorsing more screening for flight crews; see below.)

They screen all passengers at the same level, but I would argue that that level is too high. It's absurd to screen on the basis that Rep Cissna could have explosive fluids in her breast prosthesis or that the decorated veteran might have suddenly gone off the reservation, but assume that the guy who makes the milkshakes at McD's is okay because he's had a background check.

On the one hand, there have been numerous examples of TSA and airport employees stealing, assisting with drug trafficking, the airline employee who took his buddy's gun through for him, the TSA woman who boarded a flight as a passenger without screening. The background checks have not eliminated the "bad apples." On the other hand, despite these lapses, despite abysmal scores on Red Team tests, despite hundreds of unscreened people having access to the so-called "sterile" area, there are not planes raining from the heavens. And other countries manage without the scope and grope, again, without losing aircraft.

This says to me that (a) the background checks, including things like credit history, are basically meaningless in determining whether someone is a criminal or not, and (b) the current level of passenger screening is excessive.
One of the major failings with TSA policies has been the inability to consider which groups might be adversely affected by a new procedure. The liquids ban initially (and to some extent still) ignored medical needs and baby foods. The shoes-off policy ignored people who cannot remove their orthopedic shoes. The grope-up-your-leg policy ignores women who choose to wear skirts, including those who do so for cultural or religious reasons. The scanner policy overlooked the fact that some people cannot stand, some cannot stand still for 2 minutes, and some cannot stand with their hands over their heads. The policy of removing everything before going in the scanner ignored people with insulin pumps, ostomies or prostheses. The groups of people above may be a minority of the population. They may be a minority of the people who travel. But people in those groups are delayed, harassed, and embarrassed every time they have to go through a checkpoint. TSA's ill-thought-out procedures make these people second class citizens for the crime of surviving cancer, turning 90, or being a modest woman.

There are many honest people who either choose not to have a credit card or who are unable to get credit. A process that treats someone without a credit history as a terrorist will likewise single out these people every single time.
If you add random ETD to the above (say, every fifth passenger), I think that is significantly LESS offensive than the current policy while being at least as effective. The very minor risk of someone getting something through that is offset by the increased attention to these things instead of IDs, shoes, water bottles and groping. And oddly, if you add random ETD to your list, you have pretty much what the rest of the world does. @:-)

Very well said, RadioGirl.

Let me add my compliments, also, for a succinct post.

What troubles me most about current screening, is the individuals who get groped every single time they go through a checkpoint because they are somehow "different" than other people. That is nothing but discrimination.

Under current policy she would have been groped. We're talking about changing that policy.

The key phrase here being "at the moment". Again, under current policy, every gets screened. As we've all said, that policy is stupid.

What's also clear is that profiling based on race, religion, or country of origin has also been made unacceptable. So that's out.

How else would you suggest who to screen and who not to screen? I'm suggesting that data on passengers is a "blind" (i.e. not subject to prejudice) system that could be used to determine who gets screened and who doesn't. I'm not sure I'd want the TSA developing a system to make that determination on it's own but I think it's possible to design an open and fair system that would do so. In theory I think that one's credit history would be a valuable bit of data to throw in the hopper. I'm not saying that a lack of credit history would doom you to an anal probe but if there was an opt-in program that required this information and got me out of the NoS/grope then I would consider it.

I was under the impression that those folks go through background checks. I could be wrong. No background check is perfect, but then I'm not sure how many cases of airport workers actively being involved in terrorism there are.

Screening folks who have access to the flight deck (and to firearms in the case of some pilots) seems pretty dumb to me, so yeah I think screening them is a bad idea. If a pilot wants to crash the plane we're not stopping him or her from doing so with a scanner.

Unless it was a Voight-Kampff....

I would agree. The question is how to decide which passengers get that level of screening - unless you're saying that none should, and that we're just willing to accept the risk of suicide bombers on planes. Personally - I'm willing to accept that risk. (The same risk I accept when I get on a bus, and there have been way more cases of terrorists blowing up buses than blowing up planes.)

The old style screening - WTMD combined with x-raying your carry-on, would PROBABLY find guns. And I'm good with that. The fact is that one upside of 9/11 is that the old advice of passengers complying with terrorists demands is out the window. We're clearly the last line of defense and in a few recent cases that last line has proved effective.

A lot of the current "enhancements" seemed to be geared towards explosives detection. I'm willing to say "give up on that". Are you saying the same thing?

Guess not...

It would be as effective as current TSA policy - that is not at all. "Flip a coin" isn't really a good security policy. It's still security theater. I still think the better idea is to say that suicide bombers do not represent a significant threat against aircraft, and therefore screening against them is neither effective nor prudent.

But...if we do have to decide who to screen and who not to screen then somehow doing it randomly just bugs me because the only reason to do it randomly is to avoid offending anyone. It's not being done with any sort of analysis or intelligence because that wouldn't be politically correct. Again, it's security theater. And that's a waste of my time and my money as a taxpayer.

This person gets the TSA full monty for bulky clothing.



Is she really a significant threat?

Clearly you did not attend a Catholic school.

+1. And I should add I'm what many people here in TS/S would believe to be a liberal, "socialist" type.

