Florida birth certificate copy

Complaints prompt agency to soften air travel demands

In response to complaints from privacy activists and advocacy groups for Middle Eastern ethnic minorities, the Transportation Security Administration in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security narrowed somewhat its proposal to gather and search out personal data on airline passengers.

The proposed CAPPS II program is to detect passengers who may raise suspicions that require heightened searches at airports. Originally TSA wanted to keep its data for 50 years; that has been curtailed to a day or two after a flight unless there is suspicion. Originally, TSA wanted to query credit records. That element has been left out of the latest, revised proposal. www.tsa.gov/public/display?theme=8&content=631, 68 Federal Register 45265, Aug. 1. Still, the new proposal now calls for demanding date of birth from airline customers and for passenger records to be "run against commercial databases." That usually means using ChoicePoint, a discredited database company that has been cited repeatedly for selling erroneous data. ChoicePoint has Social Security numbers, and home addresses, along with phone numbers of millions of individuals and some arrest data. (Attorneys in Florida have filed a class-action lawsuit against ChoicePoint and the parent company of Lexis-Nexis for allegedly obtaining drivers' records in violation of the Driver's Privacy Protection Act. Levine v. ChoicePoint, 03-80491 (S.D. Fla. 2003).) Before activating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS), TSA must complete development and then a review of the system to evaluate its speed, accuracy, and efficiency; that process could take up to 180 days. The Department of Homeland Security says that it will continue to evaluate public comments and that a third privacy notice will be published before CAPPS is operational. [See "20 Minutes a Month" on page four if you wish to make comments.]

Mike Stollenwerk, a privacy activist in Alexandria, Va., who is affiliated with the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, called for privacy activists to organize a boycott of the CAPPS II program by declining to provide date of birth when one makes an air reservation. Date of birth has never before been a requirement when a traveler makes a reservation. The planners of CAPPS II apparently believe that DOB will accelerate queries to databases like ChoicePoint's. "If just a small segment of the air traveler population could be coaxed into giving random dates of birth every time they fly to trigger a higher 'amber' rating mix, the influx of false positives for amber passengers will overwhelm the TSA's budgetary ability to commit to this nonsense," Stollenwerk said this month. "Also, this DOB boycott effort would provide an opportunity to inform Americans just how sensitive their dates of birth have become in the digital age."

On a related matter: If you don't want to get caught up in the horror of mistaken identity at the airport, the Transportation Security Administration forces you to fill out a form that demand more personal information and a copy of a birth certificate, voter registration card, driver's license or passport. (Imagine that for security copies of documents.) Call the TSA ombudsman at 571/227-2383 to request the Passenger Identity Verification Form.