3+ Million passengers to be misidentified?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Stephen D. Poe" <sdpoe () acm org>
Date: August 14, 2007 7:50:02 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: 3+ Million passengers to be misidentified?
Reply-To: sdpoe () acm org

Dave -

For IP if you like.

Putting together two different sets of facts and running what we used  
to call a back-of-the-envelope calculation:

"The government proposed a third version of its airline passenger pre- 
screening program... With the full name, we can resolve 95 percent of  
the cases correctly. The date of birth adds 3.5 percent to that, and  
the gender adds another one percent," Hawley said." ('Feds offer  
simpler flight screening plan', http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070809/ 
ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/secure_flight)

So I believe Hawley is stating the final error rate is 0.5% mis- 
identifications.

The Air Transport Association lists 671.7 million US domestic airline  
passengers for 2006 ( ATA 2006 Annual Report, http://www.airlines.org/ 
NR/rdonlyres/0E9E7072- 
ECC6-4CED-8B8E-6857256935E7/0/2007AnnualReport.pdf).

Using the 2006 passenger figures, that would mean the third version  
of the system using all three proposed pieces of information would  
'only' misidentify 3.36 million  passengers a year.

Either Hawley's math is bad or something is wrong.

Stephen





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