CAPPS II: Coalition of Privacy and Civil Liberties Groups Files Comments

March 16, 2003 - News

PrivacyActivism, along with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and advisor Mike Stollenwork, and CASPIAN, filed comments on Friday asking the Department of Transportation to withdraw plans exempting the proposed passenger screening database from the Privacy Act of 1974.

The ASSR database is believed to be a component of CAPPS II (Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening), a system that profiles all airline travelers, using a massive secret database of information to assign "threat levels". Deborah Pierce's recent Seattle Press article gives an overview of CAPPS II, as well as the privacy and civil liberties issues it raises.

Privacy advocate Bill Scannell is calling for a boycott of Delta over the airline's testing of the CAPPS II system.

More information is available at <http://www.privacyactivism.org/topic/CAPPS>.

Last updated March 18, 2003