Wow...... I'm speechless...

From USA today.
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/fligh...terstitialskip

Really - read the whole thing. But some highlights...

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants passengers to give the additional personal information — as well as their full names — so it can do more precise background checks that it says will result in fewer travelers being mistaken for terrorists. Travelers currently must provide only a last name and a first initial.

AND

People who don't comply could be more easily mistaken for a terrorist and "may be more likely to experience delays, be subjected to additional screening (or) be denied transport," the TSA wrote.

I haven't been mistaken for a terrorist yet at the airport, so I'll pass, thank you very much.

(Is this one of the agencies that Ron Paul would get rid of?)

Why are you speechless?What's the big deal?
As a memeber of M+ UA has already my birthdate.
@:-) In fact I use it to get discounted fares.

As for the TSA staff, they wave and greet me by name before each check. Its the high airfare that I am unhappy about.

Maybe you are happy giving them all of your information ahead of time so they can do a background check on you... but I'm not.

We need to email-bomb United, Continental and Virgin congratulating them for standing up to TSA and ask them to do more. Do the opposite for AirTran and Frontier.

If you've not been hauled over for already being on the watch list, just get dyslexic or something with your birthday or even just refuse to give.

What good is it going to do anyway, as I'm sure that the birth dates of most would-be terrorists are either not known or are incorrect. It's not known for certain when Osama was born, although his birthdate is thought to be March 10, 1957.

Once again, the solution to the problem of finding the terrorist needle in the haystack is to add more hay.

This is a great plan, as long as we can depend on the terrorists to be honest about their names, gender and birth dates, which I'm sure we can.

There is a difference between voluntarily providing personal information to a private company and being compelled by the government to provide it.

Yep. The Government may say "voluntary", it'll be about as voluntary as shoe removal.

Next thing you know, it'll be your SSN for instant background checks.

They can already pull that quite easily after getting your name, credit card and other information from the PNR. Don't assume they're not already accessing that data.

Hum, the Government already has so much info on us, why just not tap those resources???

Maybe they lost the laptops the info was kept on.

Bull Feathers. The airlines don't like it because they would need to make IT infrastructure changes to add this info to the PNR's. It is telling that they aren't complaining about the requirement for full first name instead of initial, because that would require very little in the way of changes (just a validation check).

Here is what I find interesting:

1) It seems like this change will remove the power of the airline to deselect pax, as the selection is now done by the TSA and not the carrier.

2) The implementation of the DOB/Sex is highly likely to be so flawed as to actually provide less security than the current situation. Unless the DOB/Sex is printed on the BP or the ID checker has a terminal to pull up this info, there will be no positive matching of DOB to ID, and therefore a terrorist who would today be stopped can simply provide an incorrect DOB to the airline, and then board using his real ID. Essentially, it will be the equivalent of "No, he's not the Osama bin Laden whom we are looking for - no need for SSSS."

I am certain that they are - and they can get all that other information with a fairly simple process, without my need to give it to them.

But just like I have to bring a document to DMV to "prove" my SSN (even though they can and do check it electronically), I can see TSA requiring us to give it to them "just because" (it makes their life easier). And from their perspective, it also gives them another "proof" to turn you over to LE for providing false info to the government. Bury 'em (us) with paperwork and at some point they'll (we'll) screw up.