Tracking Tracking

A couple of updates on the surveillance front: First, another step forward in the public adoption and use of RFID technology, from Microsoft, who will now include RFID management software in its Axapta Warehouse Management product.

Second, Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchison is still telling reporters CAPPS-II will be in full effect by summer.

Comments

[Chris]

I think it is interestng how "violent criminals" could be barred under the CAPPS II system, even if they have already served their time. What's the deal with punishing people twice? And if our penal system is in the business of rehabilitating people(which I doubt it is) why should violent criminals be barred from flights?

Discuss.

Chris(not the asshole theist, either)

[Ben]

Anything Asa Hutchison is attached to is a very bad idea.

[Russ D]

Stephen, think outside the box (cutters).

Being that the WTC and Pentagon were not attacked with luggage, option 5 - SECURE THE COCKPIT DOORS is the most reliable AND most cost effective security. All the other "remedies" only push the potential terrorism one step farther back in the chain and cost tons of money without any guarantee that they'll actually work.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Two billion tons of prevention is also worth a pound of cure.

[Stephen Fetchet]

In airport security, you have your choice - either people are subject to search, or they aren't. Pick one.

Now if you think that somebody ought to pay some attention to what people are taking on planes, you have to figure out how to do that.

1. Search everybody.
2. Search randomly.
3. Search on a subjective basis.
4. Search based on objective factors.

Number 1 is clearly unacceptable. It would operate on the same (sketchy, IMHO) theory that DWI checkpoints operate on - "because we inconvenience everybody, in effect, nobody is singled out for bad treatment." (Thanks for that theory, Mr. Chief Justice!)

Number 2 is also clearly unacceptable. That's like having the cops stop cars randomly, or arrest and jail people randomly. While airport search techniques are really intrusive now, they sort of stick to the 4th Amendment principle of particularlized suspicion. There are some random searches, but fully randomized searches would kick the notion of suspicion being linked to searches right to the curb - and last time I checked, the Constitution doesn't burst into flames if you carry it into an airport.

Number 3 is a great idea, as long as you trust a bunch of $10/hour screeners with nearly absolute discretion. The only problem I have with that is that a screener with racist leanings will use the discretion to pick on people of a race he disfavors, and so forth. And God forbid, you should be of middle eastern descent, because everybody is going to rely on their base instincts and disregard logic and the law. Might as well just walk through the airport with your hands on your ankles.

Option 4 - coming up with some objective criteria for the searches - seems like the least worst alternative. I don't know that much about CAPPS II, but from what I've read objective criteria like travel patterns, citizenship, how you pay for tickets - would be looked for based on information held in government and commercially available databases. This seems like a reasonably good faith effort to examine all the available data, and make an informed choice as to who gets searched. Throw in a few random searches, a couple subjective searches, and it could be better than the system we have now. As one screener put it in a Wash Post article a few weeks ago, "I search anybody who looks funny."

I think there are big problems with computer assisted screening - my credit report, for example, is totally inaccurate; we saw over the holidays that name-based watchlists provide an imperfect method of matching names to persons; and how does one get from being wrongly listed, onto the trusted traveler list? (I presume they are still looking at such a thing, but I'm not sure).

It seems to me that questions of safeguards for all that personal information, and providing convenient fixes for people who keep (wrongly) coming up for searches, along with oversight of the search criteria (something we'll never get, but Congress can...) are the important issues here.

Anybody got a better way of doing it?

[Hank]

And what happens when these gov. dbases start getting hacked?