IP: TICKET BUYERS WOULD BE MATCHED AGAINST LAW ENFORCEMENT RECORDS

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

I have no big problem with these systems for security of airports but you 
know that their uses will expand and expand and eventually it will bit us 
in our liberty. djf

http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/honda28.htm

Auto-abstract

The San Jose Democrat is pushing a bill to spend $15 million to start 
designing such a system, which could mean big business for Silicon Valley 
companies.

Book a flight in the future and computers could start zipping your name 
through dozens of databases to see if you've recently visited a hostile 
country, paid for a ticket in cash or caught the attention of immigration 
officials or the FBI.

The goal is to track whether a travelers' past behavior -- not race or 
ethnicity -- fits the profile of a terrorist.

That's Rep. Mike Honda's vision for the future of air security, and the San 
Jose Democrat is pushing a bill to spend $15 million to start designing 
such a system, which could mean big business for Silicon Valley companies.

Cross-matching law enforcement records and private travel data could give 
authorities weeks to track down suspicious passengers or flag questionable 
travelers and their bags if they buy tickets the day of the flight.

``It's not profiling in the traditional terminology,'' said Honda, who sits 
on the House Aviation Subcommittee.

Honda said current requirements to screen luggage -- matching bags with 
passengers, hand searches or sending bags through bomb-detection machines 
-- don't go far enough.

You have to profile,'' said Honda, who last month helped introduce 
legislation as part of the Bioterrorism Protection Act to begin designing a 
system to merge airline, Amtrak and other reservation systems with those of 
law enforcement agencies.

For passengers like Y.K. Gupta, the system would have started analyzing his 
recent travel and cross-referencing his name against FBI and local law 
enforcement databases the minute he bought his ticket last month from the 
East Coast to San Francisco.

``You're talking about turning airline check-in counters into law 
enforcement checkpoints,'' said Jayashri Srikantiah, a San Francisco lawyer 
with the American Civil Liberties Union who has been fighting a 
facial-recognition pilot program at the Fresno airport, which screens 
passengers' faces against those of known terrorists.

``It's unclear if this database would stop terrorists, but it most 
definitely would limit the freedom of every American who travels.''

Honda spokesman Ernest Baynard said it's still unclear exactly how the 
system would work, or even what would happen to a passenger who sets off 
alarms in the system.

Congressional staffers said it's too early to predict the fate of such a 
profiling system, but Honda has had success securing technology funding in 
anti-terrorism bills in recent months as a member of the House Democratic 
Task Force on Homeland Security.

Honda's proposed profiling system would be a sweeping extension of the 
computer-assisted passenger pre-screening system, better known as CAPPS, 
which airlines already use to help single out high-threat passengers.

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