CAPPS II may be dead, but its evil step brother 'Secure Flight' will live if we don't complain loudly enough. If something isn't done soon, the passenger records of over 54 million Americans will be handed-over to the TSA by the airlines. Learn more and take action at:

http://www.unsecureflight.com

The time to file your comments is now. We've built an interface that links directly into the TSA's 'Secure Flight' comments database.

The Bill of Rights you save may be your own.

Thanks for the info. SecureFlight is little more than CAPPSII by a different name.

Thanks, Bill. I think of what happened to Ted Kennedy, U. S. senator.

Also went into the ACLU site & sent emails to my 2 state senators and Congressional rep.:

http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/Safe...ID=11904&c=206

This is what the letter (email) looks like:

As your constituent, I urge you to oppose any efforts by Attorney General John Ashcroft to pass his proposed �Domestic Security Enhancement Act� in Congress. I am deeply concerned that rather than passing this new Act � which would give new and even more controversial powers than the �USA PATRIOT Act� - Congress should instead investigate and oversee ways in which this Administration has already used or misused new powers.

I have read that the new Ashcroft proposal contains a multitude of new and sweeping law enforcement and intelligence gathering powers, many of which are not related to terrorism, that would severely undermine basic constitutional rights and checks and balances.

If adopted, the bill would diminish personal privacy by removing important checks on government surveillance authority, reduce the accountability of government to the public by increasing government secrecy, expand on the definition of "terrorism" in a manner that threatens the constitutionally protected rights of Americans, and seriously erode the right of all persons to due process of law.

I am very concerned that already under the USA PATRIOT Act, this government has compiled unprecedented powers to violate our civil liberties and tap deep into the private lives of innocent Americans. Congress must not accept new legislation that threatens our constitutional rights in the name of security against terrorism. I believe that we can be safe and free without sacrificing the very values for which our nation stands.

In its role as representing the people, Congress should now step in and block any efforts to pass additional legislation intruding on our core liberties and rights. At the same time, I also believe it is the duty of Congress to force the Administration to account for the ways in which it has already used its new powers under the USA Patriot Act. To this end, I hope that you will take every opportunity to support oversight hearings into the ways in which the government has used its new powers.

Bill--great to see you in the fight on this one!

One suggestion--let us know on the website how to directly send comments to TSA and/or to what address your web-form is sending them. Some may not be confortable using the form, and some, like-me, would use the form if it didn't overlap with where I have already sent letters/faxes/emails.

E.g., are you forwarding these comments to the TSA privacy officer, the OMB comments fax # for docket TSA-2004-19160, the DHS privacy officer, etc.?

Thanks for all your work on CAPPS II and now this one. Seems like the vampire is never dead no matter how many stakes DHS/TSA claims to drive.

Good thread. You are right about this. I would have liked to see the data and report from MIT.

The MIT report is here:

http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/stu...tm#_Toc9406728

and is linked from the website at http://dontspyon.us/carnival.html

It's been a while since I read the Carnival Booth paper, but if I recall, the basic premise is that if the terrorists know in advance they are suspects on their test runs (i.e., see SSSS on their BP, are pulled aside for extra screening, etc.), then they will merely send their non-flagged companions to perform the actual missions after testing the system to see who is non-flagged.

IIRC the basic recommendation was to make "extra screening" invisible to the pax and/or to screen everyone equally and/or to use random searches, which don't suffer from the "testing" problem.

The document is somewhat out of date (refers to the old "Have your bags been in your possession?" questions and CAPPS I). The paper has also been critcized for not being peer-reviewed or published in any recognized forum; IIRC it is a graduate class paper; something more akin to a technical report (like a whitepaper) than a peer-reviewed conference or journal publication. But none of that necessarily makes the conclusions more or less valid.

GOOD Read! I know some things now that never made sense before.

Done!

My brother's company works w/ the local FBI liason to Homeland Security in a major west coast city. Said special agent in charge tells him that approx. 50% of HS people are contractors and it's a complete mess over there from an accountability POV. To put this kind of information into their hands is but another step down the road to facism disguised as "Americanism."