re: CAPPS II Canceled

[not exactly. -x]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/politics/16fly.html

   


 
  Government Is 'Reshaping' Airport Screening System
By MATTHEW L. WALD

Published: July 16, 2004


WASHINGTON, July 15 - The government is backing away from a plan to use 
commercial databases in its computerized system for determining which airline 
passengers might pose a security risk. 

But it is pressing ahead with a new computer system that will rely on 
government databases. 

The goal is a better screening tool that will select about 4 percent of all 
passengers for more intense scrutiny, compared with the 14 percent identified 
by the current system. Some travelers are now chosen for more 
intensive "secondary screenings" at random, and others are chosen for reasons 
that are supposed to be secret but are thought to include booking at the last 
minute, buying one-way tickets and paying with cash.

The acting administrator of the Transportation Security Administration, David 
M. Stone, told the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday that his 
agency was "reshaping and repackaging" the screening system, which was 
originally supposed to use commercial databases that sweep in data on credit, 
home ownership, telephone records and car registration as a way to evaluate 
whether the name given by a passenger was real. That plan, called Capps 2, for 
Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening, had been criticized as an invasion 
of passengers' privacy.

On Wednesday the secretary of homeland security, Tom Ridge, was quoted in USA 
Today as saying that Capps 2 was dead. But a spokesman for his agency, Brian 
Roehrkasse, said Thursday that "the administration continues to move forward 
on an automated aviation passenger prescreening system to replace the existing 
antiquated airline system, to better manage risk and be more efficient."

Mr. Roehrkasse said he did not know when the new system would be put into 
place. Much of it is still under development, he said.

The law that established the Transportation Security Administration, passed by 
Congress in November 2001, two months after the terrorist attacks, included a 
variety of requirements for the new agency. One was to screen all baggage. 
That destroyed the rationale of the original Capps system, which was 
established in 1998 in response to the possibility of a bomb in a checked 
suitcase like the one that destroyed Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, 
Scotland. Another requirement was to develop a better screening tool to pick 
which passengers, with their carry-on luggage, should be scrutinized.

The new system is supposed to rely on government databases. 

The government already has a so-called no-fly list, which is actually a list 
of people whom the airlines are not supposed to carry, and a larger list of 
people who are supposed to be put through secondary screening if they seek to 
fly. According to an administration official who asked not to be identified, 
those two lists have fewer than 10,000 names but the new computer system would 
integrate a list of names that is "dramatically larger." The official would 
not be more specific about either number.

In addition, various government agencies maintain lists of names now, 
including the State Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 
the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. A federal agency established last December within 
the Department of Homeland Security, the Terrorist Screening Center, is 
supposed to integrate these lists. The agencies use a variety of bases for 
identifying individuals as suspect. 

The Capps 2 system was supposed to be based on passengers' names, addresses 
and phone numbers; the original proposal for the system would have required 
passengers to submit their dates of birth as well. The new system might still 
do that, according to the official.

Laura W. Murphy, the director of the Washington office of the American Civil 
Liberties Union, one of the organizations that had been critical of Capps 2, 
said a system that relied solely on government databases could still be 
unfair, because the databases themselves would have errors. But she said she 
was glad that the government was no longer proposing to run every name through 
commercial databases. 

"We don't want to turn into a society where everybody is treated like a 
suspect and everybody is investigated," Ms. Murphy said. 

The recently released Senate Intelligence Committee report and the hearings 
held by the Sept. 11 commission have demonstrated shortcomings in 
intelligence, Ms. Murphy said, and no-fly lists based on flawed intelligence 
would mean a security system "built on what right now appears to be a house of 
cards." The government should improve aviation security by concentrating on 
simpler challenges, like access control at airports, she said. 
 


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