DHS "suspends" CAPPS II for privacy review

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=2928022

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U.S. Reviewing Air Passenger-Screening Plan
Fri June 13, 2003 06:51 PM ET
By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has
suspended development of an airline passenger-screening program until it can
assess any threats to passenger privacy, department officials said on
Friday.

Prompted by hundreds of complaints, the department is reviewing its Computer
Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, known as CAPPS II, to ensure it
complies with privacy laws and it plans to release a public report next
week, officials said.

"We are intending relatively shortly to put out an additional privacy
notice," said Brian Turmail, a spokesman for the department's Transportation
Security Administration. "Ostensibly, no testing will happen until that
privacy notice is placed, and it should happen shortly."

Homeland Security officials said development had been suspended for about
three weeks during the review. The review is not expected to imperil the
program or delay its planned implementation, which could occur as soon as
next January. But it is likely to reveal important details about how the
"data mining" system would affect ordinary travelers.

Announced last January, CAPPS II would comb government intelligence,
commercial credit reports and other private-sector databases to verify
passengers' identities and determine if they have links to al Qaeda or other
militant groups. Al Qaeda is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the
United States by four hijacked airplanes.

The program has drawn fire from business travelers, civil liberties
advocates and some lawmakers who fear it would allow the government to pry
into citizens' private lives.

It has also met resistance from the European Union, which said it runs afoul
of its own privacy laws.

The department said it would seek to address some of the concerns in its new
privacy-impact statement and that a final statement would be published
before the system went online.

TSA officials have been reluctant to describe the system in detail, arguing
extremists could alter their behavior to avoid detection if they knew how
the government was computing each passenger's threat assessment.

OPENING UP THE PROCESS

The nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center has sued the TSA and the
Department of Homeland Security to get access to internal CAPPS II
documents.

"I think a lot of things are converging that hopefully will, if nothing
else, open up the process of what is going on," said EPIC General Counsel
David Sobel.

Sobel noted that the current screening system, which matches passenger names
against a list of suspected militants, had resulted in scores of people
being turned away at airports with no explanation and no way to clear their
names.

A Homeland Security official said passengers would probably be able to find
out why they were kept off flights as long as they did not see intelligence
reports and other classified information, which would be handled by an
ombudsman. The agency also hopes to reveal what databases are used to
compute the risk assessments in its final report.

California privacy activist Bill Scannell said the privacy review was a
welcome development.

"I'm just happy that someone got around to reading the Constitution. It's
really kind of neat," he said.

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