Honestly, I fail to understand how anyone would be more willing to allow an iris or fingerprint scan than to provide his or her credit history.

I'm sorry, but I just have a real problem with allowing government access to intimate features of my actual physical being. As in, there's no way in hell I'll provide this information unless my alternative is a gulag in Kamchatka. (And I have a 20-year credit history, a high-700s credit score, and not so much as a speeding ticket to my name.)

• I don't trust TSA to safeguard this information. This is an agency that's proven time and again it can't be trusted, and it can't even ferret out the problem of petty larceny among its staff people. So now we're going to give away even more of the candy store?
• Crafting a massive database trove of valuable information will present an almost irresistible temptation to some Fed to misuse it. How'd you like your entire credit history & background to be provided to some corporation b/c they made a giant campaign contribution to Candidate X? I'd bet any amount of money that will happen if this goes through.
• I've had problems in the past with not agreeing with my government 100% of the time. Can I be sure that government won't use its database to find and persecute people they don't want making a fuss...over issues like its tendency to trample the civil rights of its citizens?
• (Various other practical considerations)...etc.

To me, this is an unconscionable expansion of a police-state-like mentality, being imposed under the flimsiest of rationales. You're 100 times more likely to be hit by lightning than to die in terrorist incident. I just don't see the point.

If this actually succeeds in getting implemented. The first thing I see happening is that they can't match the right Iris to the right person and suddenly Betty Jean Smith gets accused of being John Smith and there is no telling what will be required for the passenger to get that cleared up. Because TSA/DHS never does anything in a simple way to get from point a to point b in a straight line.

From the opposite end of the political spectrum, I agree with you 100% on this. I don't believe for a minute that TSA/DHS's interest in credit history will be as superficial as how long someone has had a credit card. It will be too tempting to see where you spend your money. Donations to political parties? Donations to the ACLU or a tea party group? Donations to the Cannabis Defense Coalition, even if it's for Phil's defense fund? (Or perhaps, especially if it's for Phil's defense fund?)

There's just no way an organization as paranoid and risk-averse as TSA will settle for something as simple as "had a credit card for 5 years."

The other thing that worries me about this (I'm up to six things, I think ) is that if TSA approaches this like they have everything else, I can foresee people submitting their credit records, tax returns, life history, whatever, and then being rejected by the TSA without any reason given. "Sorry, ma'am, you've been turned down for trusted traveler but we can't tell you why. SSI, you know. But please feel free to try again (with the non-refundable application fee) in six months' time." Now they've got all your data and you've got nothing.

People get put on the No Fly list without being told why (or even told that they're on it). I can't see that the Can Fly list will be any different.

Well, to judge from the introduction of the AITs, TSA will roll out TT in the crudest of fashions - "Big Brother wants your retina scans" - and there'll be an outcry. I doubt the eventual program will be anything like as intensive as what's being floated now.

Instead of opening a new thread, I decided to post this here.

Note that DHS said it is working on the "checkpoint of tomorrow", and other groups have said they ARE working with DHS to bring this to fruition.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/TRAVEL/06/07...ure/index.html

Have at it.

How do YOU suggest that you be allowed to prove you are who you say you are? Biometrics are the most secure way to prove identity.


The data is already there. You're just deluding yourself if you think it isn't. Read up more on companies like ChoicePoint and other data aggregators. And the Feds already buy from them. Your credit card company sells them your purchases. Your supermarket savings club sells them your data. They get it from everyone. And sell it to everyone. Unless you're going completely off the grid, not traveling by air, and living a cash only life then there's already a TON of data about you for those willing to pay for it.



This is why I think the TSA should just give up and go back to keeping guns off of planes. But as long as they insist on doing what their doing I want them to do it smarter.

You keep missing the idea. The idea isn't that they get your credit history. It's that they get a score.

When you buy a car and get dealership financing (yeech) the finance guy there doesn't look at your full credit report. He looks at the credit score, which the agency generates and hands to him. I think it would be the same way. The feds don't get your credit history, they get a "security risk score". They don't see the raw data.

Meanwhile - if you donated to a political party via credit card they can get that data from ChoicePoint.

It will be too tempting to see where you spend your money. Donations to political parties? Donations to the ACLU or a tea party group? Donations to the Cannabis Defense Coalition, even if it's for Phil's defense fund? (Or perhaps, especially if it's for Phil's defense fund?)

There's just no way an organization as paranoid and risk-averse as TSA will settle for something as simple as "had a credit card for 5 years."

The other thing that worries me about this (I'm up to six things, I think ) is that if TSA approaches this like they have everything else, I can foresee people submitting their credit records, tax returns, life history, whatever, and then being rejected by the TSA without any reason given. "Sorry, ma'am, you've been turned down for trusted traveler but we can't tell you why. SSI, you know. But please feel free to try again (with the non-refundable application fee) in six months' time." Now they've got all your data and you've got nothing.

People get put on the No Fly list without being told why (or even told that they're on it). I can't see that the Can Fly list will be any different. [/QUOTE]

Looks like there are several people in this thread who are not aware of what the credit card companies already know about you. Look it up, you'll want to adjust your tinfoil hat even tighter.