The Transportation Security Administration is going ahead with establishing a hidden database of all airline passengers who pose a possible risk to transportation.
I made some queries to friends in the airline industry and was told that will include anyone who raises any type of suspicion when you fly, where the word “suspicion” is in the mind of the airline employee or security guard at the time. Presumably, this means other than normal conversation with airline staff and security folks, if you make a fuss when you fly, the government will add you to their list.
For the life of me I cannot understand how this will make flying safer. I wouldn’t be surprised that if this issue made the mass media and some dumb reporter did a random poll of the flying public the responses would be, “Well, if you have nothing to hide what’s the big deal?”
Have Americans really bent over forward and turned into sheep when it comes to privacy? I wonder how many private citizens who work for the airlines and related companies will feel obliged to enter your name into the database on behalf of Herr Bush and CO? Even so, I wonder how many “mean” private citizens and govt security people will enter your name into the database just because they can?
Reading it I understand the airlines will provide a manifest with the names of all passengers
and the source of the data is
The datebase will erase the names of passengers once travel is completed and retain for 50 years the names of those who are deemed to be security risks.
Speaking as someone who flies from time to time, I think this is great. It makes me and othr passengers and crew just a bit safer.
From a civil liberties POV, having a list is superior to profiling Arabs. People can be on this list regardless of race or nationality.
Presumably anyone on this list will get a more thorough examination when he flies. I triggered the alarm the last time I walked throught security, but the individual frisking was no big deal. It took about 2 minutes. I took my shoes off. The security person passed a wand all around me. They returned my shoes. Finis.
IMO, the cost of this plan will not generate enough added safety to justify itself.
There are things that can be done but some of the things being done will IMO. add so much to the cost of flying either in dollars or time that the death o passenger air travel will be the result.
We already had a thread about this and I opposed the idea then and I oppose it now.
If the government wants to have a database of bad guys and check everybody who gets on a plane against the database, that’s one thing I would have no problem with but the government keeping track of where everybody flies is just an unwarranted intrusion in our privacy. It is an invitation for abuse and it will be abused. No doubt about it.
sailor makes one of the points I was attempting to address in the OP.
The other one is what are the safeguards in this system? If you hassle the airline clerk when checking in and they’ve had a bad hair day, don’t like your looks or you otherwise display a behavior that wouldn’t bat an eye where you work, what is to stop that clerk from attaching a flag to your name?
So that same flight gets delayed and you miss an inter-connecting flight. A number of you complain about it. A different person attaches a flag to your name. You now have two instances in a short period of time. When taken as individual actions, neither are worthy of merit to have your name entered into the database. But that will never be checked. All what will happen is you got two strikes entered in a short period of time. There will never be enough time and effort to do the necessary followup to purge the false entries.
For me, the procedure will not work. And human nature being what it is, especially now in paranoid America, Bush is becoming successful in turning innocent people against each other.
I’m not very comfortable with this proposal, either. AT the same time, I do remember that there was a whole boatload of “air rage” incidents that seemed to vastly increase for a while. 9/11 took our attention away, understandably. But it’s still a danger, and at the very least quite disruptive, for drunk and/or aggressive passengers to try to break into cockpits, beat up flight attendants etc. Here in Albuquerque there were a lot of cases where flights had to make emergency landings so that violent passengers could be arrested.
Once the program is in place, I expect that the head office will be periodically deluged with requests such as this:
“* As a taxpayer who helps fund the air safety program, I’d like to ask that you please add child molesters and deadbeat dads to the airlines threat matrix. America has not done nearly enough to protect societies’ most vulnerable members. Surely such a small addition to the program would be inexpensive, yet still do much to protect our precious children…*”
What red-blooded american bureaucrat could resist such a heartfelt plea when it involves getting a larger mandate and a bigger budget ?
Can you please explain why they need to know where everybody is traveling today? I already said it is one thing to have a list of names of people who have done something but why does the US Federal Government want to know where I am going?