Government Is 'Reshaping' Airport Screening System

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

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

Published: July 16, 2004


ASHINGTON, 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.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/politics/16fly.html>

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