Passenger Profiling Violates Rights, Doesn't Improve Safety

For Immediate Release -- September 30, 2003

San Francisco - PrivacyActivism, along with Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, C.A.S.P.I.A.N., and others today submitted formal comments to the Privacy Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, urging it to stop development of a proposed airline passenger screening program administered by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

The program, called the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS II), will allow travel authorities to access personal information about each passenger from government and commercial databases.

Because even some of the most critical government and commercial databases contain faulty data, authorities who rely on systems like CAPPS II run the risk of misidentifying individuals and "tagging" them as security risks, even forbidding passengers to board planes. Once available, travel authorities or others may use this sensitive data for purposes other than identifying potential threats to passengers aboard airplanes.

"We're concerned that the Homeland Security Department's CAPPS II plan sacrifices the privacy and civil liberties of travelers without a logical connection to safety and security," said EFF Attorney Kevin Bankston, an Equal Justice Works / Bruce J. Ennis Fellow. "The CAPPS II passenger profiling scheme should not proceed until its proponents address serious questions about privacy, due process, accuracy, and effectiveness, as Congress recognized last week when it halted implementation of CAPPS II pending further review."

Last week, JetBlue Airways admitted divulging the personal information of more than one million of its customers to a Pentagon contractor, raising fears among privacy advocates that the airline was roadtesting CAPPS II. According to USA Today, the Pentagon contractor personnel had even displayed at least one passenger's personal information on a public website.

"JetBlue's inappropriate disclosure of the personal information of more than a million customers is a flagrant disregard of the company's privacy policy and an unprecendented violation of privacy," explained PrivacyActivism Executive Director Deborah Pierce. "The potential for government abuse of personal information in the context of travel security is no longer theory but instead a frightening reality."

This media release online:
http://www.privacyactivism.org/Item/177

PrivacyActivism and EFF comments on CAPPS-II:
http://www.privacyactivism.org/docs/Comments_DHS-TSA-2003-1.doc

About PrivacyActivism

PrivacyActivism (http://www.privacyactivism.org) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose goal is to enable people to make well-informed decisions about the importance of privacy on both a personal and societal level.

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Last updated September 30, 2003